It’s the era of the vulnerable pop star. These days, it’s in vogue to create music about wading through the daily grind of everyday jobs or failing relationships to connect with a mainstream audience.
If you’re anything like Charli XCX, sometimes the only appropriate response to these relatable pressures of life is to dance the night away. And gauging BRAT’s recent streaming success, it’s clear that listeners agree.
With BRAT, Charli XCX has finally graduated from underground darling of the pop scene to the top tier of the genre. In fact, Charli’s connection with a certain political party in this upcoming election year has vaulted her and her critically acclaimed album into another stratosphere of popularity and relevance.
Everything is here in BRAT. Charli is controversial and harsh at some points. At other times, her lyrics grow more personal and conversational. BRAT’s songs range from recounting cute dates with her boyfriend, to exchanging bedroom gossip with girlfriends, to delivering tirades about the state of feminism and victimization in culture.
Yet, it doesn’t take long to discover that Charli’s outlook on the current state of the world is swamped with cynicism and emptiness.
Metaphors are so out. At least according to Charli XCX. She’s claimed BRAT as her most honest and personal album to date. And she rarely holds back when sharing her honest and direct opinions about pretty much everything on this album.
“Sympathy is a knife” and “Girl, so confusing” feature moments where Charli opens up about the difficulties of being a woman and navigating hurt from relationships to forge healing friendships.
In “Everything is romantic” she talks about how to find beauty in everything, even in the low moments of a relationship or family hardships.
Another prevalent topic across BRAT is motherhood. In “I think about it all the time,” Charli wonders if “it [motherhood] would give my life a new purpose?” She also describes meeting her friend’s baby for the first time and saying, “She’s a radiant mother, and he’s a beautiful father/And now they both know these things that I don’t,” alluding to the joy and privilege of parenting.
In “Rewind” Charli sings about her desire to “go back in time to when I wasn’t insecure/to when I didn’t overanalyze my face shape” showing her honesty about past struggles and embarrassment.
As a larger theme of the album, being a “brat” is complicated.
To some generations, the term might refer to someone who is bratty, disrespectful to authority, and brash in their decision-making. On the internet lately, being “brat” has grown to encapsulate the “cool girls” who smoke cigarettes, fit in with the fashion trends, and carry a lifestyle of nonstop partying and excess.
The opening track “360” and closing track “365” not only sound nearly identical but also share a similar desire to create a perpetual cycle of partying where the goal is to be a “3-6-5 party girl” who meets in the bathroom with other brats to snort cocaine and drink at the club all night long.
That’s a snapshot of the album: a blur of overconsumption and harmful decisions. And much like the parties that Charli describes, the songs grow much darker.
In tracks such as “Sympathy is a knife” and “I might say something stupid” Charli’s lyrics reveal her depressive state and suicidal ideation. She asks herself, “Why I wanna buy a gun?/Why I wanna shoot myself?” She also murmurs, “I go cold, I go so cold, ‘cause I don’t know if I belong here anymore.” In the same song, she claims, “I’d say there was a God if they could stop this.”
In “Apple,” Charli returns to the topic of mental health by appropriating an apple core as a symbol of generational trauma passed down through her family. She sings, “I think the apple’s rotten right to the core/From all the things passed down/From all the apples coming before.”
“Mean Girls” addresses the stereotypes associated with internet-savvy girls, who comprise a core portion of Charli’s audience. She glamorizes descriptions of such girls, describing them as, “Hedonistic with the gravel, drawl and dead eyes/Anorexic, and you heard she likes when people say it.”
Across the album, several songs feature a smattering of profanity, references to sexual activity, and drugs and alcohol within a party setting at a club or at home. Five of the album’s songs contain an explicit warning, and several of the singles contain suggestive cover art featuring revealing clothing from Charli XCX and other featured artists.
Put simply, Charli claims that it’s cool to be brat now. In previous generations, receiving this sort of label was frowned upon and seen as something to avoid. But these days, it’s considered a sign of approval and an aspirational label worth achieving.
Language is constantly evolving in our culture. But some things never change. The lasting, negative effects of a nonstop party lifestyle will eventually catch up to you. This is something Charli XCX shows glimpses of understanding.
Yet just when it seems like she’s turning a corner, she slips back into old habits in the corners of nameless clubs trying to numb out the pain and hurt of life.
Despite her honesty about relatable topics throughout the album, Charli XCX’s reliance on severe profanity and references to suicide, drugs, and alcohol mute her positive messages. Careful listeners would be wise to do the same and avoid this latest release altogether.
Jackson Greer is a High School English Teacher in the suburbs of Texas. He lives in Coppell, Texas with his wife, Clara. They love debating whether or not to get another cat and reading poetry together. Also, he is a former employee of Focus on the Family’s Parenting Department.
Our weekly newsletter will keep you in the loop on the biggest things happening in entertainment and technology. Sign up today, and we’ll send you a chapter from the new Plugged In book, Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family, that focuses on how to implement a “screentime reset” in your family!
