Charli XCX: This Was Her Biggest Move This Year
Charli XCX is having an amazing year. Her brat album was a huge hit the moment it was released. Per Metacritic, it’s the best-reviewed album of the year thus far. It got five stars in The Guardian, Paste gave it a 9 out of 10, and the very trendy Pitchfork gave it a 8.6 out of 10. Rolling Stone gave it a glowing review as well. Some feel that it’s a strong contender for Album of the Year at the Grammys. Keep in mind that this is a year that has seen huge album releases by Beyonce and Taylor Swift.
Her album has been culturally impactful as well. Earlier this month, Rolling Stone published a feature: “We’re Having a Brat Girl Summer: The Charli XCX Aesthetic Explained and the Key Pieces You’ll Need to Channel the Trend.” They wrote, “What has followed in the weeks since [brat‘s] release is something that we (and probably the pop visionary herself) could never have predicted. Since its inception, the album has had everyone and their mother associating a bold, lime green shade with the release. The viral aesthetic has spanned across social media, where users are taking to their stories and TikToks to post sightings of lime green… well, anything.” The New York Times concurs, declaring that it’s “The Summer Of Brats.”
What Is Charli XCX’s ‘brat?’
Vogue wrote about “The Business of Brat,” noting, “It’s officially Brat summer. Since the album’s June release, Brat has generated $22.5 million in media impact value (MIV), according to Launchmetrics (MIV analyses the value of a brand or individual’s posts, article mentions and social media interactions). Searches for items in Brat-style ‘slime green’ surged 17 percent in the past two weeks, according to global shopping platform Lyst.”
PBS host and teacher Sari Beth Rosenberg described it on X (formerly Twitter) last month: “Last summer was Barbie Summer. Hot pink, women making it a GNO [girls night out] to see the movie, all of us collectively unpacking the pressures of being a girl & what were we made for? This summer is Brat Summer. Obnoxious neon green, doing what we want, whether it be together or on our own, we are celebrating our power but in a much more overt way. We have processed what we are made for & we know what happens when we center the Kens. We are centering ourselves. Watch out.”
“Brat Summer” moved up a level over the weekend after President Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the race for President and Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. Charli then tweeted, “Kamala IS brat.” (We’ll note here that this isn’t an editorial piece about who you should vote for, we’re just discussing the album’s impact.)
Vice President Harris fully embraced this. Her campaign’s social media accounts have adopted the bright green aesthetic of the brat album cover. The Atlantic published a feature “The Brat-ification of Kamala Harris.” That’s a pretty big cultural moment for a 31-year-old pop artist.
But I’ll argue that that still isn’t the most significant thing that Charli XCX has done this year. I would suggest that the remix of her brat song “girl, so confusing,” featuring Lorde, might be that thing. As we previously reported, fans speculated that “girl, so confusing” from brat was about Lorde, as the two artists had often been compared to each other for some reason. That speculation was put to rest with song’s remix, known as “The girl, so confusing version with lorde”: the song was, indeed, about Lorde.
Though the song initially showcased Charli’s mixed feelings about the New Zealand artist, Lorde shared her support of the brat album on her Instagram Story writing, “I speak for all of us when I say it’s an honour to be moved, changed and gagged by her work, there is NO ONE like this bitch. Brava and welcome brat.”
Charli shared a screenshot of a text from Lorde (whose real name is Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor) posted on her official X (formerly Twitter) account. Some of that text became the lyrics on the remix: “Well, honestly I was speechless when I woke up to your voice note, you told me how you’d been feeling: let’s work it out on the remix.”
Lorde gets really candid about her feelings about Charli. Apparently, when Charli would invite Lorde to go out with her, she’d cancel last minute. Citing body image issues and an eating disorder, Lorde sings that she was so jealous of Charli’s “awesome” life.
Later in her verse, Lorde notes the constant similarities brought up between the two: “People say we’re alike, they say we’ve got the same hair. It’s you and me on the coin the industry loves to spend. And when we put this to bed, the internet will go crazy. I’m glad I know how you feel, ’cause I ride for you, Charli.”
The media — and yes, we are part of the media, obviously — does, indeed, love to “spend” that “coin.” It thrives off of “beefs” between artists, and it seems like this gets particularly intense with female artists. So much has been written about Britney Spears vs. Christina Aguilera, Christina Aguilera vs. Pink, Taylor Swift vs. Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj vs. Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj vs. Megan Thee Stallion, Madonna vs. Lady Gaga and the list goes on. And on.
And, of course, this has gotten infinitely worse in the age of social media, where toxic fan bases declare war on each other over a slight, or even a perceived slight.
If you’ve ever been in a situation where you just aren’t clicking with someone, or there is a perceived conflict between you and someone else, you know that the longer it goes on, the harder the rift is to address. And the harder it is to mend. If this happens at work, or at school, or in your family or social circle, other people notice. Then they talk, and the thing begins to get momentum and take on a life of its own.
So it’s worth saying this here: both women deserve an immense amount of credit for working it out privately and then taking it public and taking control of their story.
I interviewed Charli in 2017 and asked her about her BBC documentary, The F Word And Me (the “f-word” being feminism). As you can see in the linked clip, she’s a bit bored with the topic. And I understood that; in 2017, it seemed crazy that sexism still needed to be addressed. But she also aquiesed that it did still need to be addressed. It occurred to me that she was kind of a role model, but a reluctant one. She didn’t seem like someone who wanted to be at the forefront of a movement. And sometimes, those are the most effective change agents. They don’t want to grandstand, they just want to fix or change something and move on.
And I thought about that while listening to “The girl, so confusing version with lorde.” When Charli sings, “Can’t tell if you wanna see me falling over and failing,” that’s relatable. When you’re trying to mend fences, you put yourself in a vulnerable position. Especially today: every text can be screengrabbed and shared. Both Lorde and Charli took a leap of faith by reaching out to each other. And while neither Charli nor Lorde did this to set an example, they did exactly that. It’s one that we can all benefit from. We can all afford to be a bit more vulnerable and take that difficult first step in bridging the gaps that divide us.
