Charli xcx has taken over the summer — and the rave scene — with her sixth studio album, “Brat,” released June 7, 2024. Culture has felt the early reverberations of its intoxicating, synthetic sound since the BOILER ROOM x CHARLI XCX: PARTYGIRL set, where her producer, A.G. Cook, and fabulous it-girl friend, Julia Fox, joined her for a preview of several songs. If you haven’t listened, please do — the set brought the club to my bedroom and jolted me out of my chair. I couldn’t contain my ecstasy.
The commercial and critical success of “Brat” largely stems from Charli’s deliverance of herself — the Brat persona she crafted and believes the album attracts — and many mistakes, lessons, and gradual evolutions over her 31 years. Signed at 15 to Asylum Records, Charli dealt with confusion as an individual and with her role in the music industry, oscillating between mega-pop star and partygirl identities. Her lack of knowledge about the intricacies of generating an album, paired with inexperience coordinating the talents of her team, produced lackluster results.
She matured and so did her expertise, allowing Charli to combine disparate elements of her life and personality with greater precision. She says that her lyrics are inspired by texts she sends her friends. The personal and unapologetic evidence of inner turmoil has transformed into a blunt and brutalistic force. Charli’s vulnerabilities, no longer hidden, are paradoxically aggressive and powerful.
“Brat” may be chaotic and sweaty. It also encapsulates intelligence, elegant articulation, a harmony of self-abandon and composure. The Charli we see in interviews — admitting her hangover, apologizing for speaking too much — radiates a strength that is a simultaneous awareness of her weaknesses. Funny, because Charli’s anxious and garrulous responses to her interviewee's questions offer lucid insights about the mindsets and events that fuel her creativity — and shape her vision of the artist she wants to be.
Last week, Kamala Harris’s campaign changed the aesthetic of its X account to match the cover art of “Brat” after Charli endorsed the new nominee. “Kamala is Brat,” she says.
Hopefully, Kamala is not Brat. The POTUS should not be prone to breakdowns nor want to do a little line, nor should she be a “365” partygirl. The fact that this publicity stunt sways young voters — assuming that the flood of memes on TikTok signifies Gen Z support for Harris — shows how naive their commitments are and how susceptible they are to silly, flimsy rhetoric. We should vote for our politicians for the right reasons, yes? Not because they are cool and trendy, but because they are qualified? Why is a British pop star influencing American elections? Charli said only two weeks ago that she is not a political artist.
I prefer my music separate from my politics. Hedonism, extremism and drugs — the productive and poisonous pressure cookers of the soul — have their time and place. An artist can exploit them fruitfully. A politician cannot. The lifestyles are mutually exclusive.
In “Club Classics,” Charli shouts: “Yeah, I want to dance to me.”
In “365,” “Now I want to hear my track / Are you bumping that?”
Arrogant? Perhaps. Though I’d assert that we all wish to hear ourselves, dance to ourselves and feel proud of our accomplishments. Most people lack the opportunity to relish their own beauty. Most are not sexy.
Sexiness is about more than our superficial skin. Sexiness is eroticism, richness and abundance.
Sexiness is self-sufficiency.
I wrote an article months ago about Justin Timberlake, who famously brought SexyBack in 2006. My secret metric for what constitutes a great artist lies in their music’s capacity to exude sexiness. A sexy song — a three or four-minute clue — imparts an attitude and a mode of being. It seduces us into feeling love and lust for ourselves at the same time. We recall that feeling later and aspire to it as an ideal version of ourselves. Rick James, Prince and Madonna could do this. Listen to “Give It To Me Baby,” “Kiss” and “Human Nature.” And to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” Timbaland and Aaliyah’s “Hot Like Fire.” Steve Lacy’s “N Side” and Billie Eilish’s “LUNCH.”
The question of how electronic music can access our primal selves better than other, more “natural” and instrumental genres remains a puzzle to me. But the rave — a habitat for darkness, sweat, and scintillation — for leering eyes and loose limbs — undoubtedly reunites us with our carnality. It’s been doing so since the 70s.
We owe Charli xcx a special thanks.
She has reminded us that we can be sexy — again.
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