(Atlantic)
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
On Brat, Charli xcx’s zeitgeist-lassoing sixth album, its creator brooded on her chronically underrated status. Over the sickly sweet deconstructed UK garage of Rewind, she worried about her lack of presence on the Billboard charts, unsure “whether I think I deserve commercial success”. During the jagged synthpop of Sympathy Is a Knife she bristled under the pitying gaze of a megastar peer. On electro dirge I Might Say Something Stupid, she described herself as “famous but not quite”.
The agony and ecstasy of the sub-mainstream pop star proved an incredibly rich seam. Brat mussed up Charli’s cult sound – a harsh and excessively artificial strain of dance-pop – and paired it with lyrics that ricocheted between euphoric swagger and eye-wateringly candid vulnerability. It was so rich, in fact, that the concept cancelled itself out. Brat, which hit No 3 hit on the US chart when it was released in June, became a bona fide commercial hit and a cultural juggernaut – thanks in part to an ingeniously meme-friendly marketing campaign (its cut-through best exemplified by the Kamala Harris campaign co-opting the artwork). It elevated the 32-year-old to the celebrity firmament and, more importantly, shifted pop’s Overton window to a more futuristic, experimental space.
