BRAT

Mariane Morais
26 de out. de 2024
6 min de leitura

“I went my own way and I made it”. This is how the sixth album by British artist Charli xcx begins, released on June 7th, and is one of the year's most talked about and acclaimed.

Her party-girl alter ego has been around since the beginning of her career, in 2008, and Charli has been synonymous with “cool girl”. The album, in general, does not submit to any moral rules, and the artist exposes her thoughts almost as if in a stream of consciousness a la Virginia Wolf. Leaning both towards almost megalomaniac thoughts of self-esteem (360, Von dutch) and the anguish of feeling like a fraud of herself (Sympathy is a knife, I might say something stupid, and Girl, so confusing), it captures the duality of being young, but not so much anymore.

Charli is too countercultural to be considered mainstream pop, but too recognized to be indie. And this statement makes the album's lyrics so poetic and emotional, since "not fitting in" is difficult for anyone. But by exposing her vulnerabilities while accepting she's something greater than herself, Charli managed to break into the mainstream with a work that expresses precisely her discomfort with not belonging.

Viral TikTok hits like the dance to the song “Apple” and the impeccable success of “Girl, so confusing featuring lorde” paved the way for the satisfaction of the “common man”. Part of the independent record label, PC Music, BRAT reaches new heights with hyperpop and serves as a driving force for artistic experimentation with inspirations like Sophie, A.G. Cook, and Hannah Diamond.

The album of crises and inconsistencies transforms itself into a sound record of the illegal raves that Charli performed at (with her parents, even) at the age of 14, passing through different eras and lyrical constructions from various moments of her career. There is no asepsis or half measures, Charli is visceral in her approach and goes against the grain of palatable musical canning.

Cover

At first, everyone hated it.

Lime green (now brat green), centered Arial font, and that was it. The cover was harshly criticized – Why not put the artist’s face on it? Why so ordinary? (something similar happened to George Michael in the 90s with the album "Listen Without Prejudice").

In fact, her process is much more meticulous than people give it credit for.

An irony of the concept of banality and basic, the design is – just as pop music is often seen – direct and simple, but with a twist that makes it stand out: the choice of a vibrant and unique color, and the blurry and most ordinary font possible. Just like the artist, the art is not afraid of being considered “empty”, but seeks something subversive in its composition.

To further cement its iconic status, the website “bratgenerator.com” was made available as an online platform where anyone could apply the band’s signature ‘sloppy’ design elements to create their own custom album covers (something similar happened in 2023, with the blockbuster film “Barbie” and the “Barbie selfie generator”). The interactive content strategy turned fans into owners and strongly connected them to the album.

NYC is a canvas and TikTok is a TV

On May 2, Charlie started a TikTok live with a lime green painted wall, titled "brat wall", and later tweeted the address of The Lot Radio, the location of the wall. Instantly, fans started going to the location, taking photos, recording TikToks and, once again, organic marketing was achieved.

To enhance this experience, Charli did a surprise performance at the brat wall, and as soon as she announced the remix “Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not”, the strategy was reworked, but now with the audience already very engaged and closely following the process – and producing a lot of content about it.

The success was made by tiktoker Kelley Heyer, who created a dance for the song, and soon everyone was dancing to the lyrics I guess the apple doesn'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.

Influencer marketing directly served the album’s reaching strategies, with TikTok being one of its biggest sources of memes, viral dances, analyses of the messy girl aesthetic, lyrics that talk about other possible artists, etc.

Green Brat aesthetics and it's cultural impact

A quick search on Pinterest (home of all aesthetics), and the summer moodboard of rowdy brats becomes clear before your eyes. Authenticity wins over perfection, lime green is vehemently overshadowed in the vocabulary, and brat green takes shape. The importance of bringing your audience closer – and what we can see here – is that everything gains new meanings through very well-defined semiotics.

The musical movement metamorphoses into a cultural one (influencing the campaign for president of the United States of America -- Kamala is brat, apparently), and from the awareness of the common listener to recognize and be interested in Charli, the growing desire to be part of something so cool and original made both fans and occasional listeners take action to better understand this project and its nuances. Those who gave their loyalty to the newest pop diva (part of the “pop is not dead” triad along with Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan), became true defenders of the brat brand and, in the musical world, whoever has advocates for themselves, has everything.

The sincere poetry of “Girl, so confused featuring lorde"

The industry made them rivals, but in a courageous act, Charli vents her emotions of envy, anger, and discontent in the tenth song on the album, and quickly everyone discovers who the target was for – the taciturn New Zealander Lorde, cultural icon of the 2010s, who was launched to worldwide and overwhelming fame at the same time that Charli established herself in “pop middle class” (supreme divas for her fanbase, average for the rest) and let it be crystal clear on the lyrics of "I might say something stupid" and "Rewind":

(...)

I'm famous but not quite

But I'm perfect for the background

One foot in a normal life

I go so cold, I go so cold

And I don't know if I belong here anymore, I

(...)

I used to never think about Billboard

But now I've started thinkin' again

Wonderin' 'bout whether I think I deserve commercial success

It's runnin' through my mind

Sometimes I really think it would be cool to rewind

The misunderstanding of two girls, fueled by an industry that survives on rivalry, guaranteed – in its original version – a song full of hypotheses, from the most understanding to the harshest and bitterest. In the remix, it gains enormous strength when Charli (once again brave) invites Lorde, the inspiration for the song, to collaborate and “work it out on the remix”. Genius in the way that only she can, Lorde's verses can be paralyzing, and sad, and now with the other side of the story, they make Charli's verses much more irrational and childish. Just like most of these types of cases are.

Stripping away the shame and facing feelings of envy and resentment head-on make this song Charli's best production to date, and in many ways, it reaffirms the immense victory of her creative intuition.

Brat and it's the same but there's three more songs so it's not + Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat

With releases on the 10th of June and the 11th of October, respectively, the deluxe and remix version of Charli xcx's biggest commercial and critical success appear as an overwhelming post-party hangover, the kind that brings new problems to old discussions.

Charli achieved what she wanted, global fame and intense success. Her hits were known, but they didn't fill stadiums, and she was in the eternal “almost there” for more than ten years (“boom clap” and “I love it” are 10's hits) and her moment of becoming a comet and people start questioning whether she was an "industry plant" hasn't happened. But now it has.

Questions such as “And now that I have reached my maximum?”, “What to do next” is exposed in both albums, and brings new sounds and characteristics with collabs by artists such as Julian Casablancas, Robyn, Caroline Polachek, Kesha, and the SWEAT tour – partnership with Troye Sivan.

BRAT SUMMER (it’s over)

It's officially over, but this era of Charli xcx already goes down in history as one of the biggest pop acts of the 20s, and her legacy is already been replicated (C,XOXO).

Brat gives the public the certainty that it is one of the best albums of the year, and its longevity and power to maintain the public's interest in the “feeling brat” are driven by a set of factors: an attitude of detachment, whilst feeling everything very intensely, but being courageous and confident, envious and remorseful, nostalgic, and mourning it all while going from party to party trying to find yourself in this whirlpool of feelings.

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