BRAT
by Charli xcx
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This album has been added to 5 private lists and 34 public lists:
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Favorite albums of 2024
NtsikaI've never liked Electronic pop as this much. So good and dance hits after dance hits. Versatility is Charli xcx
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Best, Favorite, & Most Interesting Albums Of 2024
Mark- Genre: Electropop, Hyperpop, Xlub-pop, Electroclash, dance.
- Influenced by: PC Music, SOPHIE, Bikini Kill, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Donna Summer, Bread, Kate Bush, Quinten Tarantino.
- Similar artists: SOPHIE, Dorian Electra, 100 gecs, Rina Sawayama, Arca.
- About this album: A loud, bold, and minimal collection of sounds that channels the illegal London rave scene where XCX started performing as a teenager.
- Metacritic Score: 95 (Universal acclaim).
- Grammy Nominations: Best Dance/Electronic Album, Best Pop Solo Performance "Beg For You," Best Dance/Electronic Recording "Beg For You."
- Song To Sample: "Beg For You," featuring Rina Sawayama, with a unique blend of hyperpop, R&B, and ballad elements.
- Trivia Bonus: Stage name: Charli XCX's stage name comes from her MSN Messenger screen name when she was 14. The name stands for "Kiss Charli Kiss." Charli has synesthesia, which means she sees music as colors.
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Vortex's Album of the Year List '24
TomI mean, it's BRAT. Of course it's going to be top of this list.
It's been so rewarding to see Charli turn into a genuine megastar propelled solely by a single body of work. You very rarely get monocultural moments anymore but BRAT was exactly that; I've made so many friends just from people recognising that shade of green in my car or on my wall (the CD collection is slowly growing!).
There's so much quality in this tracklist. 360 sounds like the pop track Charli spent much of her career striving for; effortlessly cool, catchy and quick, with bewildering lines like "I'm everywhere, I'm so Julia" sticking in the mind all too easily. If you get it, you get it. If you don't? Well, Charli doesn't fucking care what you think.
There's a sense that Brat was already Charli's victory lap, even before its mindblowing success; after years of trying (trying to push the avant-garde with records like Pop 2, trying to be the mainstream pop star with CRASH, trying to be everything to everyone), the moment Charli made the record that sounded she didn't have to try was the moment she reached her full potential. You can hear it in tracks like Von Dutch; amidst throbbing synths and harsh, bassy kicks, Charli cements her confidence with a shrug: "It's okay to just admit that you're jealous of me".
Charli heavily pushed Brat as a club album prior to its release, which isn't exactly inaccurate! But I'd argue it hews much closer to a narration of the club experience. In I might say something stupid, Charli describes her feelings of loneliness and awkwardness outside a party: "Let in but still outside/I look perfect for the background, I get nervous, sip the wine". She's "famous, but not quite", snagging her tights on the lawnchair as she mingles with celebrities much more famous than her, at the time. Sympathy is a knife tastes much more like a Charli track of yore, and yet even then Brat's writing shines through as unique, describing jealousy and embarrassment directed towards a certain someone who dated another certain someone. "Don't want to see her backstage at my boyfriend's show/Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick"...Hm. She's lucky not to have drawn the Swifties' ire for that one, but that's what makes Brat so special; not everyone is going to make a song about envying Taylor Swift so much that they want to kill themselves! Another standout, Girl, so confusing, is the best example of this. It's about Lorde, who's always been compared (and confused with) Charli. They've got the same hair, people say they're alike, and yet Charli paints a confusing and conflicted picture of their relationship; does Lorde hate her? Does she want to be her? Maybe they'll make up one day, who knows! What's important is that Charli goes there, narrating her place within the music industry with searing honesty and frankness. The whole album is a trojan horse in that way, cloaking genuine vulnerability in a veneer of pre-emptive self deprecation. Charli's so desperate for this guy that she almost follows him into the bathroom at an awards show! Charli fucking hates award shows and is going to bomb the Grammys! Charli thinks anorexia and smoking is such a vibe, but also she can't eat at a restaurant without thinking about her weight. Charli might sacrifice her career to settle down and have kids, but actually she might just snort cocaine and get soooo fucking wasted in the club for three days straight. These paradoxes sustain Brat perfectly; the tension is balanced in such a way that both things are believable, because that's life. It's the strongest writing I've seen in an album this year; simple, brutal, confrontational, and painfully beautiful.
It helps that it all sounds so good, too; longtime collaborator A.G Cook has essentially found his sound, but here it's sanded down into something resembling perfect machinery. Synths are metallic and grating, vocals treated with a generous helping of autotune and pitch-shifting, with acidic breaks in tracks like Rewind and 365. So I strips that production to the very bone, a beautiful track about the late SOPHIE. Atmospheric, wide, and completely lacking in autotune; this song does not fit Brat, and yet it makes it so much better. Rest in peace, SOPHIE.
Of course, there are some club tracks in here. Club classics and B2b are stellar, with the latter being a crunchy, warped banger that was made for playing on repeat. These tracks show the raw talent Charli and her team have carved themselves after years of honing their talent; mixed perfectly and sampled beautifully, they show that if she had really wanted to, she could've gone all the way club. You even see it in Everything is romantic; not strictly club, but so brutally infused with club DNA (SOPHIE's DNA, to be specific) that you taste it in every word that Charli trades over coldly beautiful instrumentation. Kicks laced with a Damascus sheen, warm and lonely sunsets, boiling tarmac, rushing water; this is one of the best tracks she's ever made, and it really makes me want to go to Italy. Mission accomplished, I guess.
Gotta mention I think about it all the time, too; not much to say other than it's the one song I've cried to on here. "We had a conversation on the way home, should I stop my birth control?/Cos my career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all."
Charli ends on a high in more than one way. 365 is a contender for best track of the year, giving the 360 beat crack and a lot of red wine and a couple existential crises for good measure. "Dial 999, it's a good time!" She's having a little key, doing a little line, stumbling through corridors and throwing up in bathrooms. It's a good time but also she might fucking die, which sums Brat up, really.
I love this album. A lot. It's a marker of one of the best summers I've ever had, one that was primarily soundtracked to these beats. It also helps that it's just really fucking good; messy, dirty, sex and wine-fuelled, yet unapologetically tender and emotional. It doesn't get much better than this, and I suspect it won't for many years after 2024. Well done, Charli.
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2024 albums
Jake RipleyTop 3: Sympathy is a knife, Von Dutch, Talk Talk
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2024 Favs
CatandoIt's great, it's the record of 2024 and even though I might prefer how I'm feeling (I will never be sure tbh) there's not a single bad moment in this. Really happy that Charli is this successful. There's not much else to say about BRAT. (My girlfriend bought me this record for valentine, isn't she amazing?)
Favourite track: 365
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z0z4
jzfski 💭🇬🇧
Electropop, Electronic Dance Music, Bubblegum Bass, Electro House, Dance-Pop
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2024
giovana zaleskium marco na história da música e da cultura pop. PERIOD.
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Current Vinyl Collection
ChaseBRAT is fun! BRAT talks shit. BRAT acts mean. BRAT will follow you to the bathroom. BRAT is, well, bratty! BRAT is also insecure, emotionally volatile, yearning for stability, and eager to settle down and start a new life. While BRAT makes its modus operandi abundantly clear, it also seeks to be everything that BRAT is not. BRAT is complicated. BRAT is human.
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Favourite Albums
Jason LingardAlt-Pop, Hyperpop
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recently listened to
vaniamix of bangers and introspective tunes (which fall a little flat for me) but charli has a flow that you can't help but dance to
want a variant of just the instrumentals of these songs
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