On Sept. 2, Charli xcx made a declaration: “Goodbye forever brat summer.”
Posted on the singer’s X, formerly Twitter account, those four words capped off a season of lime green profile pictures, confused corporate pandering and culturally defining hits, all stemming from the hyperpop sensation’s sixth studio album — Brat.
If you haven’t already dived headfirst into the hedonistic, club-centric world of Brat, you may have seen WMUC 90.5 FM’s new Instagram profile picture, attended the Brat-themed event at Looney’s Pub in August or even heard the album mentioned during this year’s presidential election coverage.
Brat became an emblem of the Democratic Party and the Harris-Walz campaign, despite the singer’s cocaine-laden lyrics on the album’s final track — “Should we do a little key? Should we have a little line?”
[Pitt and Clooney drown ‘Wolfs’ plot with paralleled chemistry]
The campaign’s rapid response page, Kamala HQ, changed its X banner to a lime-colored image emblazoned with the account’s handle in the album’s signature blurred Arial font after Charli xcx’s July 21 announcement that “Kamala IS brat.”
Advance Maryland, a progressive advocacy group, even used Brat’s iconography to highlight Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks’s U.S. Senate campaign in an August Instagram post.
Legacy news outlets that covered the endorsement struggled to define the album to their older readership, instead opting to use the singer’s own words.
“You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but then maybe also has a breakdown,” Charli xcx explained in a TikTok. “But kind of like parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile, does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”
It was the culmination of a miraculous summer for the singer-songwriter, whose most-streamed single remains “Boom, Clap,” which is a decade-old and sits under a half-billion streams. Brat might’ve been initially mocked for its simplistic graphic design, but it grew into one of the largest cross-cultural touchstones of the year. Charli xcx is bigger than ever, so why is she trying to cut her own party short with the announcement of the album’s demise?
The answer is simple — she isn’t.
Charli xcx embarked on her Sweat tour with co-headliner Troye Sivan, which arrived at Baltimore’s CFG Bank Arena on Sept. 26. On top of that, a second deluxe version of the album, Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, will be released on Oct. 11. It seems the reports of Brat’s death are greatly exaggerated.
Brat’s once-ridiculed cover was the perfect marketing ploy — an easy to reproduce, instantly recognizable emblem that anyone could make their own. In a music industry dominated by the all-American, too-good-to-be-true persona of Taylor Swift, it’s refreshing to see a pop star smudge-up their clean slate.
[‘SOPHIE’ misses mark with basic tracks, heavy-handed features]
Brat is the antithesis to Swift’s brand. She’s uncensored, irreverent, occasionally rude and uncompromising, but her album was embraced in a similar manner to Swift’s works,
despite being stuffed full of societal taboos and no-nos.
Now, three months since its release, Brat is more than surviving, it’s thriving. Clips from the Sweat tour are trending on social media and the album’s remixes, featuring stars such as Lorde and Billie Eilish, are seeing more streams than the songs’ original recordings. Eilish’s “Guess” remix became the second-most-streamed song from the Brat era.
It doesn’t matter when Charli xcx says Brat summer is over — it isn’t up to her. The album has escaped her, growing into a cultural force somehow one with political momentum. This lime-soaked summer is going to be a long one, with no end in sight.
