Brat isn’t an album or even an aesthetic; it’s a sensibility. It’s an ontological state. You are brat whether you like it or not.
“Brat” is the sixth studio album by Charli xcx, released on June 7 at the early height of summer. British singer Charli xcx drew inspiration from her beginnings: messy 14-year-old experimentation, Myspace demos, and performances at illegal raves in East London warehouses. The album is a celebration of “Club Classics.” Charli xcx lays out her intent right over a techno beat in the opening seconds of “360,” claiming, “I went my own way and I made it.”
Even if you haven’t heard a single song from “Brat,” you’ve undoubtedly seen its cover. It is powerfully minimalist, with the word “brat” in a blurry, Arial-like font on a brat-green background.
I think the green is the most important part. It’s maybe a shade of chartreuse, but can only be described as “brat-green.” True green is usually associated with nature, life, and energy. This green is too green, too bright, too saturated, reminiscent of the hyperactivity of the digital world and its all-too-alive AI. The album encapsulates positive greens like lush shrubbery in a Monet painting and negative greens like Shakespeare’s green-eyed monster. Green has a rich history of signification and has popped up several times in pop culture recently, namely Billie Eilish’s hair roots circa 2019 and Harry Styles’ Grinch-green sweater, but brat-green much more potent.
In the digital age, aesthetics move so quickly. In the post-2020 TikTok era, people have moved quickly between Cottagecore, Dark Academia, VSCO Girl, Clean Girl, Tomato Girl, and countless others. But these other aesthetics are ultimately ideals that you can never fully embody, only strive towards. If you want to embody Coquette, you need the pink bows, lip gloss, and white bed sheets. Outside of maybe the white tank top you already own, you don’t need any objects to be brat. Brat differs from other aesthetics because it does not demand perfection; Rather, brat is a sensibility which makes it accessible.
As Charli xcx put it, “You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes. Who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like, parties through it, is very honest, very blunt.”
The “and,” “also,” “but,” and especially “both,” is what defines brat. At the core of the brat sensibility is a girl who is trying her best but isn’t perfect. Albert Camus would have loved brat. The absurdist philosopher saw humans as rational beings in an irrational world and thought the best way to face the absurd is head on. This isn’t done by seeking higher purpose, but rather by pursuing freedom, feeling passion, and discovering oneself (that’s so brat). Brat-green, and the whole brat aesthetic, is at once a bacchic celebration of life’s joys and an existential confrontation with life’s absurdity.
The brat sensibility has transcended Charli xcx herself and the online world that honed it, into the political branding of the Harris-Walz 2024 Presidential campaign. Due to the generality of brat, voters can see the complexities of themselves reflected through the brat-green prism onto Kamala Harris. Brat summer isn’t over until there’s a woman in the Oval Office.
The penultimate song in the album, “I think about it all the time,” is a slower but still techno meditation about the possibility of motherhood. In her thirties, Charli xcx’s time moves like sand through a sieve. It is the pinnacle of the confusion and dread that poke through the album. Before you realize the song is over, still anticipating the next beat, Charli xcx’s ultimate party anthem “365” blasts off. Unprepared, mascara stains and all, you’re pushed into the mosh pit.
Brat is both. Brat is everything. Brat is you.
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