I’m going to let you in on a secret…I’ve never fully got Charli xcx.
To be fair, I don’t think many people were on Team Charli prior to 2024. She’s been a bubbling-under-babe since ‘Boom Clap!’ set her up for an explosion that never happened. But even amongst those who followed her as she became an artist that increasingly found herself at odds between her pop influences and her experimental impulses, I just wasn’t a fan.
Now, there are plenty of reasons you might not like the back catalogue of Charli xcx. She’s bold in a way that is completely out of step with the past decade of pop and has leaned into sounds that became increasingly mechanical. Her choice in collaborators behind the scenes did not regularly include the teams behind major hits. There’s a lot of pop hooks against unyielding production.
That’s all true for me, but in earnest, I also just didn’t buy the hype. ‘Vroom Vroom’ was fun, and I was a ‘Crash’ truther before most of her fans were, but I never saw the vision of what the “future of pop” was meant to be. Which feels vindicated.
A decade in the Charli xcx experiment, and contemporary pop music still doesn’t sound like this. Artists pushed to the fringe like Katy Perry or Camila Cabello might reference her, but even they have more obvious references. We’ve been awash in Lana Del Rey rip offs.
Furthermore, performers like Rosalia and Tinashe have stepped in to make music that is just as eclectic as Charli, without the awkward dissonance between performance and production. They’re also just more obviously impactful. The aforementioned Cabello’s album might feel referential to Charli, but it is undoubtably a Rosalia knock off before anything else. There’s an entire industry dedicated to remaking Tinashe’s music.
None of this is her fault, nor is it something I want to hold against her. Charli xcx didn’t oversaturate the market with snivelling critics and sycophants. But for the past decade, as somebody who really loved reading music news, reviews, and columns, I’ve been forced to read what feels like endless media releases. Sometimes, an industry keeps telling you something with no evidence.
But maybe I’ve been too harsh.
With this year being the “year of brat’, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on my feelings about the ‘Boys’ singer, and my conclusion is that…I’m still not convinced. I really have liked ‘brat’ as an album, but this is failing upwards. After years of making music that sounds more interesting than pleasant, the balance is finally achieved, and people are actually listening. That isn’t “being the future”, that’s just making better music.
This album mostly fixed the issues in persona that Charli xcx has struggled with since day dot. Namely, it humanised her while also injecting something akin to charisma to her persona. Considering how icy (yet dorky) ‘Pop 2’ and ‘Charli’ made her seen, that’s a miracle.
‘brat’ plays into the complexity of being Charli xcx a lot, which is compelling! People often mistake coolness for being cold, and this all treads that line extremely tactfully. She can be a 365-party-girl and also release a diss track about Lorde that the Kiwi singer will jump on. Or release a track contemplating about getting older while also pulling Billie Eilish for an oral sex anthem.
All of this to say, I am thoroughly fine with ‘brat’ being a phenomenon. Not because she “earned it”, but because the music is good. But I am getting a little…overwhelmed by it all.
We’re now at version three of the record. The remix album. Following the deluxe album. During the tour. While the US election involves her as well. It’s all a bit…crushing.
2024 has certainly put a dent in the idea that there is no such thing as modern monoculture. The internet is slowly becoming one useless blob of plagiarism via AI and a singular social media platform, which probably won’t get better any time soon. Which has done a lot of damage but has also basically caused pop culture to feel more unified. ‘brat’ as a moment feels way more pervasive than many other big albums of the year.
Monoculture isn’t just that you hear a song a lot. It’s that everybody kind of knows about a cultural artefact. It’s on the radio, it’s on television, it’s used online. You can ignore it, but the world does not. That type of omnipresence feels like it’s suddenly become more standard, rather than less.
The remix album is, on the whole, a refresh of the material that mostly leads to fine enough results. She’s a star now (again), and you get a lot of returned iciness that I just don’t click with. The ‘Sympathy is a knife’ remix is probably the worst for it, also managing to bring in Ariana Grande at her least interesting. But I can’t begrudge the choice here. It wasn’t like Taylor Swift was going to jump on this obvious ode to her disorientating presence while dating a famous racist.
This is all to say that, after months of “brat summer” and all the capitalising she’s been doing, I’m pretty worn out with this whole album cycle. But in a good way. I appreciate how much work has been done to ensure you cannot miss it.
Hopefully a rising tide can raise all ships and ‘Diet Pepsi’ will be a top 20 hit.