Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat
Forget song of the summer—2024’s undisputed album of the summer (northern hemisphere version) arrived in early June with a slime-green album cover and wall-to-wall bangers that would launch Charli xcx’s career to stratospheric new heights. (Cue news anchors worldwide grappling with the sociopolitical ramifications of “being brat.”) For years, the self-directed English artist enjoyed a reputation buzzier than “cult favorite” yet not quite “main pop girl,” but with the release of her sixth studio album, she hadn’t just captured the zeitgeist—she’d become it. If you didn’t see it coming, well, neither did Charli. “I really was preparing for this album to be for my fanbase only, and not really break outside the walls of that at all,” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe with typical candor. Nevertheless, she presented the concept to her label with a manifesto she’d written—things she’d wanted to say since 2016’s paradigm-shifting *Vroom Vroom* EP. “‘On this record there’s going to be no traditional radio songs, because we don’t live in that world now,’” she told them. “This fanbase I have built is so hungry for me and my peers and our slightly-left world of pop/dance music—they’re hungry for us to succeed. That doesn’t mean that we have to do any pandering to any other side of the industry. We just have to do it for them because they’ve championed us for so long, and that’s all we need to light a fire.” Not content to rest while that fire’s still burning, Charli’s also committed to single-handedly keeping the remix industry afloat. You could call the full-length remix album yet another shrewd marketing move, though the project was in the works well before *BRAT* blew up. Here, a cross-generational who’s who of cool kids mingles in the smoking section of fall’s most exclusive party, where NYC garage-rock legends rub elbows with genuine pop divas and mystical Swedish rappers. And for all *BRAT*’s messy rawness regarding the complications of being a woman in the industry, the remix album brings together a slick-talking Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande at her glitchiest, Robyn flexing her ’90s bona fides, Tinashe basking in her own long-awaited shine, and naturally, the Lorde remix that broke the internet. Brat summer is dead. Long live brat summer!
Quick on the heels of her blockbuster album BRAT, the pop star offers a remix album that is anything but obligatory. Like its sister album, it is unexpected, unfiltered, uncomfortably messy, and dizzyingly fun.
Four months after kickstarting a cultural phenomenon with her sixth album, Charli XCX invites friends and big-name acts to give it a new lease of life
Charli xcx’s sixth studio album hit 2024 like a runaway train. It was supposed to remain a cult classic: 2022’s ‘Crash’ was Charli’s extravagant bid for
Charli XCX's 'Brat and It’s Completely Different but Still Brat' is just as reflective of the zeitgeist as its parent album.
Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat by Charli xcx album review by Sam Franzini for Northern Transmissions
<strong>(Atlantic)</strong><br>Big-name guests abound on a thrilling remix album that takes a glimpse into celebrity’s heart of darkness but makes it transcendently fun and cool
The pop star’s summer ode to hedonism won unlikely fans in Barack Obama and Kamala Harris. But is her remix album a cynical marketing ploy?