It’s no surprise that “PARTYGIRL” is the name Charli xcx adopted for the DJ nights she put on in support of *BRAT*. It’s kind of her brand anyway, but on her sixth studio album, the British pop star is reveling in the trashy, sugary glitz of the club. *BRAT* is a record that brings to life the pleasure of colorful, sticky dance floors and too-sweet alcopops lingering in the back of your mouth, fizzing with volatility, possibility, and strutting vanity (“I’ll always be the one,” she sneers deliciously on the A. G. Cook- and Cirkut-produced opening track “360”). Of course, Charli xcx—real name Charlotte Aitchison—has frequently taken pleasure in delivering both self-adoring bangers and poignant self-reflection. Take her 2022 pop-girl yet often personal concept album *CRASH*, which was preceded by the diaristic approach of her excellent lockdown album *how i’m feeling now*. But here, there’s something especially tantalizing in her directness over the intoxicating fumes of hedonism. Yes, she’s having a raucous time with her cool internet It-girl friends, but a night out also means the introspection that might come to you in the midst of a party, or the insurmountable dread of the morning after. On “So I,” for example, she misses her friend and fellow musician, the brilliant SOPHIE, and lyrically nods to the late artist’s 2017 track “It’s Okay to Cry.” Charli xcx has always been shaped and inspired by SOPHIE, and you can hear the influence of her pioneering sounds in many of the vocals and textures throughout *BRAT*. Elsewhere, she’s trying to figure out if she’s connecting with a new female friend through love or jealousy on the sharp, almost Uffie-esque “Girl, so confusing,” on which Aitchison boldly skewers the inanity of “girl’s girl” feminism. She worries she’s embarrassed herself at a party on “I might say something stupid,” wishes she wasn’t so concerned about image and fame on “Rewind,” and even wonders quite candidly about whether she wants kids on the sweet sparseness of “I think about it all the time.” In short, this is big, swaggering party music, but always with an undercurrent of honesty and heart. For too long, Charli xcx has been framed as some kind of fringe underground artist, in spite of being signed to a major label and delivering a consistent run of albums and singles in the years leading up to this record. In her *BRAT* era, whether she’s exuberant and self-obsessed or sad and introspective, Charli xcx reminds us that she’s in her own lane, thriving. Or, as she puts it on “Von dutch,” “Cult classic, but I still pop.”
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!
Ela Minus’ second album, *DÍA*, takes a massive leap when it comes to the sheer size of the Colombian producer and songwriter’s music. Her 2020 breakout debut, *acts of rebellion*, felt like someone communicating electronic pop to you in secret, with warm analog synth squiggles and a delightfully brittle feel, not unlike coldwave’s minimalist steeliness or the punkish, romantic sound of ’80s synth-pop. On *DÍA*, Minus cranks up her stylistic tics to max volume: The synths crash like monsoons, and her voice soars above the music instead of lying in wait in the shadows. The saucer-eyed wobbles of opener “ABRIR MONTE” immediately recall the lush rave waves of Jamie xx’s “Gosh,” while “ONWARDS” conjures peak-era electroclash, right down to Minus’ excellently disaffected and cool-to-the-touch vocal take. At times, *DÍA* also feels like a modern update of the icy, gothic synth-pop that Swedish duo The Knife first perfected on their 2006 album *Silent Shout*. The swooning tones and static bursts of “IDK” tackle feelings of anxiety head-on, while “I WANT TO BE BETTER” is riddled with self-doubt and regret, a hand reaching across the void toward past acquaintances. The feelings feel real; the imagery is corporeal and thoroughly sanguine—the latter quite literally over the serpentine synths of “IDOLS”: “All it took/Was a little blood/To see what I’m really made of.”
It’s no surprise that “PARTYGIRL” is the name Charli xcx adopted for the DJ nights she put on in support of *BRAT*. It’s kind of her brand anyway, but on her sixth studio album, the British pop star is reveling in the trashy, sugary glitz of the club. *BRAT* is a record that brings to life the pleasure of colorful, sticky dance floors and too-sweet alcopops lingering in the back of your mouth, fizzing with volatility, possibility, and strutting vanity (“I’ll always be the one,” she sneers deliciously on the A. G. Cook- and Cirkut-produced opening track “360”). Of course, Charli xcx—real name Charlotte Aitchison—has frequently taken pleasure in delivering both self-adoring bangers and poignant self-reflection. Take her 2022 pop-girl yet often personal concept album *CRASH*, which was preceded by the diaristic approach of her excellent lockdown album *how i’m feeling now*. But here, there’s something especially tantalizing in her directness over the intoxicating fumes of hedonism. Yes, she’s having a raucous time with her cool internet It-girl friends, but a night out also means the introspection that might come to you in the midst of a party, or the insurmountable dread of the morning after. On “So I,” for example, she misses her friend and fellow musician, the brilliant SOPHIE, and lyrically nods to the late artist’s 2017 track “It’s Okay to Cry.” Charli xcx has always been shaped and inspired by SOPHIE, and you can hear the influence of her pioneering sounds in many of the vocals and textures throughout *BRAT*. Elsewhere, she’s trying to figure out if she’s connecting with a new female friend through love or jealousy on the sharp, almost Uffie-esque “Girl, so confusing,” on which Aitchison boldly skewers the inanity of “girl’s girl” feminism. She worries she’s embarrassed herself at a party on “I might say something stupid,” wishes she wasn’t so concerned about image and fame on “Rewind,” and even wonders quite candidly about whether she wants kids on the sweet sparseness of “I think about it all the time.” In short, this is big, swaggering party music, but always with an undercurrent of honesty and heart. For too long, Charli xcx has been framed as some kind of fringe underground artist, in spite of being signed to a major label and delivering a consistent run of albums and singles in the years leading up to this record. In her *BRAT* era, whether she’s exuberant and self-obsessed or sad and introspective, Charli xcx reminds us that she’s in her own lane, thriving. Or, as she puts it on “Von dutch,” “Cult classic, but I still pop.”
When artists say they’re taking their time to make a new album, they usually give it a year or two. For Zedd, whose last full-length was released in 2015, things took a bit longer. “It can definitely be a disadvantage to take too much time,” the producer tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe of the nine-year gap between *True Colors* and *Telos*, his third LP. “But it really depends on what you’re trying to do. At some point I had to decide what this album was about. In 2020 or so, I started working on an album, but I had no idea of what I was actually doing. It was like, ‘Well, there’s a pandemic. When am I going to get another chance to sit down and make music?’ But I didn’t have real genuine inspiration, and I was aimlessly trying to make music without any context or real reason.” Only one track remained from those sessions, but it was enough to give shape to what would eventually become *Telos* (that’s Aristotelian for the end or the completion of a goal). “Dream Brother,” which centers around late singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley’s vocal stems from his 1994 track of the same name, “was the one song that to me was giving me that emotion that I wanted,” Zedd says. “\[Buckley’s\] ‘Dream Brother’ has always been inspirational to me. I’ve always thought that there’s a side of it that could live in a different context. I just thought I could make this into an incredible respectful dance-ish song.” “Dance-ish” is pretty key to understanding *Telos*, and Zedd’s entire approach to music after nearly a decade between albums. “There was this moment where I had to decide that this is an album for me,” he says. “That put everything in place. All the songs that I had started, where I was like, ‘How am I going to make \[a\] 7/8 \[time signature\] work in dance music?’ Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s no longer dance music. I’m making this for myself—not for the fans, not for the label, not for anybody. It’s just for me.” Unlike the beat-driven *True Colors*, here the drums are used for color, tone, and dynamics, flickering in for a few bars and fading out, trading places with synth, piano riffs, and Bea Miller’s vocals on the opening “Out of Time” and adding a punchy rhythmic component to the vaguely South Asian “Shanti.” Tracks such as “Sona,” his 7/8-time collaboration with Irish American trio the olllam, showcase an even greater commitment to writing songs, and make *Telos* a cohesive whole that asks its listeners to take their time, just like he did making it. “I can make a good song,” Zedd admits, “but 10 of them aren’t going to make a good album. I grew up with these albums that were more than just 10 good songs. They still inspire me, and they made me the musician I am today. I wanted to create something that was meaningful. I wanted to make an album that in 30 years, I will meet a kid who’s like, ‘I heard this album and I wanted to get into music.’”
At the start of 2023, Quevedo unveiled his debut album, *DONDE QUIERO ESTAR*, to considerable acclaim and chart success in his home country of Spain. For his follow-up, *BUENAS NOCHES*, he makes a more pronounced pivot toward pop, albeit in a multifaceted manner. Opener “KASSANDRA” glistens with nostalgic synthesizer flourishes as he admires a powerful woman from afar. “DURO” maintains that maximalist bent, an aesthetic that suits the breakup ruminations of “NOEMÚ” and the playboy apologies of “IGUALES” well. He plays well with others regardless of genre, as demonstrated on the electro-rock duet “GRAN VÍA” with Aitana and the slo-mo reggaetón team-up “TE FALLÉ” with Sech. Perreo drives choice collaborations with De La Ghetto (“AMANECIÓ”) and La Pantera (“HALO”), yet his Pitbull-backed “MR. MOONDIAL” goes full EDM in execution. That unbridled dance-floor thump is countered by the sleek hip-hop fusions of “LA 125” with Yung Beef and “14 FEBREROS” with Sin Nombre.
