Continuing to prove that she’s pop’s biggest deviant, Charli XCX has not only released a deluxe edition of Brat so soon after its standard edition (three days after, to be exact), but she’s also titled it something far less basic than “deluxe edition”: Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not.
As for the “three more songs” in question, “Hello goodbye,” “Guess” and “Spring breakers,” each one builds on the ultra-danceable hyperpop sound present throughout the record (even when Charli takes a break to get “way existential” on tracks like “I might say something stupid” and “I think about it all the time”). The first, in addition to being the title of a beloved song by The Beatles from Magical Mystery Tour, is an initially mid-tempo track that continues the “crushing-on-you-but-scared-to” feelings explored in “Talk talk.” “Hello goodbye” addresses the same fear of being vulnerable, and all without trying to write off those emotions entirely (as she does on a song like Crash’s “Yuck”).
So it is that XCX opens the song with the verse, “I don’t know what’s going on/Most of the time I’m out my mind/A nervous wreck I said, ‘Goodbye’ and not ‘Hello’/Don’t even know/Felt a little fear and some anxiety/The second you arrived and kind of smiled at me/My heart began to rise I panicked quietly, so silently.” The music mirrors this “fluttery” sort of feeling before bursting forth to accompany the chorus. One that speaks to a common theme in her work in terms of pushing a romantic partner away before either 1) they get too close or 2) she does allow them to get close and then decides to abandon them before they can abandon her.
Hence, she belts out in earnest, “I said, ‘Goodbye’ before you came/I turned around and ran away/I was too scared, I should have said,/‘Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello’/I said, ‘Goodbye’ before you came/I turned around and ran away/I fеlt too scared, I should have said, ‘Hello, hеllo, hello, hello, hello, hello.’” The regret punctuating her sense of missing an opportunity for love—or at least an ephemeral connection—serves as another “D’oh!” sort of moment for her as she self-loathingly recounts, “Now I’m all up in my head/Replaying all my worst regrets/I shot myself, I’m born to lose/Now all I do is think ‘bout you.” This “would’ve, could’ve, should’ve” epiphany is further enhanced when A. G. Cook then incorporates a space-y sort of sound effect in the last minute of the song, as though to subtly indicate that Charli’s emotions and thoughts tend to make her feel like an alien in a crowd of “normal” people with the ability to healthily express their emotions.
And then, as though to wipe away that “icky vulnerability” she showcased far too much, Charli returns to her “brat” persona for “Guess,” a track that reeks of “that city sewer slut’s the vibe” as she channels her inner (or outer, for that matter) sleazecore to sing, “You wanna guess the color of my underwear/You wanna know what I got going on down there/Is it pretty in pink or all see-through?/Is it showing off my brand-new lower back tattoo?/You wanna put ’em in your mouth, pull ’em all down south/You wanna turn this shit out, that’s what I’m talking about.” It’s a “tease anthem” worthy of “Peaches-level raunch” that leads in seamlessly to “Spring breakers” in that “Guess” seems to loosely allude to a scene in said movie when one of the drunken male revelers tells Cotty (Rachel Korine), “Goddamn you look sexy, I want that pussy, baby.” Cotty, lying on the ground in a suggestive position, responds in a taunting sing-song voice, “Never gonna get this pussy.” She then flashes the two dudes her tits instead.
As she delves into the “slut positive” chorus (mentioning producer The Dare in it, to boot) of “Guess,” Charli suddenly channels the intonation of Daft Punk on 2005’s “Technologic” when they recite, “Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, trash it, change it, mail, upgrade it/Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it, snap it, work it, quick erase it/Write it, cut it, paste it, save it, load it, check it, quick rewrite it/Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it, rip it/Technologic.” In Charli’s case, however, she opts for, “Try it, bite it, lick it, spit it/Pull it to the side and get all up in it/Wear ‘em, post ‘em, might remix it/Send them to The Dare, yeah, I think he’s with it.” At arguably her “brattiest” yet on this track, it reminds one, at the same time, of the insecurities she’s previously expressed on the album, and how the title itself arose from the admission that, “It’s about this sort of behavior that everybody adopts on the internet, whether you’re a Twitter troll or whether you’re dancing to Addison Rae on TikTok. There is this element of unabashed, shameless, Me-centric content that is being made, but I also think behind that is a lot of people who use that as a protective layer. Brattiness is a cloak. You’re only a brat if you’re acting out against something that’s made you feel a little bit insecure.”
And so she continues to act out and wear that cloak of brattiness on “Spring breakers,” the new “real” finale to the record. What’s more, it seems like Camila Cabello has now taken one too many sources of inspiration from Charli for C,XOXO, with her entire Spring Breakers mood board being more in line with Charli’s shtick…not to mention the patented hyperpop sound of “I Luv It” (which, granted, is still a bop). So it looks like she oughta be the one to call “familiar FROOT” on someone this time. As for the lyrical content of “Spring breakers,” it comes across as a direct hit at the Grammys—indeed, this is her Beyoncé on Cowboy Carter moment. For Bey, too, gets her jab at the Recording Academy in via a song from her most recent record. Because, despite being the most awarded Grammy winner in history with thirty-two wins as of 2024, she’s still miffed that she never got Album of the Year. The barb about that perceived “slight” arrives on “Sweet * Honey * Buckin” when she sings, “A-O-T-Y, I ain’t win (let’s go)/I ain’t stuntin’ ’bout them/Take that shit on the chin/Come back and fuck up the pen (yeah)/Say the things that I know will offend (uh, yeah)/Wear that shit that I know start a trend.”
Charli, who has a much more legitimate reason to be irritated with the Recording Academy, expresses similar sentiments in the lines, “Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, in a big pink truck/February 10th, and I’m gonna pull up/Hey, Staples Center, what the fuck is up?/Yеah, I’m parked outside watching all the girls strut/Got thе custom on, hit the worst dressed list/Yeah, you better not slide, not slip, not trip/‘Cause I poured a load of gasoline on the carpet/Lit a cigarette, took a drag, then I just flicked it/Place went boom, boom, boom, boom, clap/And I just laughed when the bodies went splat.” Referencing three of her own songs in that verse (“Vroom Vroom,” “Boom Clap” and “Hot Girl” from the Bodies Bodies Bodies Soundtrack), Charli also fortifies her “360” lyric, “I’m your favorite reference, baby.” Or at least she’s her own. Though there does seem to be a subtle nod to 00s party girls like Paris, Nicole and Lindsay when she braggadociously flexes, “Yeah, I knew I’d end up with my hands behind my back/In a police car, blue and red sirens/All flash, flash, flash, flash, lights and cameras everywhere/Now I’m on the news with the DUI stare/Who cares?”
But it’s the Queen of the 00s herself, Britney Spears, that Charli pays the most homage to. Not just by saying “outrageous,” but thanks to a subtle insertion of the “angel if there ever was one on this Earth” crooning the word, “Everytime,” yet another nod to a scene in Spring Breakers when Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty dance serenely while wearing pink ski masks and toting guns to this very song being played on the piano by their “cult leader,” Alien (James Franco).
Charli then continues to make shade-drenched Grammy allusions with the demand, “Just put me on the platform, turn the microphone on/There’s no one I wanna thank out there, yeah.” In the second verse, she builds on her fantasy “fuck you” speech at the Grammys by sarcastically adding, “On the flip side, I could talk real, real nice/Maybe if you give me that prize/You might see a tear from my eye/Might change my whole damn life/I-I-I’d maybe thank God on the stage/Yeah, I swear I’d be so nice/No, I’d never misbehave/And I’d do my speech on time, maybe somethin’ just like…” Delivered in a more vocally manipulated manner, this gives way to the chorus featuring “regular Charli voice” as she boasts, “Hi, it’s me, you’re all in danger/Never get invited ’cause I’m such a hater/Got my finger on the detonator [she also shocks you like defibrillators]/ Crazy girl shit, gonna go Spring Breakers/Every time, I make it so outrageous [this entire line channeling Britney]/Always gonna lose to people playin’ it safer/Four, three, two, one, see you later.”
Thus, the overall message of “Spring breakers” is that Charli will never be the girl who plays it safe for the sake of awards and accolades—unlike a certain other pop star she’s shading on “Sympathy is a knife”: Taylor Swift. Instead, she is that bitch accused of being crazy, that bitch who goes on an all-out spree of forcing people to get out of their musical comfort zone and end up really enjoying themselves as a result. That’s what Brat is all about—in addition to the entire XCX oeuvre.
