What’s The Deal with BRAT Summer

Photo by Rebecca Calvar

Charli XCX’s album, BRAT, marks the return of club music and the rave scene in a way that has propelled her from 2010’s notoriety into true stardom. As her sixth album, BRAT serves as an experimental advancement from the previous pop-heavy sound of her earlier albums, and the album’s electronic sound has critics enthusiastically praising it. 

At first glance, BRAT’s hyperpop style and upbeat rhythm make it seem like an album about simply being a party girl. However, XCX has meticulously interwoven vulnerability into all 15 of the standard album’s tracks. She speaks of jealousy in “Sympathy is a knife” as well as the loss of her late friend and producer SOPHIE in “So I.” She covers insecurity in “I might say something stupid.” In the latter, she ponders her position as a celebrity: “I'm famous but not quite / But I'm perfect for the background.” The connection she explores and builds with herself throughout the album’s entirety remains a vulnerable point for the singer. 

 It’s necessary to remember that XCX has been in the pop game for well over a decade, but BRAT is her first album to achieve such high commercial success. BRAT earned XCX her highest rank on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart with a spot at number 3 (source). XCX’s initial rise to fame occurred in 2012 with the song “I Love it,” which reached number 7 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart (source). Her collaboration with Iggy Azalea a year later brought astounding success, maintaining the #1 spot on Billboard for 7 consecutive weeks. Just a few months later, XCX returned to the Top 10 with “Boom Clap.” The aforementioned singles boosted XCX’s celebrity as a popstar, but none of her proceeding albums “Charli,” “how i’m feeling now,” and “CRASH,” reached the critical acclaim that BRAT has this summer. 

Released on June 7, 2024 by Atlantic Records, BRAT has been a huge hit. Beyond critical success, however, is BRAT’s complete takeover of pop culture within the past few months, earning itself the nickname “BRAT Summer” due to the album’s easily imitated cover, featuring nothing but an arial-font title and lime green background. Memes have been recreated in the same style as the album cover and “BRAT green” has taken its rightful place as 2024’s color of the summer. Kamala Harris even used BRAT in her political campaign for the 2024 Presidential Election. Why is there still a fixation on BRAT summer moving into fall, though? 

Today Magazine defines “BRAT summer” as being “all about accepting your imperfections while embracing the chaos” (source). This comes with XCX’s confessionalist writing on each track as she approaches topics of motherhood, insecurity, and obsession. XCX’s uplifting and bouncy club beats juxtapose her vulnerable lyricism, creating a unique effect. It’s easy to only hear the resounding beats of the music, but once her lyricism is truly appreciated, BRAT can be interpreted as a work of art. XCX’s balance of her party girl identity with her intimate lyrics heightens the appeal of the album’s content. 

BRAT continued to influence fans with remixes featuring other major artists, such as Lorde, Billie Eilish, and Troye Sivan. Upon the album’s initial release, the 10th track, “Girl so confusing” captured many fans’ attention due to the song’s message of exposing XCX’s strained, awkward relationship with another female musician. XCX sings, “Cause people say we're alike / They say we've got the same hair” and “Yeah, I don't know if you like me / Sometimes I think you might hate me / Sometimes I think I might hate you / Maybe you just wanna be me.” These lyrics had listeners scrambling to figure out which artist the song was about. 

Following the release of “Girl so confusing,” an interview from October 2014 resurfaced in which the interviewer mistakes XCX for Lorde because they “have the same hair.” Fans began to zone in on Lorde and XCX’s relationship, especially concerned with their careers within the music industry. Both singers gained prominence in pop music in 2012; however, Lorde reached higher success with her debut album, “Pure Heroine” which spawned infamous singles such as “Royals” and “Team.”

For fans seeking an answer as to which girl in XCX’s life was so confusing, they should seek no further. In her 2024 Rolling Stone profile piece, XCX admitted, “‘When ‘Royals’ came out, I was super jealous of the success that that song got,’” and that she thought, “‘Well, that could have been me’” (source). XCX fed into the attention the track was getting and soon released a remix of “Girl, so confusing” featuring Lorde herself. This fueled the controversy surrounding the song and received widespread media coverage due to the unexpected collaboration. The lyric, “Let’s work it out on the remix,” soon got meme-ified and applied to other situations in which two friends struggle to get along. With the release of “Girl, so confusing featuring Lorde,” XCX proves she knows how to give her fans exactly what they want. 

Following this viral collaboration was Billie Eilish’s feature on “Guess.” Like XCX, Eilish has had a phenomenal summer with the release of her album Hit Me Hard and Soft. The album’s lead single “Lunch” ranked number 5 on Billboard’s Hot 100 along with “Chihiro” and “Birds of a Feather” in the 12th and 13th spots, respectively (source). Collaborating with another artist who recently released an album was strategic. It served to promote both albums while feeding each fandom with new material to obsess over. The song was an immediate hit and debuted at number twelve on Billboard’s Hot 100, making it BRAT’s highest-peaking hit thus far (source). 

Why has BRAT been so significant this year? Well, XCX seems to have covered all of her bases. The album signifies the return of recession pop, a music subgenre noted for its quick beats, optimistic lyrics about partying and rave culture, and its positive effect on listeners’ moods. XCX released BRAT amid a recession pop drought, and many music fans desperately needed upbeat club music to feel better about the world’s current state. BRAT culture is perfectly suited for this task. 

Thanks to social media, the cultural significance of BRAT cannot be ignored. Not only has XCX’s album taken pop culture by storm with her album and music videos, but Harris’s use of it in her presidential campaign speaks volumes as to the importance of BRAT. 

So, what does BRAT’s success and the return to recession pop say about culture? It says that people have been craving more club and party music for a while. While the nation is in a state of political turmoil, many people are seeking music that’s cheerful and free, something that BRAT continues to provide. Additionally, BRAT features iconic collaborations with major artists that yield to the album’s personality, adding to the songs they’re featured on rather than taking away from them. This is why “Guess” and “Girl, so confusing” have been so remarkably popular: both tracks stand strong on their own, and the features add an interesting artistic element that 2024 hasn’t seen otherwise. BRAT is not just an album; it’s become a lifestyle. And while “BRAT summer” is officially over, “BRAT autumn” has just begun. XCX’s highly anticipated remix album titled “BRAT and it’s completely different but also still BRAT” is out now.