Summer 2024 was supposed to be all about Taylor Swift’s victory lap around the planet with her Eras juggernaut steamrolling six continents and pulping all the other might’ve beens. The only stories we should be reading right now are those gasping about the length of her set list and the billions she is pumping into the global economy, only somehow we’ve all come off script. Something has occurred, perhaps in direct response to Swiftageddon, something as unexpected and hysteria-inducing as the bullet which whizzed through Trump’s wig last weekend: Charli XCX. Yes, the thirty-something Home County girlies who shape UK culture from their warehouse share in Seven Sisters have spoken. Having had simply enough of Swift’s All-American cheesecake routine they have declared this a BRAT Summer.
Everywhere I go this record is the conversation, especially if the people I’m chatting with work in media and/or the arts. It’s inescapable and quite hilarious, but I think that’s the point. Isn’t it? Low-res lime green, supply your own meaning if you feel it to be at all necessary. Not that I’m complaining, I am in fact absolutely fascinated by the whole palaver. At Pride events the talk has been of Charli, in coffee shops I hear of little else, TikTok is awash, every instagram carousel is set to 360 and captioned I’m so Julia, I expect even the nanas on Facebook are going Hell for leather with the BRAT meme generator by now. I was just at a wedding, a beautiful ceremony with not a dried flower out of place, wall to wall elegance, zero pretence, the kind of celebration you can’t help but weep at, if only because the butter was directly imported from France. Even here once Von Dutch dropped those linen suits were strained to the point of splitting, and let me tell you I loved it.
The whole notion of BRAT Summer is so stupid it could be a B-plot from Broad City, it’s ridiculous that every lime green object now rouses screeches of BRAT SUMMER!!!! from all observers (as my poor Boopie learned the hard way, wearing a tie in that exact shade to the wedding). It’s absolute pre-fab nonsense, it’s a menthol slim away from Nicola Coughlan’s Shoes…More Shoes but this in no way detracts from it.
BRAT is the pop album that best expresses the collapse and destabilisation of our moment, whether it means to or not. Is this an experimental underground dance record or a Billboard pop hit, or both? Is there even a difference? Is it the sound of youth culture piercing the corporate stranglehold on independent music or is it bangers for posh kids who never got near a rave for fear their parents would find out, freak out, and leave them at home with the housekeeper whilst the rest of the fam enjoyed a skiing holiday without them? Who can say?
The indie sleaze redux, the wraparound shades, the distressed denim, the strappy white top and a BIC lighter, the one thousand articles, What is Brat Summer? How to have a BRAT Summer, BRAT Summer essentials, seem to make it quite clear that whatever this is, it’s fake as fuck. It’s plastic but no-one’s shying away from that. The phoniness and artifice are a very central part of the appeal. It lines up with a very contemporary sort of irony which refuses to ever articulate a position for fear that it won’t be the right one (politically or culturally). Any such position is likely to age into cringe anyway, so best just to keep it blank, commit to the pose but not the politic. It’s infantile, and I don’t mean puerile or unsophisticated, more innocent, juvenile. BRAT’s rebellion is an Anglican’s idea of decadence, it’s like hearing someone, in all seriousness, describe eating an entire Nutella donut as, “really naughty”. Charli is the direct descendant and heir apparent of Hun culture, and I honestly don’t think she’d be offended by that sentiment.
Yet more intriguing perhaps than the phenomena which BRAT has become, is the audience who have made it so, the fans and streamers with whom the music has resonated, who feel represented here. The gays ofc famously love Ms XCX, their proper popper fandom can be taken as read, Pitchfork journalists too, but NB, no small percentage of Charli stans are nice girls* who know all the words to Wicked, and work for climate thinktanks. This is the moment when one-time Sixth Form prefects finally get to feel seen. Former Head boys and Head Girls at day schools across the country rejoice, your time has come! We’re here, we’re posh, and we’re only mildly embarrassed about it.
This is not an anomaly. The deification of your cousin Stephanie, who’s three years older and already has her provisional license, whose kinda a bully but kinda cool, is a central part of UK culture’s ongoing obsession with all things fundamentally blousy. Two other key examples being Amelia Dimoldenberg and Dua Lipa, both of whom give off real BIG UPPER SIXTH ENERGY.
This in itself has been a big boon for BRAT bc the remaining few arts journalists in the UK, really any politically engaged writer under 45, Hell the entirety of London’s left-leaning media in fact comprises of six girlies who all went to school together, and who feel extremely represented by Charli. This is a new class of public intellectual, they wear baseball caps and blazers, they comfort each other unashamedly, with little chirps of, “Ah, mate”, they have Trans Rights Now! stickers on their Mac books bc they’re different from the people who edit the boring old broadsheets of the legacy media, i.e. their fathers, and they love Charli. They show up for her in a way they couldn’t for say Lil Simz or CMAT, bc, well they go to different schools and it’d be just a bit awks.
And I understand, it’s good to feel seen. They must feel like I did in those beautiful months around the release Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, when it was (briefly) cool to be a ginger transsexual. Coincidentally Sophie, a good friend of Ms XCX, took her name from my bff in Berlin, inspired as she was by her unhinged sexuality (one imagines). Not long before she died I went with Boopie to see Sophie play at the Southbank and we had to tuck ourselves away in the corner until the doors opened, after some startled twink spilled Diet Coke all over themselves on seeing me from across the lobby and thinking I was Sophie. I could probably write a whole Sophie post (and maybe I will…) but for now back to Charli.
She says that, “Music’s not important,” that it’s the artistry that matters, and this idea I really love. Anyone who truly reshapes pop music has to be more than a singer-songwriter, more than just an entertainer. Like all great artists they have to be in touch with something beyond themselves which they are in turn capable of relaying back to us. The artistry is what sets PJ Harvey, Frank Ocean and Anonhi apart from Harry Styles, Lady Gaga and Celine Dion. It’s the understanding that whatever the medium, this artist would’ve been magnificent.
That said, I have to say that I do like Charli’s music, I like the songs, I like the damn album! The melodies are insistent, the lyrics show a wry self-awareness and a certain vulnerability even, the production is slick, and fun and doesn’t get in the way. I especially like the hype and hysteria though. It’s exciting to feel like something is happening rn even if it’s only this, this, whatever it is. I like the not knowing, I like the vagueness. I feel like I’m in a situationship with this record, and this record is a closeted cis boy who works in finance. And you better believe that I dragged Boopie back to the dance floor by his lime green tie for Von Dutch, and that danced til I wore out the soles of my suede kitten heels. BRAT SUMMER FOREVER!!!! Or at least until it starts to feel a bit cringe.
*across genders and seggsualities
sharp funny writing - loved it. would love to read a post about Sophie one day.