Just when there hasn’t been a certified, reigning bad girl in pop in a minute, Charli XCX declares herself a brat.
The British hyperpop phenom is more brash and confrontational than ever on her sixth studio album Brat (which dropped on June 7 via Atlantic Records). She laments how she’s everybody’s “favorite reference” and questions why she’s not more famous (“360”), while still feeling nostalgic for the days when she didn’t value fame quite as much (“Rewind”). She forgoes niceties to analyze the complexities of female relationships (“Girl, so confusing”) and criticizes expectations placed on women ("Mean girls," “Sympathy is a knife”). Most importantly, she confronts herself and the role of the messy girl she’s both played and has been prescribed to her (“I might say something stupid”). She’s the life of the party at a rave under club lights, and in the quiet car ride home, she can’t help but have an attitude over either the world’s or her own perception of who she is and her desires. So, she’ll be a brat, embrace it all, and do it unlike anybody else in her league or beyond it.
