Charli XCX - Brat

The latest album by Cambridge-born Charlotte Emma Aitchison, professional name Charli XCX, fuses the adventurousness of the 2020 ‘How I Am Feeling Now’ with the more mainstream pop of her last release, the chart-topping ‘Crash’. ‘Brat’, her sixth album, co-produced with the in-demand A. G. Cook, is predominantly a dance record, with splashes of 80s electronic pop, drawing on rave music, with booming synths, infectious, driving drumbeats and introspective lyrics expressing inner fears and vulnerabilities. Songs to listen out for in this fifteen-track collection include: the hilarious, edgy video opener ‘360’; ‘Club Classics’, co-written with fiancé Daniel George (drummer of The 1975); the sparse ‘I Might Say Something Stupid’ with its searching self-reflection; the infectious lead single 'Von Dutch’ with its serrated synths and tirade against celebrity culture; the dreamy, evocative ‘Everything Is Romantic’ with its jocular lyrics; the Euro-pop ‘Rewind’ with its wistful longing for a simpler, less judgmental time: “I used to never think about Billboard/But now I’ve started thinkin’ again/Wonderin’ bout whether I think I deserve commercial success/It’s runnin’ through my mind/Sometimes I really think it would be cool to rewind”; ‘So I’, with its ethereal harp, an emotive tribute to the late pioneering producer SOPHIE: “You’re a hero and a human”; the catchy ‘Mean Girls’, with its jazzy piano, a tongue-in-cheek assessment of the ‘It Girl’ landscape; the unadorned ‘I Think About It All The Time’ on the quandary of motherhood and fame: “I’m so scared I’m missin’ out on something/So, we had a conversation on the way home/Should I stop my birth control?/’Cause my career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all”; and the closer ‘365’ with its euphoric beat. Hedonistic, confessional, at times raw, ‘Brat’ offers a layered kaleidoscope into a complex pop icon.