There has always been a contradiction at the core of Charli and at the core of why we love her; she has always wanted to be both a pop megastar and indie cool. Traditionally, she has resolved that by alternating albums – one for the masses and one for herself. brat has broken that mold, but not through the compromise you would expect, but instead by being her best music yet from either perspective.
The pop here is otherworldly. The beat of “B2b” is busted. Her ear for music is freer than it has ever been and these songs are absolutely bursting at the seams with fishhooks to pull you somewhere new. The single “Von dutch” is propulsive and cinematic. The switch in “365” blew me away and her reworking of the opener “360” into something new for the closer is fun, not just for the device, but for how it gives us two classic pop songs.
She’s got good variety and good pace changes song-to-song as well. Flipping the slower, more FKA “everything is romantic” to the peppier “Rewind” works well and the whiplash of moving from motherhood in “I think about it all the time” to the cocaine of “365” is an excellent jolt.
brat has Charli committing much more to storytelling than before. The metagame of pop is parasocial at the moment and Charli has never been so open as she is here. The honesty is devastating in “So I,” her song for her long time collaborator SOPHIE who died in 2021.
“Girl, so confusing” might have Lorde references meant for internet detectives but the introspection grounds the album as a whole and it’s compelling to hear her go through her vulnerabilities. It’s also just absurdly good pop. Similarly, “I think about it all the time” does a lot to feed the fanbase but it’s also very clever music and I love the shifting of the word baby. Some of the lyrics really hit even if I feel that we all deserve better than someone from The 1975 though. She’s a little out of her element in the storytelling of “Mean girls” but everything is forgiven of truly great pop.
She also makes the pop star positioning into explicit text throughout the album, especially in the overwrought video for “360.” The song has some great pop rap from her though and some True Romance fragments that I loved to see.
Seeing her in this and in “Von dutch” really bring home just how far Charli has come though. She has dramatically matured from the time of “SuperLove” or even “Boom Clap” and yet brat is not about Charli bending herself to fit the world, as so many of her weaker ventures seemed to be. This is instead the moment where the world has finally begun to catch up with Charli.
Top Five Records 