035 :: BRAT

Featuring

brat by Charli XCX, released by Atlantic Records in 2024. Listen / Buy direct

"360"
"365"

Transcript

It had to happen. I had to talk about this album. It is brat summer, after all.

And you know what's so great about this song? It's not giving voice to some universal feeling, like the thrill of romance or the exuberance of youth. It's not even trying to be relatable. It's just a song about the singer's own preeminence and ubiquity. It's a song about how the singer is "everywhere". If this song makes us feel anything, it's the vicarious satisfaction of a self-fulfilling prophecy or a self-evident proof.

And you know what else is so great about this song? It's a total bop, even though it has no right to be. Like, what is this beat? There are hand claps and a bass line that's both rhythmically and harmonically jolting – and that's about it. But by some kind of magic, it works, and worms its way into your head, forever on repeat, drowning out all other musical memories until it becomes the only song you ever hear, the only song you've ever heard, the only song you'll ever need – until we're all just "bumpin' that", as indeed we are.

But this song isn't done with us just yet. Really, it's just getting started. It's time for the remix.

That same jerky beat is back once again, but pitched up and sped up, and somehow that makes it a good beat for the singer to now rap over. It all makes even less sense than it did before, and that's kind of the point. This is music that revels in its own irreverence, music that's high on its own supply, music that is unafraid of doing something dumb, on the off chance that it may end up being something brilliant.

Like, what if it went all techno on us? To which the only reasonable response is: What if went even more techno?

Another way to say all this is that the artist is treating their own music like a meme, something to be repeatedly twisted and warped and transformed into increasingly unexpected and ridiculous shapes. And we are being treated to the artist's infinite scroll, an endlessly unfurling mess of musical ideas, a nonstop party that we can only hope will never end.

Liner Notes

Brat and Brat Summer have been catnip for cultural critics, and I can't even begin to catalog all that's been said about it, but a couple of pieces that I particularly enjoyed were: Gita Jackson's essay on brat for Aftermath; and Switched on Pop's episode on brat, one of the rare musical analyses of the album I came across.

You can generate your own brat text art with the brat generator.