Charlie XCX, Brat
Jan. 30, 2025
When making my albums of the year posts at the start of the month, I realised that compared to many other critics lists, there was no sign of Brat by Charlie XCX. And when it came up again on my album shuffle the other day, I thought I should re-evaluate the album and whether it should have made my list.
Listening to Brat again for this post, it was clear that I’d missed out on something special. This was partly because I went for a walk with it on my headphones and that always lets me hear the details of the music. I think too many times when this album came on at home, it would be a little bit too doof-doof to be background music. These are songs that do demand (and deserve) a bit of attention.
However, I can see why the album as a whole didn’t make a huge impression on me, and why it got skipped over a fair bit last year. The songs are pretty samey, both in content and style. Don’t get me wrong, lots of albums have the distinguishing feature that one track only differs from another due to a slightly different production quirk. Lots of those albums are great. Brat is great too, but…
The hyperpop production style is too hyperactive for me. I appreciate the beats and the energy, but it’s so flat as to be hard to stomach after a while. That flatness is what makes the little twists in production stand out, like the flashes of colour on a Mondrian grid. For instance, the way the autotune slips out from under the vocal on Sympathy is a Knife: though that’s one of the more interesting songs anyway, the trick isn’t really needed.
The way that songs and ideas come thick and fast is praise-worthy though, stuff that’s more experimental (like I might some something stupid) doesn’t get bogged down with a long run time. The longest tracks are both 3:23 - with Everything is romantic probably being my favourite at the moment. It reminds me of the lyrics I used to write when I was 15 (albeit less worldly and way more cringe) but had no idea how to turn into songs. And that’s what does excite me about Brat, it does seem to have novelty and experimentation at its heart.
So I do think it’s good. I could totally understand someone saying they thought it was one of last year’s best. I think someone saying that might not have to nudge Total Blue, Adrianne Lenker, or Waxahatchee off their lists. On the other hand, I can point to albums like Bolis Pupul’s Letter to Yu and Il Quadro di Troisi’s La Commedia as being my more pretentious old man versions of the same pick. Also that cover is amazing and I will love it forever.