Charli XCX Makes BRAT Into Her Own Personal Acronym For: Being Really Attractive & Tumultuous

While the modern meaning of the word “brat” might be “a child, typically one that is badly behaved,” there was a time in its early usage when, antithetical to its present association with spoiled kids, it was meant to refer to a “beggar’s child.” And, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, “nearly always implying insignificance.” As the word evolved in the twentieth century to become more tailored to the type of blonde, rich Daddy’s girl that would reign supreme in the late 90s and 00s, it began to get reappropriated. Veruca Salt, though not blonde, was obviously an OG of this trope. In that no longer was it a mark of shame for little girls to “own” the title, but it was also a source of pride for grown women, too. Particularly the twenty-something ilk that Charli XCX speaks of on Brat’s thirteenth track, “Mean girls” (a belated vindicating anthem for Regina George if ever there was one). But long before that moment, Charli radiates her brat “persona”—one of those masks she’s been wearing for so long that it’s difficult to tell where the “fake” her ends and the “real” her begins. 

In any case, where Brat itself begins is with “360,” a title that embraces being the “complete package” of an unapologetic, slightly sociopathic bitch (something that the accompanying video reiterates). Opening with the all-too-fitting lines, “I went my own way and I made it/I’m your favorite reference, baby,” Charli establishes that she knows she’s that girl, no matter how “underground” her success has been for so long. With Crash, it already bubbled over to the surface, and Brat is slated to immortalize her as one of the great pop stars of the twenty-first century. Complete with speaking to the brand of narcissism it takes to be one in the current landscape. Even if that narcissism is belied by a sense of raging insecurity. It is this contradiction that flourishes throughout the album. For, on the one hand, you have a braggadocious brat saying things like, “Work angles, yeah/Yeah 360” and “That city sewer slut’s the vibe,” but on the other, you have fraught ruminations on never being able to compare to the really hot bitches. 

That expression of insecurity comes after the one-two punch of the hyper-self-confident “360” and “Club classics,” the latter of which is an unabashed ode to the fact that if anyone is going to be motivated to dance in the club, including Charli herself, it is only going to be a result of playing her and her friends’ music (hence, name-checking A. G. Cook, SOPHIE and “HudMo” a.k.a. Hudson Mohawke). And yet, all that cocky energy falls by the wayside on track three, “Sympathy is a knife.” Co-produced with Finn Keane, Charli keeps the musical tone even more rhythmic and hyperpop-oriented than the previous two songs, which only serves to better present the dichotomy of the insecure lyrics she sings, including, “’Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried/I’m opposite, I’m on the other side” and “Oh no, don’t know/Why I wanna buy a gun/Why I wanna shoot myself/Volatile at war with my dialoguе.” These intense feelings of self-loathing are only further compounded by living in the public eye and being perpetually scrutinized.

Some of that scrutiny extends to the fan theories regarding this song being directed at Taylor Swift. Apparently the inspiration for all uncontrollable contempt these days, if one is to go by the theory that Olivia Rodrigo’s “vampire” is also about her. To boot, Rodrigo speaks of the same issues with the “green-eyed monster” on Sour’s “jealousy jealousy” and Guts’ “lacy” and “pretty isn’t pretty.” Indeed, Charli, too, embodies the spirit of “lacy” by homing in on one particular girl who “taps my insecurities.” She then continues in the same verse, “Don’t know if it’s real or if I’m spiraling/One voice tells me that they laugh/George says I’m just paranoid/Says he just don’t see it, he’s so naive/I’m embarrassed to have it, but need the sympathy.” Alas, as the title of the song declares, “Sympathy is a knife.” Or, more specifically, “All this sympathy is just a knife/Yeah, all this sympathy is just a lie.” 

For those clinging to the Taylor theory, however, Charli drops more than a “faint” “Easter egg” about that potential allusion with the lyrics, “Don’t wanna see her backstage/At my boyfriend’s show/Fingers crossed behind my back/I hope they break up quick.” With her boyfriend being The 1975’s drummer George Daniel, who also gets mentioned in the song, this sentiment could have easily applied to Taylor while she was “dating” Matty Healy in the spring and summer months of 2023 (in which case, Swifties could try to accuse Charli of putting a “hex” on their brief romance). The irony of Charli writing a song about Taylor making her feel insecure is that Taylor, too, has written numerous tracks about her own supposed insecurities despite looking like the American wet dream a.k.a. ticking all the cliche boxes: thin, tall, blonde, blue-eyed and decidedly clean-cut and preppy. 

Charli continues to explore the depths of her self-consciousness on “I might say something stupid,” which is the first track on the album to slow things way down. A slightly warped, vocoder-filtered voice is meant to “take some of the edge” off the seriousness of the song. As one of only two songs on the record produced by Gesaffelstein, it also stands apart sonically while Charli once again delves into the topic of feeling perennially on the outside looking in. Even if she technically is on the inside. But it doesn’t feel that way to her as she sings, “Wear these clothes as disguise/Just to re-enter the party/Door is open, let in but still outside/I look perfect for the background/I get nervous, sip the wine.” As will be the case many times on Brat, the obsession over not looking “hot” “enough” to be among the beautiful people that populate the world of celebrity is part of why Charli overcompensates with the persona most recently created through Crash (that of an international pop star as powerful as, well, Taylor Swift) and which continues to shine on Brat. As she says herself, “Guess I’m a mess and play the role.” She also taps into something fellow Brit MARINA has also discussed in terms of being a “millionairess” yet not all that well-known in the mainstream: “I’m famous but not quite…/One foot in a normal life.” With the line, “I don’t know if I belong here anymore,” Charli also lays the groundwork for hinting at a retreat from the spotlight—a hint she’s dropped before (upon turning thirty), and one that shines through again on the baby-fiending “I think about it all the time.” 

Before that moment arrives, however, Charli goes back to being the “up” person fans know her as—the person they rely on for the jubilant club classics. Although a bit more generic-sounding than the other offerings on Brat, “Talk talk” could very well be slated for that category. A 90s dance-inspired ditty that serves as Charli’s requisitely gushing, “I have a crush” song on the album, she urges the object of her affection, “Wish you’d just talk to me/I wish you’d talk, talk/Wish you’d talk, talk.” In another instance, we get some insight into the average goings-on inside a girl’s head when she’s in “intense crush mode”: “Are you thinking ’bout me?/I’m kind of thinking you are/I followed you to the bathroom/But then I felt crazy.” It seems to be a song inspired by the early phase of her relationship with George, as she further adds to her lament of yearning, “Tell me your secrets and fears [how very “Justify My Love”]/Once you talk to me, I’ll talk to you/And say, ‘Hey, let’s get out of here/Shall we go back to my place?’” Evidently, that’s what eventually happened. Because it gives her the confidence boost to then bring us “Von dutch,” the lead single off the album. 

On titling the song after that particular brand name, Charli stated, “My use of [Von Dutch] was more about the idea of it being this cult classic brand. This thing that people on the internet scramble to get their hands on. Kind of like me: cult classic baby.” And yet, one imagines that after Brat, which has already received the highest acclaim of any album on Metacritic thus far in 2024, Charli will no longer merely be just “peripherally famous.” Her status as “legend” secured in the same way that Julia Fox’s is—for both are “weird” and “kooky” girls who don’t quite fit the mold but have managed to bleed into the mainstream the same way cerulean did into Andy Sachs’ closet circa 2006. Among the most repetitive numbers on Brat, Charli wants to get the message across that she knows her haters are “jealous of me” and that “it’s so obvious I’m your number one.” In effect, it builds on the black-and-white aphorism, “If you hate me and still watch everything I do, then, bitch, you’re a fan.” Charli additionally remarked on her inspiration for writing it, “This song is kind of about that feeling of ‘ugh, I know you’re fucking watching me.’ So if you’re fucking watching, I’m gonna be a fucking star… and you’re like fine, fucking talk: I’m that girl, watch me, and you can talk about me more.”

Charli then switches the mood again, leading us back to her summer spent in Italy—hence a title like, “Everything is romantic.” And yes, to those “just visiting” Italy, it always is. With Charli name-checking Southern Italian milieus like Capri and Pompeii (places with two very divergent connotations: affluence and “everyman-ness”), she layers on image after image designed to evoke that feeling of romanticness she felt while traveling there. This includes, “Winding roads, doing manual drive/Early nights in white sheets with lace curtains” and “Lemons on thе trees and on the ground/Sandals on the stirrups of the scooters/Neon orange drinks on the beach.” The backing beat, co-produced by El Guincho, A. G. Cook and Charli also mimics a tone of romance and wistfulness. Of the sort that ties in nicely with the theme of nostalgia on “Rewind,” this song being an overt “1999” redux (even in terms of the instrumental intonation). For, just as it was on that song off the Charli album, XCX speaks of wanting to return to a simpler time in her life. One when she wasn’t so inhibited by what other people might think of her. Thus, Charli muses, “I’d go back in time to when I wasn’t insecure/To when I didn’t overanalyze my face shape/Nowadays, I only eat at the good restaurants/But, honestly, I’m always thinking ’bout my weight/I used to never feel embarrassed/When I call up the paparazzi/Everyone else does it constantly.” 

In this line, too, Charli proves herself to be unlike the other pop stars by pulling back the curtain on how desperate it can feel to be one sometimes. So it is that she retreats into the safety of her pre-fame memories with the verse, “Used to burn CDs full of songs I didn’t know/Used to sit in my bedroom, putting polish on my toes/Recently, I’ve been thinking about a way simpler time/Sometimes, I really think it would be cool to rewind/I used to never think about Billboard/But, now, I’ve started thinking again/Wondering ’bout whether I think I deserve commercial success/It’s running through my mind.” And so it is that the rampant insecurity throughout Brat flares up again, betraying the persona of a “too good for you cunt.” During the outro of the song, Charli even incorporates a bit of Cher flair with the lines, “Sometimes, I just wanna rewind/Wanna turn back time, to a different time.” Even if Cher was only wanting to turn back time to avoid hurting the one she loved, not the unique pressures of twenty-first century fame. 

Continuing to pull back the layers and reveal her more emotional and vulnerable side, “So I” (which Charli first premiered live at the 2024 Billboard Women in Music Awards) is an elegiac rumination on her creative partnership with SOPHIE (without which you can’t spell “So I”). But more than that, a friendship she wished she had worked harder to fortify, assuming herself to not be “cool” enough to hang around SOPHIE. In the aftermath of her death, there wasn’t just sadness for the professional loss, but for not seizing the opportunity to spend more time with SOPHIE as a friend. Fittingly, the track is co-produced by A. G. Cook, also a friend and creative partner of SOPHIE’s, with the opening verse woefully commencing, “Always on my mind (every day, every night)/Your star burns so bright (why did I push you away?)/I was scared sometimes/You had a power like a lightning strike” (or, as she phrases it on “Lightning” from Crash, “You struck me down like lightning”). 

Charli also tackles the pain of continuing to perform the “club classics” they made together for fans. Songs that, although are favorites of her “Angels,” make her feel downtrodden because they remind her that SOPHIE is gone. Thus, she laments, “When I’m on stage sometimes I lie/Say that I like singing these songs you left behind/And I know you always said, ‘It’s okay to cry.’” Indeed, that was the name of the first track on SOPHIE’s only album as a solo artist, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides. And, despite Charli’s regret about things she could have done differently in terms of nurturing her friendship with SOPHIE, she does illuminate a moment of “positivity” on “So I,” reflecting, “Your sounds, your words live on, endless/When I make songs, I remember/Things you’d suggest, ‘Make it faster.’” Naturally. So Charli does just that on “Girl, so confusing,” a song that is pointedly in the exact spirit of something SOPHIE would have produced. It also happens to be Charli XCX’s version of Madonna’s “What It Feels Like For A Girl.” And what it feels like, of course, is being in a state of constant confusion, and yes, rage. 

“Girl, so confusing” also fuels more speculations as to who Charli might be talking about when she says, “People say we’re alike/They say we’ve got the same hair/We talk about making music/But I don’t know if it’s honest.” Some posit Lorde, while others assume MARINA (eerily, MARINA did say of Charli back in 2015, “Everyone says we look the same so I said, ‘We should say we are sisters and see how far we get with that.’ I might start signing her autographs as well!”). The two do both live in L.A. and have collaborated in the past on MARINA’s “Just Desserts,” released as a standalone single during her Electra Heart era. In fact, Charli even opened for MARINA on a portion of the The Lonely Hearts Club Tour in 2012. It was in 2016, however, that their seeming “sisterly friendship” took a nosedive when Charli did an ad campaign for a fragrance from Impulse shot by photographer Charlotte Rutherford. It didn’t take long for fans to point out the similarities between Charli’s ads and MARINA’s Froot aesthetics (also shot by Rutherford). MARINA was equally quick to comment, “That FROOT looks familiar!” 

When asked by a fan online in 2023 about the supposed beef that ensued, Charli actually answered the question with, “I will say I DID feel negatively years later because I just felt like I really looked up to her and almost saw her as a role model in a way, and when she publicly put me on blast via subtweet I was honestly really hurt and upset and confused and all the fans were coming for me and everything. And I just thought we were friends so maybe she could have, like, texted me or something? So I just felt like she knew she was sending people to ‘get me’ online and as someone I looked up to I just thought that was really a mean thing to do at the time.” 

In short, “Girl, so confusing” could very well be the long-awaited acknowledgement of the matter on Charli’s part as she shades, “Yeah, I don’t know if you like me/Sometimes I think you might hate me/Sometimes I think I might hate you/Maybe you just wanna be me/You always say, ‘Let’s go out’/So we go eat at a restaurant/Sometimes it feels a bit awkward/‘Cause we don’t have much in common.” The clearest indication that MARINA is the inspo, however, comes via the lines, “You’re all about writing poems/But I’m about throwing parties.” This feels like a nod to MARINA’s upcoming collection of poetry, Eat the World. And yet, even if “Girl, so confusing” is, at times, shade-drenched, it also comes across as an olive branch, particularly when she suggests, “Think you should come to my party/And put your hands up/I think we’re totally different/But opposites do attract/Maybe we’re so meant to be/Just you and me.” To that point, Charli also rightly asserts of any potential collab between herself and MARINA, “One day we might make some music/The internet would go crazy/But you might still wanna see me/Falling over and failing/At least we’re closer to being/On the same page.” Whoever the song might “really” be about, Charli speaks to the entire range of confusing emotions related to girl/womanhood, putting it best when she says, “Girl, how do you feel being a girl?/Girl, girl/Man, I don’t know, I’m just a girl.” 

XCX continues to keep the vibe “upbeat but way existential” on “Apple,” which is also the title of a song put out by another “MARINA-era” artist: Lily Allen (fine, hers is called “Apples”). On her 2018 album, No Shame, she sings, “Now I’m exactly where I didn’t want to be/I’m just like my mummy and my daddy/I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” In Charli’s case, the expression seems to apply less to being like her parents and more to being like someone she’s tried to emulate for far too long. This being manifest in the verse, “I guess the apple don’t fall far from the tree/‘Cause I’ve been looking at you so long/Now I only see me/I wanna throw the apple into the sky/Feels like you never understand me/So I just wanna drive.” Because, being a Charli XCX album, sooner or later, the mention of cars, driving, airplanes and other assorted fossil fuel-burning modes of transportation must occur (which is why she also adds that she wants to drive to the airport). 

During another part of the song, Charli appears to be metaphorically speaking on so many potential institutions in this world, not least of which is government or, more relatably to her, the music industry. This comes in the form of: “I think the apple’s rotten right to the core/From all the things passed down/From all the apples coming before.” So yes, her bratty side has fallen off at this point, continuing to do so as “Apple” gives way to the mournful (but still oh so danceable) “B2b.” This being an abbreviation in the DJ/electronic music scene for two DJs standing back to back as they “spin records” (so to speak). The circuitous (or “360,” if you prefer) nature of the song also speaks to Charli perpetually returning to her club roots. And so, as much as it is a song about an ostensibly doomed relationship, it’s also about Charli’s own relationship with the club scene and fame itself as she sings, “Took a long time/Breaking myself down/Building myself up/Repeating it.” A slight pant at the end of “B2b” channels exhaustion as much as it does Britney Spears on “I’m A Slave 4 U” (and one wouldn’t put it past Charli to make such a specific reference). 

Ready to remind listeners that this is still an album called Brat, next up is “Mean girls,” during which Charli serves up her most Lana Del Rey meets Mr G (Chris Lilley) from Summer Heights High (indeed, it’s a wonder Charli [or Lana] didn’t come up with, “She’s a naughty girl with a bad habit/Bad habit for drugs/She’s a party girl with a bad habit/Bad habit for drugs”) lyrics yet. Perhaps knowing that her lyrics are very Lana-y in terms of the picture they paint of a “Carmen”-esque bad bitch, Charli even mentions LDR by name. This comes in the verse, “Yeah, it’s two a.m., and she’s out there/In the sheer white dress, wearing last night’s makeup/All coquette-ish in the pictures with the flash on/Worships Lana Del Rey in her AirPods, yeah/Yeah, she’s in her mid-twenties, real intelligent/Hedonistic with the gravel, drawing dead eyes/You said she’s anorexic and you heard she likes when people say it.”

Del Rey allusions also flicker in with the line, “Calls him Daddy while she’s fingering a gold cross.” Dissecting a certain kind of internet trope, Charli also picks apart the toxicity of an online culture that would hate someone simply for being “hot” and then turn any potential off-handed remark or action from that person into something “cancellable.”

Charli continues to illustrate this “internet stereotype” of a mean girl with, “And she’s kinda fucked up, but she’s still in vogue…/You said she’s problematic and the way you say it, so fanatic/Think she already knows that you’re obsessed.” This idea of being obsessed/jealous of someone and those emotions alchemizing into hate is also the theme of “Von dutch.” Hell, maybe the theme of Charli’s life—or at least the alter ego she’s carved out for herself. The comically dramatic piano breakdown at the midpoint of the song (and it’s here that she really gives Mr G energy) only adds to the notion that Charli is expressing how hilarious she finds all of this. That the internet takes its hate so seriously. This, too, applies to her aforementioned “beef” with MARINA. 

Not one to allow listeners to get too comfortable with her “frothy” side, Charli has the gumption to incorporate an “I think I might want a baby” song right after a song about having mad respect for skinny, dead-eyed, drug-addled cunts. Called “I think about it all the time,” it’s something of a foil for “Twice,” the last song on the standard edition of Crash. And, although XCX is only turning thirty-two in August of this year, she clearly feels the pressure to make a decision about the thing all women are “programmed” to want…eventually. Or at least question themselves about if they don’t want it. The song began as a response to seeing her friend and collaborator, Noonie Bao (who co-wrote many of the tracks on Crash), holding her new baby in her arms. The reaction to this sight comes out in the lyrics, “I went to my friend’s place and I met their baby for the first time/How sublime/What a joy, oh my, oh my/Standing there/Same old clothes she wore before, holding her child, yeah/She’s a radiant mother and he’s a bеautiful father/And now they both know thesе things that I don’t.”

Falling into the trap of thinking she might somehow be “missing out” or “incomplete” if she doesn’t have a child, XCX also told Rolling Stone of the existential nature of “I think about it all the time”:  “Am I less of a woman if I don’t have a kid? Will I feel like I’ve missed out on my purpose in life? I know we’re not supposed to say that, but it’s this biological and social programming. There’s a lot of pressure on women to not talk about that stuff super openly, especially not in pop music or in music generally; we’re supposed to be sexy and free and fun and wild.”

And yet, more and more, women in pop—particularly European women in pop—are talking about it. Tove Lo also opened up the conversation on “Suburbia,” a song from her 2022 album, Dirt Femme, during which she goes back and forth on the pros and cons of motherhood, singing, “Just let me talk this through/So if we had a baby/You’d love them more than me?/What if I’m way too lazy/For the mom Olympic team?/Will we still be romantic?/Will I still get my sleep?/Will you be less pedantic?” and “What if I change my mind and want one/But then I can’t have none?/Would you leave me then?/What if I don’t want the things I’m supposed to want?/What then?/But what if I do in the end?”

Charli XCX is burdened with a similar list of worries, elucidated in her surrender to being Time’s bitch as she offers, “But I finally met my baby/And a baby might be mine/‘Cause maybe one day I might/If I don’t run out of time/Would it give my life a new purpose?/I think about it all the time.” She also notes of seeing her friends with their baby, “And they’re exactly the same, but they’re different now/And I’m so scared I’m missin’ out on something/So, we had a conversation on the way home/Should I stop my birth control?/‘Cause my career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all.” These bold, unprecedented lyrics are also in direct opposition to the theme of the album. One that listeners will often have to remind themselves is called Brat amid these hyper-vulnerable revelations. 

But, in case anyone does get it twisted and thinks Charli could ever truly shed her “cunt energy,” she calculatedly chooses to conclude the record with “365,” something of a “360” reprise. Featuring the same beat as “360” at the beginning, it gives way to a more irascible, drugged-out sound after the one-minute mark. To be sure, drug allusions are the name of the game on this banger (again, only Charli would have the cojones to place a song about wanting kids in between tracks like “Mean girls” and “365”). Particularly cocaine, as Charli suggests, “Should we do a little key?/Should we have a little line?,” later mentioning her drug of choice again with, “French manicure, wipe away the residue.”

The sweaty, club-infused vibe of Brat’s coda also bears hints of Benny Benassi’s famed anthem, “Satisfaction,” as reimagined by “365” co-producers A. G. Cook and Cirkut. What’s more, Charli is sure to get self-referential, alluding to her own songs with lines such as, “Now I wanna hear my track, are you bumpin’ that?” (a nod to “Club Classics,” when she asserts, “I wanna dance to me”) and “Who the fuck are you?”—something she also demands on “Hot Girl.”

Even the fact that Brat starts with “360” and ends with “365” is an homage to 2019’s Charli, which offers both “1999” and “2099” (both featuring Troye Sivan, her tourmate for Sweat). In other words, she’s her favorite reference. And rightly so.