WHAT EVERYONE SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT THIS WEEK
As critics rush to call time on Charli xcx’s neon-green revolution, they mistake a meme for a movement: ‘BRAT’ has sparked a cultural wildfire where authenticity reigns, and pop’s outsiders are rewriting the rules of the game.
Words: Abigail Firth.
It’s the year of the brat. Ever since Charli xcx coined the term ‘Brat Summer’, the album and its already iconic green have eclipsed the internet, culminating in potential presidential candidate Kamala Harris using the album’s colour and typography to boost her election campaign. And with that, the world began declaring Brat Summer over. But it’s far from it.
Upon its release, Charli xcx’s latest album ‘BRAT’ landed at Number 2 on the UK Albums Chart, falling just short of the top spot, which remained occupied by Taylor Swift and her ever-growing anthology of a release ‘The Tortured Poets Department’. Many saw Taylor’s extended (UK only) drop as a calculated move to block ‘BRAT’’s chart success, and while we’ll probably never know if that was the case, it signalled something more important: that for the first time in her entire career, the whole world was rooting for Charli xcx.
The pop-cultural tide has since turned towards Charli, prompting a sea of bright green on any festival field, any social media home page, any club night (markedly for the first time surpassing the borders of the LGBTQ+ communities Charli was previously only lauded in), Brat Summer has spilt out from the internet corners she once occupied and into the real, tangible, mainstream pop world.
While Taylor’s own Eras Tour powers on regardless, these big moments from pop’s major players seem to pale in comparison to the forces coming up from the underground. See Dua Lipa’s big Glastonbury headline set being skipped by many attendees to secure their spot at Charli’s PARTY GIRL DJ set at the festival’s 7000 cap The Levels stage just 45 minutes after she finished, or Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘GUTS’ tour being almost entirely overshadowed by the rapid rise of its North America opener Chappell Roan.
In a post-post-pandemic world, FOMO is king, and Charli, Chappell and more have captured the magic of an unmissable event. Whether it’s to rave until the early hours or to participate in a group dance in a festival field, being able to say “I was there” is the main currency throughout Brat Summer.
“I wanted to create concerts where people can dress up and have a blast,” said Chappell Roan when Dork interviewed her at the end of 2023. “Yes, they are parties. I just wanted to be a drag queen. I absolutely did that.”
She understands better than anyone the importance of being a part of something and how special it feels to be in those crowds; although our chat predates her explosion, Chappell was remarkably successful in her mission, stating, “I always think about the audience when I’m writing and what they would want to sing. What can I point the mic at them and have them yell? Every single bridge that I write is audience participation.”
Those missing out on PARTY GIRL at Glastonbury flocked to the Greenpeace fields for Confidence Man’s similar portable party Active Scenes, which was subsequently shut down two hours into their four-hour mammoth set. On the Thursday night, Shygirl’s Club Shy party at The Levels was equally impossible to get into. Meanwhile, the boys of the Brat Summer have taken their own curated party lineups for an outing; A. G. Cook’s Britpop Roadshow took over three nights at Camden’s Underworld this April, while George Daniel’s DH2 label launch rave just hit Brixton’s Phonox, and The Dare’s Freakquencies club night was brought to Peckham Audio in May, every one of them selling out.
This primal urge to party has decimated the proud-concert-crier catharsis that took over last year’s summer live circuit – think of the initial Eras Tour hype, boygenius’ big summer shows or SZA’s ‘SOS’ tour. It ushers in a new era of authenticity, one that plays with character and persona to present a full spectrum of emotions, where the purveyors of it are purposefully unpolished, and where it’s unclear where the person stops and the persona begins. It might’ve even been preceded by the antics of pop’s real anti-hero (sorry, Taylor) Matty Healy and his use of Matty Healy The Character on The 1975’s At Their Very Best tour.
In Dork’s cover interview earlier this year, A. G. Cook broke down his own position in the current pop landscape, saying, “I think someone like me who’s on the borderline between mainstream and underground music probably could have an interesting role to play in this current era, where we’re completely questioning what is mainstream and what’s viral and what’s real or not in terms of music. I want to get deeper into that, how can I keep finding these vantage points that will be culturally pretty interesting?”
A leading architect on ‘BRAT’, A. G.’s most recent collaboration with Charli has led him to a bigger cultural shift than either of them could’ve predicted just a couple of months ago. And if A. G. Cook is the Father, The Dare is almost certainly the Son.
In a chat we had with him ahead of his album announcement, he said, “I’ve never written a lyric that wasn’t something I felt or thought about in a genuine way. But at the same time, I love performers, and I love people who crank up their feelings and do it over the top, or even tell stories about other people, and you don’t really know if it’s true or not.”
The Dare doesn’t share much sonically with the PC Music crew, but there’s a clear connection between what he’s doing with his project and A. G. Cook’s original mission with PC Music. The same can be said for Confidence Man’s origins in making rave music for a laugh and then realising it was actually worth pursuing, or Chappell Roan’s pulling together of disregarded subcultures to create her own pop persona. It’s not a coincidence that all three of those acts make a distinction between their on-stage and off-stage selves too.
While the internet might be convinced that a post-hyperpop world features Camila Cabello being accused of ripping off Charli, it’s far more interesting than that. Following the closure of PC Music’s doors at the end of 2023 and a general evolution of the genre’s sound, the fallout of the underground’s hyperpop era includes the blurred lines of the real and fake person behind the music (early pioneers of this in PC Music were Hannah Diamond and GFOTY), and the idea of making something for fun but approaching it with complete sincerity (A. G. Cook’s outlook when he created the label).
Moreover, Brat Summer is for the artists who’ve played the long game, gone their own way and made it. It’s not just made a success of Charli, finally for who she is instead of the songs she lends to other artists (ahem, ‘I Love It’ and ‘Fancy’), but of Chappell, who was dropped by Charli’s very label Atlantic and system rebooted her artist project with outstanding results. It’s also for Tinashe and the independent direction that’s seen her produce forward-thinking albums for years now, finally hitting it big with the viral ‘Nasty’, and for Sabrina Carpenter, whose similar nine-year post-Disney career has paid off with the runaway dominance of ‘Espresso’ and ‘Please Please Please’.
The Dare gets it. Speaking of other artists who’ve served as inspiration and taken their sweet time to be culturally recognised, he says, “I feel like when Yung Lean came out, they just panned the shit out of him for like four or five albums. I think that with people like Bladee or Ariel Pink or whoever, the zeitgeist shifted around them, and they were just persistent. They kept doing what they love to do, and ultimately, it began to make sense to people.”
That’s exactly what’s happened with Charli xcx and pop’s deliciously refreshing new cast of characters. Brat Summer is a win for the underdogs and a testament to what happens when an artist sticks to their guns and wholeheartedly believes in their own direction. It’s not just a meme but a moment that’ll be remembered long after the green light’s gone out.
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