Charli XCX - Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat Review
Charli XCX's latest album is nothing short of a remix revolution. There’s more power, more fame, more darkness - and more on the line.
The difference between Brat, Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not, and Brat and it’s completely different but it’s also still brat, is Charli. We’ve all witnessed time compress and pressure-cook a star who finds herself teetering at the top of the pop pyramid, strutting sexily on her sell-out SWEAT TOUR with confidant Troye Sivan in tow. Somehow, amidst all that chaos, she found the time to plan, create and perfect sixteen remixes that are mostly completely new takes on the originals. With this remix album, Charli proves her brilliance. She also proves that, in our increasingly meaningless society dazed by post-truthism, ecological disaster and global crisis, there’s a value in being present, honest, and collaborative. Don’t let capitalism’s individualism fool you – we’re better together, Charli promises, whilst still, as ever, bumping that. Get you a girl that can do both.
There are some constraints on how Charli could approach this album. Condemned to follow the original structure, 360 featuring robyn & yung lean is a weak opener, leaving more to be desired on the vocal front. She switches it up, fast: When Charli first played Club Classics for the Primavera festival crowd underneath the midnight Spanish sky, it was instantly a hit. She’s completely reinvented the wheel here, with polyrhythms wrestling the original take until, beautifully, bb trickz Spanish verse bulldozes through like a bull-dog greedy for toys. Sympathy is a knife has less of this bite by leaving out the original chorus, circling around the extension of the metaphor that harkens back to Ariana Grande’s return single ‘yes, and?’. Nonetheless, Ariana’s vocals do add delicacy into the mix, and the song stands as a solid single. Their power together can’t be denied.
I might say something stupid has already had a lacklustre fan reception. It’s easy to land on the logic that without Charli’s fiancé George, drummer of The 1975, this collab may not exist. Yet with the addition of Jon Hopkins it proves an interesting listen, the piano conversing compellingly with other parts of the record. Matty Healy’s heart-wrenching lyricism adds sheepishly to Charli’s otherwise brattish self-flagellation. The patriarchal power imbalance flips on its head. Talk talk featuring Troye Sivan welcomes queer desire and longing into the mix. Von Dutch with Addison Rae’s fractural scream and A G Cook’s wizard-like production is both an interesting piece of pop history and a viral moment, the obstinate “got a lot to say about my debut,” haunting the chambers of TikTok forever.
Charli’s outpour of recent work poses a question around the politics and style of listening. As its title suggests, brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, listeners are encouraged to exercise a collaborative, reflective and interrogative listening that shines light on the work in conjunction with, rather than divorced from, its earlier counterpart. In this friction, the songs are elevated to a higher level. There is no greater example of this than Everything is Romantic.
Ex-Chairlift frontwoman and chalice-drinking goddess Caroline Polachek is no stranger to making bangers with Charli XCX. The George Daniel and Charli XCX remix of Welcome to my Island is still one of her most popular songs. On Everything is Romantic, the pair bring the malaise of dreary London into focus. The song loses the former glamour of summers in Capri and Pompeii, grounding us in the come down of the after-party, the confliction of forlorn self-doubt. Encapsulating sonically the reworked thematic offering is only the first swing; Caroline becomes the relatable voice of misery and reality, with lyrics like “romantic like £6 wine, girl throws up on the back of a lime”. Here she takes the holidayed image of fresh fruit, and the luxury of expensive taste so prominent in BRAT, and reduces it to its warped simulacrum. In Brat autumn, profit-driven initiatives distil meaning into brand, brand into new meaning. The lime becomes the bikes littering the streets of London, of course, not just rendering Charli’s stints in Tokyo and Italy unreachable but trapping the listener in the hellish postmodern city with Caroline, forever grounded. It repurposes the conversational tone of Lorde and Charli’s collaboration, their text-conversation on Girl, it’s so confusing, and stages the phone call for us. All the while, we aren’t starved of Polachek’s infamously angelic sweeping falcettos, nor feminist political statements of ‘free-bleedng in the autumn rain’ whilst acknowledging ‘ACAB tag on the bus stop sign’.
In the second half of the album, there are some high highs, some near misses. The whacky introduction of indie-folk band Bon Iver on I think about it all the time creates a glitchy synth-pop banger imbued with an echoey 80s nostalgia. On b2b American super-star and ‘nasty girl’ Tinashe brings ferocity and playfulness, proving Charli's sound is still distinct in malleability, elevating Tinashe’s classic club voice within the PC influenced remix. The Guess remix with none other than Billie Eilish is a delight. Mean girls is, unfortunately, not so strong. After the poor reception of his latest album as ‘The Voidz’, Julian Casablancas’ appearance yields some confusing cuts with that once-glorious piano now muted beneath confused baroque-influence.
Still, producer and PC Music pioneer A G Cook proves himself now and forever a hero with his remix of So I, which takes a few listens to warm up to as Charli’s onslaught of diary-like chatter initially overwhelms – maybe the scarcity of her lyricism on this track was what made it so special in the first place? “Now I wanna think about all the good times,” she insists, reminiscing on moments with Sophie, pop-pioneer who tragically passed away in 2021 and whose posthumous album isn’t wowing critics, either.
It feels important that Charli gets to extend this narrative. She also uses a Sophie sample on big-hitter and album close 365 featuring Shygirl. The changes are choppier, the vibe is grittier, the work is more experimental, more chaotic. What do you want from your night out? A cocktail, the perfect poise of slick-back hair and the promise of an early night? Or tequila shots, black memory holes, and the phantom of a phone lost in the back of the taxi? Charli ends with a play for the latter .
The sheer imagination, candour and craftmanship on this album is astounding. It was always bound to butt heads with fans who prefer the original, and in some cases their argument may ring true. In many cases, the remixes are even better. But Charli encourages that conversation – because there, at the very least, we are together. Whilst this piece interrogates the confusion of fame and desire singular in its existence, it’s also not without heart. She has offered up her dreariest moments, her darkest thoughts, so that in the flow of the dance we may feel the weight of our own demons rearrange, we may feel the load lighten. In Charli’s world, there’s always more meaning. Now we must remember that in our own.