In a world where everyone experiences situations that may be easy for some but hard for others, it is difficult for an artist to express their feelings without being seen as hypocritical or pandering.
In “Brat,” Charli XCX sings about many of her insecurities that most people may go through but think that famous people don’t experience. For example, in “Sympathy is a knife,” Charli talks about experiences she has had with another female artist where they are on different ends of the music spectrum and every time the other artist is around Charli, she feels insecure and that “All this sympathy is just a knife.”
While all of these songs discuss Charli’s insecurities, they still follow the genre of her other music.
“Brat” is a hyperpop and electropop album. You definitely hear the heavy bass and beat, but it is still a somewhat simple mix of notes. The simplicity itself is what makes this album so much more impactful. The simplistic music doesn’t remove the point of the lyrics but instead enforces it as it should.
The songs on “Brat” are ones that you could hear being played in a club or boiler room show where you can’t necessarily hear or understand the lyrics, but it doesn’t matter because the beat is excellent. “Brat” helps bring the importance of understanding the lyrics back to the forefront by making the lyrics about everyday struggles that everyone goes through.
“Brat” pushed against the industry standard in the way that most albums, such as “The Tortures Poets Department” by Taylor Swift, were released a couple of weeks after the initial release of the 16-song album. A re-release happened and included 14 demo songs. For fans of Taylor Swift, that was amazing, but for other people, it seemed almost unnecessary, and people wondered why those songs weren’t included in the first place.
Charli also re-released “Brat,” but instead of trying to make it seem like a deluxe edition or something more special, she titled it “Brat, and it’s the same, but there’s three more songs, so it’s not.”
The initial release of “Brat” didn’t include any features with Charli on her album, but one new version has a feature by Lorde. Many of the songs released on “Brat” that Charli has performed live have also included guest appearances and features, but that is still a major difference from the industry standard of today, where almost every album seems to have a feature.
Connor Anderson can be reached at [email protected]