She’s always been a party girl, right? Since her debut album “True Romance” in 2013, every moment of Charli XCX’s career has been marked by upbeat, catchy tracks that make you want to get up and move, whether it’s through your headphones, car speakers or in a club.
Charli’s music has always been built for and around the club scene. It’s an “XCX World” where she belonged and loved to be. But with “Brat,” we see a whole new side of Charli, a side where she no longer feels like the life of the party.
Given a loan from her parents when she was 14 years old to pursue her interest in music, she began uploading songs to the internet and her Myspace profile in 2008. She later received recognition from a promoter and began performing at raves and parties throughout the rest of her youth.
Her breakout hits like “I Love It,” “Fancy,” and “Boom Clap,” propelled her into the mainstream, but Charli’s true influence lies in her experimentation with sound, blending hyper-pop, electro, and punk influences to create her own voice.
Whether working with underground producers or other pop stars, Charli continues to reshape the pop landscape while simultaneously keeping each moment something special and fun. Even in her latest release, “Brat,” the party anthem vibe is still strong on the album. She’s managed to tie every element of her production together seamlessly. Every track feels like it belongs.
In the opening lines of “Sympathy is a Knife,” we see Charli snap. “I don’t wanna share this space / I don’t wanna force a smile / This one girl taps my insecurities / Don’t know if it’s real or if I’m spiraling.” Charli acts out like a brat. Everything Charli says is forceful, and her words hit with brutal honesty. She’s raw and unfiltered, openly revealing her insecurities.
“One voice tells me that they laugh / George says, ‘I’m just paranoid’ / I’m embarrassed to have it, but need the sympathy.”
Charli even admits later in the song if she had a gun during these moments of insecurity, she’d consider ending it all. This is one of the most vulnerable moments from her career, combining her signature boldness with an emotional depth that’s rare in today’s pop music.
Nostalgia and reflection are two new themes we see on the track “Rewind.” She reminisces about a time when she was carefree, creative and unbothered by public scrutiny. “I’d go back in time to when I wasn’t insecure / To when I didn’t overanalyze my face shape,” Charli says as if on the phone with a friend.
There’s a tangible sense of longing for a version of herself that isn’t weighed down by self consciousness or the pressure to maintain a certain image. It’s as if she’s mourning the loss of the fearless party girl she once embodied.
“I hate these doubts that keep runnin’ through my mind / Sometimes I really think it would be cool to rewind.” The preposition of “sometimes” suggests that there’s a complex relationship with her former self, it’s not that she wants to go back with those earlier, unguarded days. The “party girl” persona may still be a part of her, but it feels more distant now, almost like a memory she can only revisit briefly.
Charli then touches on her revolving relationship with success and the music industry, admitting, “I used to never think about Billboard / But, now, I’ve started thinking again / Wondering ’bout whether I think I deserve commercial success.”
She openly questions whether she deserves commercial success, a far cry from her carefree days of burning music she’s never heard on CDs in her bedroom.
“Rewind” is a turning point in her career, one where she’s more self-aware, more critical, and less certain about her place in pop music and pop culture. Charli seems to be grappling with whether she ever saw herself as the ultimate party girl, or if that was simply a role she played.
In “Brat,” Charli isn’t just reflecting on parties or fame, but also on the party that was her everyday life. The energy, the lack of inhibition, the spontaneous joy, all of it feels somewhat lost to her now. There’s a sense that the “party” isn’t just about external things like the crowds, the attention, the paparazzi photos, but also about her internal state.
Losing that vibrancy, that sense of being “that girl,” leaves her questioning what comes next, both in her personal life and in her career.
But the party isn’t over quite yet. In “365,” the album’s closer, Charli delivers what feels like the ultimate Charli song. The production, a bold evolution of the earlier track “360,” encapsulates the energy of a full night out. On “365,” producer A.G. Cook takes everything from “360” and amplifies it, turning an already stellar “club classic” into something even more explosive.
“365” vividly captures the highs and lows of a night out. Charli explained in an interview how the phrase “bumpin’ that” changes meaning between “360” ad “365.” While in “360,” it simply refers to turning on a song, in “365,” it becomes something more… Explicit.
The song captures every aspect of the club experience, from dancing in the middle of a crowded room to the quieter moments in the bathroom, hearing the bass thumping through the walls.
“[‘365’] is kind of like this journey of a night out where, at the end, you become this girl who’s like, ‘oh my god go home, you’re being too crazy, you stayed at the party for too long.’ And the music is totally reflective of that,” Charli said in an interview on the “Tape Notes Podcast” with George Daniel and producer Cook.
It’s the ultimate portrayal of her clubbing days, but there’s a bittersweet undertone.
As the track plays out, you get the sense that this might be the last time she’ll revel in this scene, and by the time the final beat drops, it’s clear that “Brat” is Charli’s reflection on everything she’s lost. The album captures the feeling of no longer being the party girl she once was.
But the answer to this loss is right in front of her, it’s “Brat” itself.
With this album, Charli has created a cultural movement, redefining what it means to be a “brat” in 2024. Historically, the words carried a negative connotation, typically used to describe spoiled or misbehaving children. But Charli has flipped that narrative. Today, being a brat means staying true to yourself, being fashionable, and, yes, still being the life of the party, even if it looks different than it did before.
Charli may feel like she’s lost parts of herself, but in “Brat,” she’s found a new way forward. Her party isn’t over yet, it’s just transformed.
Track Ranking:
- Everything is romantic
- 365
- Sympathy is a knife
