Michael's Cut

---

Half-full vodka handles, Funyun bags, and oversized jorts clogged the backseat. Every weekend, the items shuffled. Candy wrappers replaced 7-Eleven hot dog foil. A left Twix that melted to fudge on the floor; not one person noticed. Our friends piled their limbs over one another, like mannequins taken down from display. Alcohol reeked over the car freshener she just bought yesterday. But as we all met at her apartment tonight, we agreed I’d be the designated driver. So there she’ll be later that night, camped on that backseat, in her pink long sleeve, hovering over the brown paper bag. The moon stared at the sedan speeding through the parking lot, questioning the stars flicking for every beat, every second that passed.

At first, Brat defines the messiness of club culture. When tracks like “365,” “Club Classics,” and “Von Dutch” choke you in their EDM blowouts, you respond accordingly. Under all that booze and powder, the crowd raves and screams. More shots, more chasers, and more energy found from an intangible force (no, not from a tequila soda). But the record diminishes the facade of weekend benders. Though memorable – but also unmemorable from the blackouts –  the Essex alt-superstar now seeks an internal remedy. Cocksure performances aside, the party girl we’ve known for so long isn’t the one at the tone. Rather, Charli XCX rewrites her rhetorical situation: a raver all her life prepared to address her personhood to an audience expecting a hedonistic summer. Instead, get ready for Brat summer, she announces, and damn does that become her mighty testimony.

Oddly enough, “360” opens up this affirmation with subtlety. Mild synth pads and matte vocal melodies polish her otherwise flashy lyricism. Confidence backed by evidence: “I went my own way and I made it / I’m your favorite reference, baby,” she clears the skeptics on the first read. But XCX knows success isn’t an individual-led outcome, so she gives her proper thanks over this understated bubblegum bass beat. Julia Fox, Gabbriette , A.G. Cook, SOPHIE, Hudson Mohawke, George Daniel, and more named within the first two songs. For a record sporting no features, it’s ironically communal, and instructive that a tight-knit support system must be expected for this season. She’s leaving no one behind.

XCX positions Brat with strong storytelling and dynamic personas, leading to the undefined consensus about our buzz phrase. Being a brat can’t just entail a self-assured bitch (the good kind). It’s an umbrella term, neologistic, even. Tracks like “Sympathy is a Knife” and “Girl, So Confusing” screech insecurities by just the tap of the shoulder, a brush from the woman with which you think your partner could be cheating on you. Or how about a friend that needs some working out with on a remix? Emotions have no clear-cut process; thus, the results spiral. “Why I can’t even grit my teeth and lie?,” she confesses on the former through the constant gum chewing and avoidance, synths blistering and soon scabbing. 

Personal confessions seep onto the dance floor – grime and sadness, if not arrogance, mixed like jungle juice. Yet there are moments where we’re pulled to the parking lot, another cigarette kindled for the night. The shortest cut, “I might say something stupid,” isolates XCX into the background, swept off by the wind as debris, and auto-tuned vocals dragging onto the ground like busted luggage. Elsewhere, “I think about it all the time” questions motherhood and career longevity, a change in priorities as we sneak up on death. These moments of consideration, of self-awareness, humanizes the album experience, presenting XCX’s flaws as quintessence. Rarely do we stay the same person, especially as different circumstances appear before the premise. These themes lead to the most intimate song. “So I,” a tribute to the late PC Music pioneer, SOPHIE, intersects praise, remorse, and grief without ostracizing XCX’s audience. The excuses to escape a dinner invitation, the forgetting to return a phone call, and the consequential regrets haunt XCX, as well as the adage that crying is indeed okay. So she cries, gemstones trickling down her cheeks, and brilliant keyboards capturing the gorgeous full moon in Greece for our dear friend.

And yet, with all its poignancy presented, Brat still gleams with chartreuse radiance, the type that reminisces barf on the sink and highlighters borrowed from your high school English teacher. To think that “Rewind,” with its prep school-like pining for the retro spun through an electro-clash twist, or even “Everything is Romantic,” how it shatters a picturesque framework of Europe with a grime/Brazilian funk/techno fusion for the future, create such defining character moments for XCX. Multifaceted takes, sometimes and understandably contradictory, make for great evolution. It’s okay to want to return to a simpler past or have a lovey-dovey side while still enjoying mainstream attention and ballistic rave nights, as well as exhibiting brash behavior. Brat confirms the tabloids are kept on her industrial nightstand, maybe even posted on the wall as irony. A woman who understands her brand but just doesn’t give a fuck, and neither should we. Didn’t she make a song about breaking the rules anyway? 

Make what you want about being a brat; there’s no wrong answer as long as you’re true to yourself. For years, XCX has constructed meaning to her individualism, and finally the world has provided her the space to showcase her ethos. Long live Brat summer.

Be sure to check out my RateYourMusic page as well for additional music ratings, as well as my TikTok for music-related updates!