Brat Summer-y

Founded as a marketing maneuver tied to the central publicity campaign of her cult album, BRAT, brat summer was quite certainly destined to veer towards a shortened lifedeath by design (the clue, ephemeral, being in the name). Yet, to its denigrators, it already stalled somewhere along the way, all too easily receiving dismissal as a fad void of meaning in the face of XCX’s uncontrollable newfound exposure. And, to others, awash with connotations of presidential campaigns and third-party product peddling, it was always as such: meaningless in conception, a label for everything without necessarily alluding to anything. These have been the primary modes of thought dictating the trajectory of 2024’s brat summer, leading one to ponder: was it ever that deep?

Well, for the brat summer enjoyer, it really was. To cite the “neo-Dadaist farce” of the subversive Czech film, Daisies, definitively atop BRAT’s mood board: “Can you feel how volatile life is?” Letterboxd account in hand, weaponized, I feel this quote succinctly distils the subtext of Daisies in its entirety, XCX’s mission statement for the album, and, by proxy, the brat summer ethos that the two scaffolded, all works evergreen in the color palette of their form and renown—and now, for BRAT, in its capital.

That is to say, BRAT was made as a vehicle for XCX to express long pent-up feelings (note the plurality) to pinpoint precision, much like Marie I and Marie II confer to one another in the film. It’s about baring your soul for others to receive in the moment, recognizing an urge to speak and acting on it, and straddling dual worlds: the eternal party, and the very real existential fears left in its wake.

For the twin Maries though, their carefreeness constitutes a quite literal removal from reality; at times, they are physically disembodied, reduced to mere heads bobbing outside the confines of their Prague enclave. They are bright young things who repeatedly overstep the line many others take great care in toeing, gorging on earthly decadence to satiate desires that prove near unfulfillable, and toying with older men. Thus, operating very much within the realm of societal expectations (all while defying them), for these reasons director Věra Chytilová deemed it her ode to “those whose sole source of indignation is a messed-up trifle”.

A still of party girls Marie I and Marie II, behind a table of alcoholic beverages, taken from director Věra Chytilová’s Daises (1966). Available via The Movie Crash Course.

I draw this comparison for it equally reflects the surface-level qualities that have brought the masses to label their 2024 respite a brat summer; as much as there is nonchalance, there is an equally debilitating reflective capacity to the mischief wrought in Daisies, the Maries eternally contemplating if they did the right thing, whether they can piece it back together, and ultimately, if their actions bear significance when considered “in the existential scheme of it all”. The latter is a lyrical excerpt of BRAT’s track 10, ‘Girl so confusing’ (not to be confused with XCX’s actual ‘Track 10’, from acclaimed mixtape Pop 2), proving that nihilist ponderings also ring true for the lauded popstar, melded as if the joined psyche of Alma and Vogler in Bergman’s 1966 Persona (another XCX favorite).

Although less surreal, Charli’s pen on BRAT is just as in your face and confrontational, very much doing what it says on the tin: it lets loose, pulls no punches, and inadvertently indulges in messiness, set to the backdrop of beats one could endlessly summer vacation to (if they were feeling so inclined or, say, radically optimistic). Yet, unlike other pop albums, BRAT is basking in the fruits of one’s labor while being unashamed to maul the hand that feeds, XCX actually offering up a rare commentary, free-willed, that has been historically hard to come by when painstakingly churning out releases under the major label machine (her pact having been brokered by Atlantic Records, albeit less Faustian the second time around). Make it a pop one at that, which historically sets universality as a precedent in its lyricism, and her admittance of doubts on self-image, motherhood, and the industry as a whole could have easily confounded general audiences.

But it didn’t. BRAT earned high notoriety from most parties (if not all) for its profoundly confessional qualities. On the one hand, this was unsurprising given that Charli has been a critical darling for quite some time now, and esteemed outlets now flaunt a love for poptimism that they were previously ever so on the ball to denounce (add a hyper- prefix to that purported pop, and you land in certain publications’ sweet spot). On the other, its transparency and utmost authenticity prevailed where execs may have feared that feeling XCX’s presence stark in the melodies would isolate, even amassing disciples to follow extremes of pomp and depravity in the name of a brat summer (so coined through XCX’s signage, bearing all attributes afore-mentioned to the ones she exhibited on the LP). Thus, while matters of fame are certainly not relatable topics per se to the average chronically online user, there is some sort of deep-seated similarity that the energy of BRAT has that lends itself potent enough to infiltrate the vernacular of popular culture, embodying not just a word, nor an attitude, but an entire moment.

Think The Bell Jar, Girl, Interrupted, or even Fiona Apple’s When The Pawn Hits…: these are all semi to highly autobiographical works, firmly rooted in their makers’ experiences, which have berthed entire aesthetics and personas for people to curl up in. XCX even directly shouts these caricatures out on ‘Mean girls’ (“All coquettish in the pictures with the flash on / Worships Lana Del Rey in her AirPods”), the album’s most overt homage to the traits that would later subsume the trappings of a brat summer, not yet salient that her album would spawn such a thing in tandem. I think that it really speaks to the fact that we are at a time in Internet culture where the thankless persona is being embraced, but by persona or caricature I don’t mean to say that it is artificial or a construction of the artists themselves. And by thankless, I don’t mean to say that there is dishonesty or an ingratitude to it either. Rather, that by speaking on feeling other, at the same time being deemed diva-ish to the conventions of polite society, there is a jagged rawness that comes across as overwhelmingly fully-formed in these works—an idea that we get to know this image of an artist, as a constellation of their thoughts on actual events. In fiction, similar mouthpieces stir a ruckus that is iconic, yes, but ultimately imagined as hyperbole (E.g. Cher in Clueless, or even Miss Belladonna herself, Slayyyter’s Starf**ker) Yet, in audio or visual diaries, there is a realness to the personality conjured in reaction to non-fictive occurrences like none another, and if you add upbeat production, you arrive at something more along the lines of a brat summer—soundtracking the avowal of your successes and failures—rather than the melancholia of the sad girl aesthetic.

Now, while less clinically significant than these memoirs (”Why I wanna buy a gun?” notwithstanding; see ‘Sympathy is a Knife’), like them, however, mileage also varies on the trend cycle that BRAT unleashed to a putrid lime omnipresent tee. More specifically, to support, there will always be defectors and, for brat summer, these were ironically the people who were most attuned to BRAT’s orbit prior to and upon release: Charli’s Angels themselves (not the tripartite of action heroines synonymous with the addition of an ‘e’ to the singer’s name but, rather, her own fanbase).

You see, with BRAT came use, and with BRAT’s use, came perceived overuse. “This is brat”, “that is brat”, “it’s giving brat summer”, the Arial font was attributed to anything and all. Most egregiously, to Charli’s for-lifers, songs like ‘360’ soundtracked the mundanity of aesthetically unrefined Instagram stories, as the likes of Billie Eilish and Lorde hopped on reimaginings of underground indie-sleaze inspired songs (a dichotomy in and of itself, prompting its own rockism-esque discourse on the genre’s resurgence and its purity, if conducted by our generation’s biggest stars). This garnered XCX sustained (still ongoing) mainstream attention and press, less fleeting than the singles that had, up until now, only caught the general audience’s attention intermittently via their charting—whereas, for the individualists within her fanbase, she had always had this quality of being on the fringes. Hence, as BRAT’s once underground positioning eventually surpassed itself, it felt like brat summer spoke less to the Chloe Sevigny, Gabriette and Alex Consani idolizing standom it was geared for and the underdog that XCX felt she was, and more to the quick clicks that doing a TikTok dance garners (previously having lyrically slandered this via the vessel of lead single ‘Von dutch’, “Do that little dance / Without it you’d be nameless”, only for it to find renewed meaning through album deep-cut, ‘Apple’, gaining traction by XCX succumbing to the medium).

Charli XCX sat on the floor, pictured proudly with BRAT vinyl in hand on the day of its release (June 7th 2024), via IG @charli_xcx (photographer not known)

It’s interesting, though, that for an album with only relatively modest streaming numbers to boot, BRAT and brat summer have synergistically been the words and graphics on everybody’s lips and socials. For some, it seems they may have never even heard the album or a full track beyond a snippet, let alone of Charli XCX herself, and have yet understood the phrase’s meaning through its two component words alone, which very simply notify you of its a) disruptive and b) seasonal demeanor. It was genius of XCX and her team to make something that is evidently so effortful and deliberative feel so slapdash and instantly accessible, but it has also left room for lazy ways to cash in on what was once inspired marketing. For its patentless and royalty-free iconography have enabled Kamala Harris to position herself to gen Z in a bid for presidency, countless corporations to sell their services under the pretense of being in-the-know, and, most recently, NATO to declare world peace (perhaps the final nail in the coffin). It unfortunately renders it all so hollow and reductive, down to the tactical memeability of a textpost.

The question is whether all publicity is good publicity, and for Charli XCX, brat summer seems to have been (XCX currently seated as the 59th most listened to artist in the world on Spotify rankings, and showing no signs of cessation, with a remix album under way). Announcing new photoshoots and sponsorship deals on the daily, she seems to be having the last laugh dallying on the corpse of brat summer—and, to her, this is really only what matters. It trumps all, with any ensuing divisions that have followed trivial and outside her control. Sure, its main body of work had substance and intent, inherently going against the grain, but when you begin to collide with it—and brat comes to be labeled as this, this, and this—then it begs one to consider what brat isn’t. For that, I believe a brat summer under any other name would have still been a brat summer when we time and again find a need to deify these gloriously short-lived months as a breakaway from a capitalist nine-to-five regime. They give us much-needed pause to contemplate, or even ruminate, as well as crash and burn in the heat of partying. Therefore, in a vein not too dissimilar from hot girl summers of old (case in point), because BRAT shared these characteristics and championed a tiredness for façade, with easy-to-latch-on-to aesthetics, it earned its pedestal (at least until, for some, it devolved into capitalist farce itself).

In the end, take away from the label of brat summer what you will, and enjoy what you find in its refuge; don’t let others ruin the fun. But, be ready for history to repeat itself (perhaps too soon) with FKA twig’s prodigal return to music, and the already spoken rise of ‘Eusexua’ autumn…