BRAT AND IT'S COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BUT ALSO STILL BRAT
UK - 2024
Electronic Dance Music, Bubblegum Bass, Electropop, Electro House
« And they’re exactly the same, but they’re different now »
On I think about it all the time, Charli travelled back to her memories when she first met her friend’s newborn child. And she was troubled. These two people she loved showed her the vision of a life that she did not give herself the right to access. And while her reflections on motherhood are still pending, she didn’t wait before giving birth to a whole new album that, like her friends, are exactly the same, except they’re different now.
It’s easy to compare this record with the « original » version. After all, a remix is nothing more than a reworked version of already existing material. That’s one way to look at it. But most of the time these remix albums lack focus, inviting a bunch of people to remake the melodies depending on their inspirations. This is a whole lot different. Charli invites her friends and inspirations in her backyard so they can play altogether. She’s not delegating her power, she’s sharing it.
« And I’m exactly the same, but I’m older now / And I got even more stress on my body ». On I think about it all the time’s Bon Iver remix, the focus shifts. It’s not her friends anymore but herself. Because it recquires a great amount of love and self-confidence to accept how much you can change, and grow. It’s the same for BRAT. It changed, it grew, until it became more than a remix album. It became a sequel.
« The city sewer slut’s the vibe / Internationally recognized / I set the tone it’s my design / And it’s stuck in your mind »
From New-Zealand with Lorde, Stockholm with Yung Lean and Robyn to Barcelona with Bb Trickz, Charli predicted the international success of BRAT on the original 360 and acknowledges it on its sequel. « Baddie en el club, BRAT en en el club ». Surrounded by friends, she collects mutliple experiences to strengthen her discourse and shatter her insecurities. « Three child stars out here doing damage » on 360, « We’re just living that life » with Addison Rae on Von Dutch, or Lorde’s golden « Let’s work it out on the remix » on Girl, so confusing.
More than guests, she picks the right people who would fit her songs’ themes such as self-empowerment on the opening, the rave culture on 365 with Shygirl. And the brat-persona grows as well. If I had to think of a brat male-version of Charli, Julian Casablancas would be among my top picks. Although he comes from an earlier generation, Cassablancas built his persona around his stoic, sometimes almost upsetting, persona. So it’s no surprise we find him on Mean Girls. Likewise, Billie Eilish arrives like a lightning bolt in Guess to embrace that brat-persona she playfully cultivated on her recent hit LUNCH. And through these passionate conversations, Charli builds a brand new narrative.
« Why is all this sympathy a fucking knife ? »
This question ended Sympathy as a knife. Now on the remix, she takes her time answering that question. Because if the original song focused on this painful feeling, the remix instead focuses on precise examples. « It’s a knife when a journalist does a misquote […] It’s a knife when somebody says they like the old me and not the new me ». And Ariana Grande comes in to back her. « It’s a knife when they dissect your body on the front page […] It’s a knife when somebody says they like the old me and not the new me ». Both these artists met a tremendous amount of misogyny throughout their careers, especially when they decided to flew away from commercial success to recentre on themselves. Sonically, the song follows the same horizontal structure as before, but this time it also grows vertically thanks to Ariana Grande’s pristine vocals, reaching a pitch Charli isn’t capable of. With their respective artistic strengths, they join forces to fight their common enemy, the public eye, the press, all these people stuck in the past and invalidating their personal growth.
But if in this case the song evolves thematically, some other times the growth happens within the production. On Rewind, the bridge becomes the remix’s main sample. On Apple, the song starts by remixing the original song’s last line, repeating « I wanna know where you go when you’re feeling alone ».
This goes even further on Talk Talk where the song is now built around the outro « Talk to me in French / Talk to me in Spanish ». But where the original one was about Charli clumsily trying to confess her growing love to her soon-to-be fiancé, here she becomes much more assertive. « You’re thinking ‘bout me / No don’t pretend that you aren’t / We’re still obsessed like we just met / And when you fuck me it’s crazy ». In a few months, Talk Talk grew into a passionate bratty song, leaving her previous insecurities behind. Just like this album, Charli’s growth is exponential.
She leaves these same insecurities behind on So I. Where she used to grieve the moments she hadn’t the time to share with SOPHIE, she now embraces all her happy memories. She wanna think « about all the good times / Like the first time I heard your music / My ex-boyfriend played your SoundCloud / That moment really changed my life ». She learned to cry, and now she learns to smile again. 2-step grief.
But her growth can’t stop there. More songs need to change. Girl, so confusing was a troubled stream of consciousness in need of an answer. The song starts the same, the very same. But Lorde comes in, showing her most vulnerable side to Charli, explaning her point of view, clearing things out. And then the song finally changes. « It’s you and me on a coin / The industry loves to spend ». True power, from reconciliation to female empowerment. A historical song.
« When you’re in the mirror you’re just looking at me »
And those changes even infect Charli’s core motives. Mirrors were everywhere on BRAT, and they’re still here but differently. The original I might say something stupid already hinted at the dual relationship between Charli and mirrors, highlihgting the many sides of the brat persona : « Talk to myself in the mirror / Wear these clothes as diguise / Just to re-enter the party ». These lyrics find a strong echo in Rewind with Bladee.
« Maybe I need a reality check / Sometimes I just gotta say less / Count so well, drew lines on my chest / When I look in the mirror I don’t see no reflect ». Not longer able to find an image of herself she appreciates in an intimate setting, she looks for other mirrors, giving in to the toxic drives of fame : « Wanna see my face all up in the press / When I don’t, sometimes I get a little bit depressed ». Magazines, videos, Instagram, Charli has so many mirrors distorting her reflection so she sees that icon we all see, forgetting the young girl from Essex. By trading her mirrors to frontpage magazines, Charli destroys a tool she used before as an empowering element, now shutting her up inside her insecurities.
And so she constantly reinvents her mythology on the remixes, even playing with the song structures themselves.
Just like the poetic collage opening Everything is romantic « Winding roads, doing manual drive / Bad tatoos on leath-tanned skin / Jesus Christ on a plastic sign », BRAT remixed dissolves the structure of the previous chapter to create a sonic collage. Now the second track Club Classics opens with Charli’s newfound trademark « Bumpin’ that » which was before a part of the first track 360, adding lyrics from 365 as well.
Charli embraces a more radical hyperpop approach, spending more time destroying her melodies. That’s what happens towards the end of Sympathy is a knife where the sounds suddenly crumble roughly. On the contrary, I might say something stupid travels from alt-pop to ambient thanks to Jon Hopkins’ splendid color palette. With his piano and white noise in the background, the song puts on a strange beauty troubled by Matty Healy’s distressed lyrics. And as a lone traveller, the piano moves from the foreground to the background again and again so our ears understand the song’s sonic depth. But this peace doesn’t last forever, pierced by bubbly sounds and a steady ascending pop rhythm at the end.
It’s clear, BRAT isn’t meant to stay in one place. It’s meant to be chewed, spit, kneaded, broken and rebuilt.
« Too hot, when I sweat, just lick me / Touch and squeeze when the bassline hits me / […] Harder than a BPM beat match me »
And it all shapeshifts ! Club Classics goes from a bubblegum bass song to a 2-step quicker beat. The main line becomes « When I go to the club I wanna hear those classics ». One word less, a faster flow. We’re way higher into the rave. It’s the same on Talk Talk that becomes a future house banger. Before, it had a classic build-up with the production getting stronger on the first chorus after a rather withdrawn first verse. Then it went back to a quieter but more dense second verse before the outro took it way higher with a sick bassline. The second chapter opens in quite the same way, with Troye Sivan’s delivery. But as soon as he arrives at the pre-chorus, the bassline takes us into future house territory. It’s lively, danceable as hell, bratty to the core. And Troye Sivan’s so damn nonchalant flow turns out to be a perfect and playful contretemps to the main beat. It just sounds like they’re having so much fun together, experimenting with voice distorsions, adding so many sounds and melodic lines to create a pure house tune.
Because if some tracks become more atmospheric (Everything is romantic, B2B), Charli mainly follows SOPHIE’s advice. We’re going faster.
That’s why So I suddenly becomes so uplifting. It takes on that bubblegum bass sound so dear to A.G. Cook, completely changing the steady pace of the first chapter where the beat hugged Charli’s flow. Now it cannot sound more opposite. A.G. Cook broke her initial rhythm to build a SOPHIE-esque wall of sounds.
That growth can also be witnessed on Apple where what used to be a sweet and bubbly dance-pop song becomes more complex, with a louder mix. Same on Mean Girls. Just listen to how much punch and dedication she puts in her lyrics « This one’s for all my mean girls ». Then on Von Dutch, A.G. Cook’s production underlines Charli and Addison Rae’s vocals with a lot of tension, hinting at the drop about to come. And our wait is perfectly rewarded with Addison Rae’s pure hyperpop shriek, a shriek so impactful that the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece about how women tend to scream way more in nowadays’ pop songs in order to break the image of the calm and neat girl.
And finally, what used to be BRAT’s outburst, the closing track 365, is now embracing hard techno to its full potential. In only two minutes, the song takes us into the darkest part of the club with a noisy final drop splitting in halves the very core of the night.
She made it her playground. The night. She made it her playground once again. And now when she says « When I get to the club I wanna hear the club classics » her request is followed by an interpolation of 365. It’s done. BRAT’s short legacy is already living through BRAT remixed. In an age where the internet makes everything go so fast, Charli already had the time to process the impact her album had on her life, on her fans and on the rave culture.
« Every time my track drops, you’re jealous » she sings on Von Dutch. That’s true, the original Von Dutch is now a true hit, among her best songs. « 360, find a way to deal » sings Bladee on Rewind. Even when the rapper thinks about how messy his mind can be, he remembers that there’s still a state of bliss waiting for him. Self-empowerment is a value we need to cherish. 360 highlights that way of life, it’s our way to deal.
It might be faster, harder, stronger, BRAT remixed is, most of all, a celebration. It celebrates summer with Tinashe on B2B and it celebrates the night with it’s awe-inspiring melancholy on Everything is romantic with the fabulous Caroline Polachek. « I feel smothered by logistics / Did I lose my perspective / Everything’s still romantic, right? » Charli asks. BRAT surely became a cultural phenomenon increasing tenfold the pressure on Charli. Let’s just hope that, like us, she’ll now be able to embrace the night, its anguish, its carefreeness, its nostalgia and its playfulness, and find her reflections back into her mirrors, away from the pressure, in sync with the multi-faceted brat persona.
On I think about it all the time, Charli travelled back to her memories when she first met her friend’s newborn child. And she was troubled. These two people she loved showed her the vision of a life that she did not give herself the right to access. And while her reflections on motherhood are still pending, she didn’t wait before giving birth to a whole new album that, like her friends, are exactly the same, except they’re different now.
It’s easy to compare this record with the « original » version. After all, a remix is nothing more than a reworked version of already existing material. That’s one way to look at it. But most of the time these remix albums lack focus, inviting a bunch of people to remake the melodies depending on their inspirations. This is a whole lot different. Charli invites her friends and inspirations in her backyard so they can play altogether. She’s not delegating her power, she’s sharing it.
« And I’m exactly the same, but I’m older now / And I got even more stress on my body ». On I think about it all the time’s Bon Iver remix, the focus shifts. It’s not her friends anymore but herself. Because it recquires a great amount of love and self-confidence to accept how much you can change, and grow. It’s the same for BRAT. It changed, it grew, until it became more than a remix album. It became a sequel.
« The city sewer slut’s the vibe / Internationally recognized / I set the tone it’s my design / And it’s stuck in your mind »
From New-Zealand with Lorde, Stockholm with Yung Lean and Robyn to Barcelona with Bb Trickz, Charli predicted the international success of BRAT on the original 360 and acknowledges it on its sequel. « Baddie en el club, BRAT en en el club ». Surrounded by friends, she collects mutliple experiences to strengthen her discourse and shatter her insecurities. « Three child stars out here doing damage » on 360, « We’re just living that life » with Addison Rae on Von Dutch, or Lorde’s golden « Let’s work it out on the remix » on Girl, so confusing.
More than guests, she picks the right people who would fit her songs’ themes such as self-empowerment on the opening, the rave culture on 365 with Shygirl. And the brat-persona grows as well. If I had to think of a brat male-version of Charli, Julian Casablancas would be among my top picks. Although he comes from an earlier generation, Cassablancas built his persona around his stoic, sometimes almost upsetting, persona. So it’s no surprise we find him on Mean Girls. Likewise, Billie Eilish arrives like a lightning bolt in Guess to embrace that brat-persona she playfully cultivated on her recent hit LUNCH. And through these passionate conversations, Charli builds a brand new narrative.
« Why is all this sympathy a fucking knife ? »
This question ended Sympathy as a knife. Now on the remix, she takes her time answering that question. Because if the original song focused on this painful feeling, the remix instead focuses on precise examples. « It’s a knife when a journalist does a misquote […] It’s a knife when somebody says they like the old me and not the new me ». And Ariana Grande comes in to back her. « It’s a knife when they dissect your body on the front page […] It’s a knife when somebody says they like the old me and not the new me ». Both these artists met a tremendous amount of misogyny throughout their careers, especially when they decided to flew away from commercial success to recentre on themselves. Sonically, the song follows the same horizontal structure as before, but this time it also grows vertically thanks to Ariana Grande’s pristine vocals, reaching a pitch Charli isn’t capable of. With their respective artistic strengths, they join forces to fight their common enemy, the public eye, the press, all these people stuck in the past and invalidating their personal growth.
But if in this case the song evolves thematically, some other times the growth happens within the production. On Rewind, the bridge becomes the remix’s main sample. On Apple, the song starts by remixing the original song’s last line, repeating « I wanna know where you go when you’re feeling alone ».
This goes even further on Talk Talk where the song is now built around the outro « Talk to me in French / Talk to me in Spanish ». But where the original one was about Charli clumsily trying to confess her growing love to her soon-to-be fiancé, here she becomes much more assertive. « You’re thinking ‘bout me / No don’t pretend that you aren’t / We’re still obsessed like we just met / And when you fuck me it’s crazy ». In a few months, Talk Talk grew into a passionate bratty song, leaving her previous insecurities behind. Just like this album, Charli’s growth is exponential.
She leaves these same insecurities behind on So I. Where she used to grieve the moments she hadn’t the time to share with SOPHIE, she now embraces all her happy memories. She wanna think « about all the good times / Like the first time I heard your music / My ex-boyfriend played your SoundCloud / That moment really changed my life ». She learned to cry, and now she learns to smile again. 2-step grief.
But her growth can’t stop there. More songs need to change. Girl, so confusing was a troubled stream of consciousness in need of an answer. The song starts the same, the very same. But Lorde comes in, showing her most vulnerable side to Charli, explaning her point of view, clearing things out. And then the song finally changes. « It’s you and me on a coin / The industry loves to spend ». True power, from reconciliation to female empowerment. A historical song.
« When you’re in the mirror you’re just looking at me »
And those changes even infect Charli’s core motives. Mirrors were everywhere on BRAT, and they’re still here but differently. The original I might say something stupid already hinted at the dual relationship between Charli and mirrors, highlihgting the many sides of the brat persona : « Talk to myself in the mirror / Wear these clothes as diguise / Just to re-enter the party ». These lyrics find a strong echo in Rewind with Bladee.
« Maybe I need a reality check / Sometimes I just gotta say less / Count so well, drew lines on my chest / When I look in the mirror I don’t see no reflect ». Not longer able to find an image of herself she appreciates in an intimate setting, she looks for other mirrors, giving in to the toxic drives of fame : « Wanna see my face all up in the press / When I don’t, sometimes I get a little bit depressed ». Magazines, videos, Instagram, Charli has so many mirrors distorting her reflection so she sees that icon we all see, forgetting the young girl from Essex. By trading her mirrors to frontpage magazines, Charli destroys a tool she used before as an empowering element, now shutting her up inside her insecurities.
And so she constantly reinvents her mythology on the remixes, even playing with the song structures themselves.
Just like the poetic collage opening Everything is romantic « Winding roads, doing manual drive / Bad tatoos on leath-tanned skin / Jesus Christ on a plastic sign », BRAT remixed dissolves the structure of the previous chapter to create a sonic collage. Now the second track Club Classics opens with Charli’s newfound trademark « Bumpin’ that » which was before a part of the first track 360, adding lyrics from 365 as well.
Charli embraces a more radical hyperpop approach, spending more time destroying her melodies. That’s what happens towards the end of Sympathy is a knife where the sounds suddenly crumble roughly. On the contrary, I might say something stupid travels from alt-pop to ambient thanks to Jon Hopkins’ splendid color palette. With his piano and white noise in the background, the song puts on a strange beauty troubled by Matty Healy’s distressed lyrics. And as a lone traveller, the piano moves from the foreground to the background again and again so our ears understand the song’s sonic depth. But this peace doesn’t last forever, pierced by bubbly sounds and a steady ascending pop rhythm at the end.
It’s clear, BRAT isn’t meant to stay in one place. It’s meant to be chewed, spit, kneaded, broken and rebuilt.
« Too hot, when I sweat, just lick me / Touch and squeeze when the bassline hits me / […] Harder than a BPM beat match me »
And it all shapeshifts ! Club Classics goes from a bubblegum bass song to a 2-step quicker beat. The main line becomes « When I go to the club I wanna hear those classics ». One word less, a faster flow. We’re way higher into the rave. It’s the same on Talk Talk that becomes a future house banger. Before, it had a classic build-up with the production getting stronger on the first chorus after a rather withdrawn first verse. Then it went back to a quieter but more dense second verse before the outro took it way higher with a sick bassline. The second chapter opens in quite the same way, with Troye Sivan’s delivery. But as soon as he arrives at the pre-chorus, the bassline takes us into future house territory. It’s lively, danceable as hell, bratty to the core. And Troye Sivan’s so damn nonchalant flow turns out to be a perfect and playful contretemps to the main beat. It just sounds like they’re having so much fun together, experimenting with voice distorsions, adding so many sounds and melodic lines to create a pure house tune.
Because if some tracks become more atmospheric (Everything is romantic, B2B), Charli mainly follows SOPHIE’s advice. We’re going faster.
That’s why So I suddenly becomes so uplifting. It takes on that bubblegum bass sound so dear to A.G. Cook, completely changing the steady pace of the first chapter where the beat hugged Charli’s flow. Now it cannot sound more opposite. A.G. Cook broke her initial rhythm to build a SOPHIE-esque wall of sounds.
That growth can also be witnessed on Apple where what used to be a sweet and bubbly dance-pop song becomes more complex, with a louder mix. Same on Mean Girls. Just listen to how much punch and dedication she puts in her lyrics « This one’s for all my mean girls ». Then on Von Dutch, A.G. Cook’s production underlines Charli and Addison Rae’s vocals with a lot of tension, hinting at the drop about to come. And our wait is perfectly rewarded with Addison Rae’s pure hyperpop shriek, a shriek so impactful that the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece about how women tend to scream way more in nowadays’ pop songs in order to break the image of the calm and neat girl.
And finally, what used to be BRAT’s outburst, the closing track 365, is now embracing hard techno to its full potential. In only two minutes, the song takes us into the darkest part of the club with a noisy final drop splitting in halves the very core of the night.
She made it her playground. The night. She made it her playground once again. And now when she says « When I get to the club I wanna hear the club classics » her request is followed by an interpolation of 365. It’s done. BRAT’s short legacy is already living through BRAT remixed. In an age where the internet makes everything go so fast, Charli already had the time to process the impact her album had on her life, on her fans and on the rave culture.
« Every time my track drops, you’re jealous » she sings on Von Dutch. That’s true, the original Von Dutch is now a true hit, among her best songs. « 360, find a way to deal » sings Bladee on Rewind. Even when the rapper thinks about how messy his mind can be, he remembers that there’s still a state of bliss waiting for him. Self-empowerment is a value we need to cherish. 360 highlights that way of life, it’s our way to deal.
It might be faster, harder, stronger, BRAT remixed is, most of all, a celebration. It celebrates summer with Tinashe on B2B and it celebrates the night with it’s awe-inspiring melancholy on Everything is romantic with the fabulous Caroline Polachek. « I feel smothered by logistics / Did I lose my perspective / Everything’s still romantic, right? » Charli asks. BRAT surely became a cultural phenomenon increasing tenfold the pressure on Charli. Let’s just hope that, like us, she’ll now be able to embrace the night, its anguish, its carefreeness, its nostalgia and its playfulness, and find her reflections back into her mirrors, away from the pressure, in sync with the multi-faceted brat persona.