In an interview with Billboard, Charli XCX, British singer and song-writer, said, “I actually think being a brat is pretty nuanced, because I think a lot of people think it’s just about being stroppy and kind of bitchy but I also think like brattish behaviour comes from insecurities cause I think that’s when I think people put their walls up and get stressed out and act out. So, it’s kind of like a combination of like all of those things, this like ultra confidence and this ultra vulnerability.” Boy, did I eat it up!
BRAT, released in June 2024, is Charli XCX’s sixth studio album. With its bold neon green cover that simply had ‘brat’ spelt out in small letters, it was bound to make a splash.
For me, however, that splash has since then turned into a tsunami-level of obsession with the album. In the genre of Pop in general, specifically with female artists, there’s this huge pressure to constantly reinvent yourself and to appeal to changing audiences, which is something Taylor Swift also expresses in her documentary on Netflix, Miss Americana. Charli XCX’s BRAT feels so honest and refreshing, and I think that the main reason it feels so electrifying is because Charli talks about feeling confident but also insecure at the same time, which I think is a feeling that I myself resonate with.
BRAT also, to me feels different because Charli talks of female friendship, in songs like Girl, so confusing, where she talks about her pop rival and frenemy, and how she’ll never know how this other pop girl feels. In the song she basically states that in the music industry, all female superstars are expected to be friends with each other but at the same time are also always compared and pitted against each other, a line in the lyrics being, “People say we’re alike, they say we’ve got the same hair” and that it’s so confusing that she herself doesn’t know whether they like each other or not. People speculated that the song was about Lorde, another female artist in the music industry with hits like Ribs and Team.
A few months later in October 2024, Charli released another album called Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, with all the tracks being remixes of the ones on BRAT, this time featuring Charli in collaboration with other artists on every single track. Of these I found three tracks compelling and they spoke to me the loudest. More about each of them below.
The Girl, so confusing remix, featured Lorde, almost confirming that the original song was about her. Lorde’s verse in the remix begins with, “Honestly I was speechless, when I woke up to your voice note, you told me how you’d been feeling, let’s work it out on the remix.” Lorde goes on to talk about her struggles with her weight, “I was so lost in my head, and scared to be in your pictures, ’cause for the last couple years I’ve been at war in my body, I tried to starve myself thinner and then I gained all the weight back.” She continues, singing, “I was trapped in the hatred, and your life seemed so awesome, I never thought for a second my voice was in your head. Girl, you walk like a bitch, when I was ten, someone said that, and it’s just self-defence, until you’re building a weapon, she believed my projection and now I totally get it, forgot that inside the icon, there’s still a young girl from Essex”, referring to Charli.
The weight this remix carries, the moment it creates and the pop culture history it makes is magnificent, because here are two women, who were speculated to be ‘feuding’, who are conversing about their experiences and perspectives together, highlighting their own insecurities regarding the other. At the end they sing in unison, “People say we’re alike, they say we’ve got the same hair” and “And when we put this to bed, the Internet will go crazy” Lorde ends by saying, “I’m glad I know how you feel, ’cause I ride for you Charli.”
The song ends with Charli saying, “You know I ride for you too.” Which to me is incredibly special, especially in an industry where women are always put up against each other. Charli and Lorde who were always compared to each other came together to acknowledge how it made them feel, and this song feels like a vow to never let it cloud their view of their fellow pop girls again, and that feels so personal to me as a teenage girl, because it is indeed, “so confusing sometimes to be a girl.”
Guess features Billie Eilish, with the two having a conversation. Charli’s verse begins with, “You wanna guess the colour of my underwear, you wanna know what I got goin’ on down there?” and Billie’s starting with, “Don’t have to guess the colour of your underwear, already know what you’ve got goin’ on down there.” And I just think that it’s so cool that these two women are having this discussion of the sex they may or may not have, discussing their sexuality, and just having fun with it. It’s so nuanced because we generally get songs about men, without the kind of vulnerability this song projects, at the end they even sing, “You wanna guess if we’re serious about this song?” Charli’s songs are peak girlhood, in my opinion. Her songs are able to grasp all of the nuances of growing up as a girl in today’s world, and capture her and other women’s lived experience as a part of the music industry.
The third song, a remix of Sympathy is a knife from BRAT, is titled Sympathy is a knife featuring ariana grande, discusses fame, and how people constantly want to see them fail and are counting on their mistakes, with Ariana Grande singing, “It’s a knife when they dissect your body on the front page. It’s a knife when they don’t believe you, why should you explain?” while the original Sympathy is a knife on BRAT is about Charli’s own insecurities.
I think that in a world, where the media constantly speculates about feuds between female artists, such as Charli XCX herself, and Taylor Swift most recently in 2025, and between Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo in 2021, it’s important to have albums like BRAT where artists like Lorde and Charli XCX are discussing how it’s almost as if the industry wants fights to occur, because they inevitably profit off of the publicity it gets, with an incredibly aware line on, Girl, so confusing featuring lorde being “It’s you and me on the coin the industry loves to spend”.
I think in this context, it’s important to have an album with songs in collaboration with other female artists, almost talking back to the industry as a rebellion of sorts, having fun with their sexuality in an industry where women are very sexualised, reclaiming it in a way, and facing realities like how confusing it is to be a girl in an industry, and broadly speaking, world, where you’re constantly compared to other women and as a woman are expected to want to one up other women and be better than them, but at the same time be their friend, but not truly, because women can never actually fully like one another.
In this atmosphere, not just to discuss the realities of female friendships but to create a spectacle of friendship which you also profit off of is an unapologetic challenge to the sexist capitalist music industry we know today.
Cover image by Dwayne joe on Unsplash
