Brat Girl Summer
How Charli xcx elevated the album rollout to an artform with Brat
Charli xcx has been one of my favourite artists for years. Her influence over pop music has felt significant but yet somehow simultaneously understated. I’ve had conversations with other musicians who agreed that her excellent 2017 mixtape Pop 2 was a landmark release, influencing vocal production (among other things) for many records that came out after it.
For a time, Charli was the queen of the underground, the artist too cool to become a Main Pop Girl, your favourite producer’s favourite artist. But that time is over. Charli is nobody’s secret anymore since the release of Brat, her signature album and this year’s best release.
The Brat era has been such a breath of fresh air. After a procession of anodyne pop stars making records that strain to seem Important and Serious, Charli xcx has taken over the world with a glimmering celebration of trash. Effervescent, sweet and emotionally complex, Charli has resurrected the spirit of nu-rave, bringing us back to a time when it felt okay to get messy, dress weird and listen to loud synth tracks in close quarters.
I decided to deconstruct the record and the album rollout in this month’s edition of my Hazlitt column. We will look back years from now and consider Charli xcx’s Brat rollout as not only a high water mark for successfully presenting music to the public but also as the cultural reset that it truly is. It’s wild to think of all the stuff that she did around this album:
‘Box trucks in London with “Charli xcx sextape” and her fiancé’s name on them in the album font. A “Brat wall” erected in Greenpoint with different messages on it. A viral music video starring an it girl squad including Chloë Sevigny, Julia Fox and Rachel Sennott. A raucous Boiler Room party with a record-breaking 25,000 RSVPs where she DJed and hyped up the crowd while wearing an instantly iconic shirt with “CULT CLASSIC” printed on the front. Carefully curated remixes with Addison Rae, Robyn, Yung Lean and most notably, an internet-breaking turn by Lorde. The rollout was self-referential and meta, even featuring a list of possible marketing ideas from “Charli gets her nipples pierced at Claire’s” to “Charli gets caught shoplifting at the mall and leaks the CCTV footage.”’
What Charli has achieved with this rollout is not an easy feat in today’s music landscape. Just look at the response to Katy Perry’s comeback single, a video that was so ill-conceived, cringeworthy and conceptually flawed that the only thing that stopped it from continuing to get dragged endlessly across the web was a Presidential assassination attempt. In contrast, Charli and her team executed every moment with pinpoint precision in a way that never felt heavy-handed, tiresome or contrived. They’ve even added a viral TikTok dance for “Apple” to their list of achievements since I filed my column.
The sheer amount of effort she put into the storytelling around this release is awe-inspiring. According to Billboard, she sent her management team a “a 20-page PDF breaking down every element of brat in full” back in January before the rollout began. To do what she’s doing requires a few things working in concert: vast financial resources, a label that believes in your vision, a team that can adapt and move quickly and the artist living in personal circumstances that are ripe for producing quality music.
Charli literally had to go all out to break through in an increasingly noisy online environment that has been conditioned to swipe away for the next thing every split second. To capture and retain the public’s attention the way that she has is truly impressive.
In a way, it’s also somewhat depressing that she had to go to this level of effort to get people to care about a great record in our day and age, especially one that is an incredibly well-crafted piece of art that can and should be able speak for itself. I get it though. I felt like I did everything I possibly could in my efforts to promote Rollercoaster and there’s probably people reading this that still don’t even know that I put out an album this year.
Rather than being bummed that we smaller artists can’t hope to ever attain her level of marketshare or have access to the budget that makes a rollout like hers possible, one can’t help but think of a win for Charli as a win for true artistry. Her success is encouraging for anyone who believes in the album as a creative format. You can’t help but root for her.
Read my piece about Charli xcx in this month’s edition of my National Magazine Award-nominated Hazlitt column, Mind In Bloom
Last weekend I jumped on stage for a live rendition of “Connor McDavid” with PUP during their headline set at Because Beer Festival in Hamilton. I feel like I brought my inner Henry Rollins to the forefront on this one.
Just put out a new single with Sleepy Tom where I rap over some disco house, listen to “Golden” here.
MTL: come see me at Osheaga on Sunday August 4th at 6:30 pm!
You can find me updating my playlists or hanging on Twitter and Instagram. You can listen to my music on Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp and you can get Cadence Weapon merchandise here. Read my monthly column in Hazlitt. Pick up your copy of Bedroom Rapper here and please rate it on Goodreads.