Kat Says: “I Got The Biggest ‘Brat’ I Know To Write About Charli XCX”
My friend and mentor Jose Duran explores how the pop star’s experimental career brought her to this big moment.
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Hey Friends,
Are you bumpin’ that?
Now now, put your keys away. I’m talking about Charli XCX’s sixth studio album Brat. I’m talking about the cultural smash of the summer; the hipster hit of the season; the avant-pop-mainstream-takeover that’s got everyone from the New York Times to Anthony Fontano dedicating inches and hours to its evocative mess.
Of course Kat Scrawls needs to weigh in on the Brat of it all, but when I think “Charli,” I think “Jose Duran.” Maybe that’s because Jose was the first person to text me the music video for “Von Dutch,” maybe it’s because he interviewed her back in fucking 2013, and maybe it’s because my Maimi New Times editor and Cutie Club collaborator is a bratty pop star in his own right. 😝
Either way, I took the opportunity to outsource his expertise and asked him to pen an essay about the glitter-and-whiskey-soaked road that brought XCX to this current crossover peak. Like, Charli is absolutely having a moment, and there’s no one I’d rather have break it down with exalting praise and biting cultural criticism than the man who turned me on to A.G. Cook and gave me most of my first big breaks in the music journalism industry. Forever grateful to this QT <3 Enjoy!
By: Jose Duran
I don’t exactly remember how I became conscious of Charlotte Aitchison, better known as Charli XCX. I do remember it was around the time her debut True Romance dropped in the spring of 2013.
I had already been entranced by one of the album’s earlier singles. “You (Ha Ha Ha)” sampled Gold Panda’s “You,” a hypnotic experimental hip-hop/electronica number that I was obsessed with for a brief moment. Anyone ballsy enough to sample it had to be worthy of my attention.
Back then, Charli was barely out of her teens, but she already had this pull on me that I rarely get as a music journalist that lets me know, “This! This is a person you want to keep tabs on.”
I never expected for my intuition to be proven right over a decade later. Charli recently released Brat, her sixth studio album — eighth if you consider her two mixtapes as albums — a pop masterpiece that builds upon her body of work so far. Charli also cleverly asserts her place in the industry as your pop star’s favorite pop star, because on “360” when she sings, “I’m your favorite reference, baby,” she isn’t kidding around.
But before Brat’s arrival, Charli had me hooked after receiving an advance copy of True Romance a decade earlier. The opener, “Nuclear Seasons,” immediately drew me in, and tracks like “Stay Away,” “Black Roses,” and “You’re the One” made Charli seem wise beyond her years. The one track I couldn’t get out of my head was “Take My Hand,” a song that hinted at the party girl persona she would perfect.
I found out Charli was coming to Miami and quickly jumped at the chance to interview her for the Miami New Times. I don’t remember a lot about our conversation, but I do remember how smart and witty she came off on the other end of the line. Even back then, she was characteristically blunt.
Further Reading: Charli XCX Talks Pop: "I Never Wanted to Write a Hipster Record" (Jose Duran, Miami New Times, June 2013)
Charli XCX in Miami, 2013. Photo by: Lex Hernandez for Miami New Times. The full slideshow is v indie sleaze.
On a humid summer night in June 2013, she performed for a small crowd at the Garret above the now-gone downtown Miami music venue Grand Central. She performed a few tracks off of True Romance, a cover of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way,” and Icona Pop’s “I Love It,” a throwaway song she penned that had been picked up by the Swedish duo and had her listed as a featured artist because they used her demo vocals on the final cut.
Kat's Note: "I love that Charli’s “throwaway song” ended up completely taking over the world in 2013 and peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100."
I kept listening to True Romance for a while, excited to see where her career would go next. Time eventually eroded my need to hear the album constantly, replaced by newer releases and obsessions.
“Fancy” was next; a song by Australian rapper/culture vulture Iggy Azalea. From my understanding, the song started as a demo Azalea recorded called “Leave It.” However, the track's producers, the Invisible Men, felt there was something lacking and brought Charli on to help improve it.
The earworm of a chorus that gets stuck in your head? Yeah, that’s Charli’s work. Critics were also quick to notice, with many praising Charli’s contributions even if Azalea’s rapping was weak. (“Fancy” remains the only song Charli has ever received a Grammy nomination for.)
This was followed by “Boom Clap,” Charli’s contribution to the soundtrack of the film adaptation of the YA novel The Fault in Our Stars. While a bit saccharine (not in the good way) for my taste, I still sensed Charli had a knack for writing a solid hook. The track made it to No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it her biggest hit as a solo artist to this date.
After the disappointing sales numbers of True Romance and the sudden back-to-back success with “Fancy” and “Boom Clap,” I imagine Atlantic Records execs were salivating, thinking they had struck commercial-pop gold with Charli, and her sophomore album, Sucker, was quickly announced.
Sucker is—er—not good. I mean, if it were anyone else but Charli, Sucker would be a good pop album, but it always seemed to me she was destined for more.
Sucker stripped Charli of everything that made her interesting on her debut, and instead tried to make her a pop-punk diva—which, in retrospect, was ahead of its time considering pop-punk’s pandemic-born resurgence.
In later years, Charli tried to distance herself from the project. These days, she seems a bit more at peace with it.
Sucker was where Charli had lost me. Instead, I found a new obsession. I stumbled on this SoundCloud account run by a British collective called PC Music. It was 2014, and I remember talking ad nauseam about the music they were releasing to Kat—she’s always been patient and willing to hear my ramblings.
I remember going with Kat to a Sotheby’s party during Art Basel to see QT DJ for a bunch of rich fucks who had no clue who she was.
Jose and I with QT of PC Music
Little did I know that PC Music would bring me back to Charli. Rumors began swirling that she had linked up with PC Music’s A.G. Cook and SOPHIE to work on a new project. That all turned out to be true when the Vroom Vroom EP released in 2016, marking her first collab with the the U.K. collective and its affiliate.
People will rave and rant about a piece of art being so monumentally important, however, the Vroom Vroom EP felt like it had made all the pop music created before it completely null and void.
The title track, in particular, paired SOPHIE’s squelchy industrial synths with Charli’s pop sensibilities and knack for writing an earworm of a hook.
“Lavender Lamborghini, roll up in a blue bikini / Bitches on the beaches, lookin' super cute and freaky.” Lyrics these daft and cringe would cripple most, but Charli delivers them with such conviction that you just can’t help to go along with the ride.
In November of that same year, I took a trip to California which happened to coincide with a Red Bull party at the Exchange in downtown Los Angeles. When I found out Charli and SOPHIE were tapped as performers, I quickly emailed my friend who worked for Red Bull’s cultural division (back when it had one) to get me on the list for the sold-out event.
Charli performed tracks rumored to be part of her upcoming album, the now-infamous XCX World, which was later leaked onto the internet, which in turn forced Charli to scrap the LP entirely. I saw her perform still-unreleased tracks “TKO,” “Bounce,” “Daddy Knows,” and, of course, “Taxi.”
After that, she released her pair of mixtapes, Number 1 Angel and Pop 2. Charli has gone on the record to say those are both albums in her books, and she only called them “mixtapes” so Atlantic Records would release them without any fuss.
These projects are probably what solidified Charli as the princess of avante-pop. Pop 2, in particular, was so forward-thinking that, in retrospect, the title feels like Charli saying, “This is the sequel to the current pop landscape.”
If you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favor and listen. It’s essential to understand how influential Charli and PC Music have been over the years. “Track 10” alone still feels leagues ahead of anything currently on the pop charts.
Supposedly there was going to be a third, however, she and A.G. Cook were so inspired by the mixtapes that the third project morphed into 2019’s Charli. Unfortunately, the album’s promotional cycle was cut short due to the pandemic.
While a bit more polished than the mixtapes, Charli is still XCX at her experimental best. Though oddly lacking any contributions from SOPHIE, it has a murderer’s row of forward-thinking producers, including Easyfun, 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady, Umru, and Planet 1999.
Further Reading: Kat Says: “Florida Is 100 Gecs-Level Weird, And I Love It Here” (August 2023)
While 2020 quickly put an end to the Charli era, it also served to push Charli creatively.
While in lockdown in Los Angeles, Charli was cohabitating with her then-boyfriend, Huck Kwong. The pair had dated off and on through the years, but this was their first chance to spend a long period of time in the same place.
The strange lockdown situation and the need for a creative outlet saw Charli attempt a quarantine album. She did it all in the span of five weeks with the help of her fans. She took to Instagram Live and Zoom to workshop ideas and discuss her progress, and it all culminated with the release of How I’m Feeling Now on May 15, 2020.
Producers Cook and Brady returned, along with Danny L. Harle and BJ Burton. (I again wondered, “Where’s SOPHIE?”)
I considered it Charli’s best project to date, and her resulting Mercury Prize nomination seemed to corroborate that feeling. The album's first half explores her relationship with Kwong and how it ebbed and flowed over the years, with her taking responsibility for her shortcomings. On the record’s second half, she dives into missing her friends and aching for human connection.
But while How I’m Feeling Now felt like a career-high for Charli, the subsequent months brought plenty of lows. The first was SOPHIE’s death in January 2021.
The internet quickly piled on the pop star, asking if Charli was OK—which isn’t necessarily something one wants when grieving. A few days after, Charli broke her silence to pay tribute to the pioneer, writing, “I wish I had told her more how special she was, not just her music, but her as a person.”
Soon after, when she announced she was gearing up to start the promotional cycle for her fifth album, rumors started swirling that she and Kwong had broken up. She subtly confirmed the breakup via a TikTok, if only to quiet down the obsessive fans.
I’m not sure if all of this affected her creativity, but in 2022, she released Crash. It was the final album she was contractually obligated to release via Atlantic, meaning that afterward, she could shop around for a new deal. She stated Crash was going to be her big “sellout” album, doing everything Atlantic executives had wanted her to do from the beginning, including work with other songwriters and producers.
While Crash is beloved by a certain sect of the Charli fandom and critics gave the album good reviews—something I believe came from critics’ love for Charli—the album felt uninspired to me.
Charli is a talented songwriter who has written plenty of number-one hits for acts like Selena Gomez, Camila Cabello, and Iggy Azalea. If Crash was going to be her “selling out,” why not go big? Instead, the album feels like something that could have been delivered by any of what the New York Times once called the “middle-class pop divas.”
So now, we come to Brat.
Charli’s latest album has spawned nearly universal critical acclaim and even more think-pieces on the current state of pop music. A.G. Cook, Easyfun, Hudson Mohawke, Gesaffelstein, Cirkut, El Guincho, and even Charli’s fiancé, the 1975’s drummer George Daniel, handled most of the production duties.
I have to admit, the singles had me a bit worried. While they were undeniably catchy, they stuck to Crash’s “keep it short” ethos. I missed the days of Pop 2 when a song’s outro would go on for a solid minute, but something in the back of my head told me to trust the process; that with Brat being a “club” record, the singles would make more sense as a whole.
I actually think Charli calling her sixth album a “club” record undersells it. Brat is more than that.
On Brat, Charli uses the dance floor to exercise her demons, whether it’s trying to convince herself that she’s earned her place in the pop pantheon (“360,” “Von Dutch”) or exploring how other women make her feel (“Sympathy Is a Knife,” “Girl, So Confusing,” “Mean Girls”), it’s her party and she’s going to cry if she wants to.
The album also gives some insight into why Charli’s output with SOPHIE suffered after those first fruitful years. On “So I,” perhaps one of the best posthumous tributes ever recorded, Charli not only says how much she misses her friend and how much it pains her to sing the songs they wrote together but also expresses the guilt she feels of having pushed her away and how insecure she sometimes felt measuring her own talent with SOPHIE’s.
I’m not going to add to the Brat hype. Everything that needs to be said, has been said. (My favorite pieces regarding the album were written by Meaghan Garvey for Pitchfork and Kelefa Sanneh for The New Yorker.)
I will say, I do think it’s a special album and that it shows the culmination of Charli XCX’s artistry throughout the years. The praise being heaped on the album may feel a tad overkill, but—trust me—it’s not unearned.
For the last 10 years, Charli has been through the grinder of the music industry, first trying to play by the rules and then throwing the rulebook out the window. Brat is the culmination of everything she’s learned over the years, and a celebration of the scars and bruises she’s endured along the way.
As someone who has followed her career from the get-go, it’s a sight to behold.
THE DURAN WRAP
If you are just discovering Charli’s avant-garde take on pop music, I’ll leave you with some recommendations.
If you like Brat, I highly suggest you listen to the following albums:
How I’m Feeling Now
Charli
Pop 2
If you are interested in Charli and SOPHIE’s collaborations, check out these releases:
Vroom Vroom EP
“Spliff in My Ear” (Unreleased)
“Taxi” (Unreleased)
“No Angel”
“Lipgloss”
Also, Charli is the queen of leaked unreleased material, most of it which can be found online. Here are some of my favorites:
Also…
Don’t forget! Charli is about to hit the road on the Sweat Tour with Troye Sivan! The first show is in Detroit in September, and they’re coming to Florida in early October. Stay tuned for a full sweaty report, but don’t take my word for it! Buy tickets at the link below!
YO! I made Super Kat World shirts in black. S/O all my inner goths. This joins the existing lineup of the signature SKW shirt in pink, a “music matters” hat in pink, and a “music matters” / logo coffee mug!
Buying SKW merch is an amazing way to support me and my vision, and share your love of DIY music journalism with the world <3 Also, it’s cute!
Absolutely Necessary
(This is the part where I share songs that are so good, they’re absolutely necessary to listen to. That’s it. That’s the bar.)
I made two Spotify playlists for this section that you can follow: one weekly playlist updated with just the new stuff every week, and one cumulative playlist that will host every song I pick ever (until Spotify tells me it’s full). Check them out! I made them for you—and me, but mostly you.
Because Jose so graciously broke down his recommended Charli hits (and because last week’s playlist hits so fucking hard), I’m sparing you this section and leaving the playlist as it is for one more week. DON’T FUCKING SLEEP ON THESE JAMS, PEOPLE.
Okay, that’s a wrap! Do you agree with Duran’s spicy takes? Do you wanna argue with him about Crash? Come say hi in the Discord and @ that motherfucker, hahahaha.
Until next time, see you on the Internet!
Thanks for tuning into my newsletter. Listen to the playlists on Spotify. One is updated weekly with all the songs from each edition. The other is cumulative with all the updates ever!