Reflections on Charli XCX's Brat project and personal experiences of approaching adulthood highlight the uneasy tension between time, love, and life’s pressing choices.

Charli XCX at the Met Gala After Party in 2024. Aurora Rose/Getty Images. Shared via NME

I am entirely aware that numerous articles have already been written about Charli XCX’s new project, Brat. Many praise it, acclaiming it as an instant cult classic, while a small minority question its relevance in today’s culture, discussing the oversaturation of the acid green Pantone that has now become Charli’s signature color. My goal in this opinion piece, however, is not to build a critique, positive or negative—I simply aim to talk about a song and a feeling that I have a sneaking suspicion has been overlooked.

I am 29, turning 30 next April, and I find myself struggling with a peculiar pull of opposing feelings: I want a family, yet I still have wanderlust and crave adventures; I want a home, but after nearly 10 years of living out of a suitcase, I struggle with the idea of settling down.
I want kids, but as a gay man, I am aware that it will be a huge challenge. I am an artist, yet I’ve grown increasingly accustomed to the comfort of a steady paycheck. And I don’t know what to do.

It seems that this gravitational singularity is called “Saturn Return,” though I’m still in that phase where I pretend not to care about astrological theories that, coincidentally, completely describe how I’m feeling now (there is a pun for Charli fans there). So, last weekend, while listening to Brat—and it’s completely different but also still Brat—I went straight to the song "I Think About It All The Time," featuring Bon Iver. I had a feeling it would resonate with me even more than the original version. And I was right.

In the original song, Charli thinks out loud in a very candid way about the possibility of stopping birth control to start a family with her fiancé, George Daniel, and wonders if pausing her career is the right decision in the grand existential scheme of things. In the remix, the soliloquy goes even deeper. At one point she sings—quite beautifully, I might add—“I found love,” and suddenly, as I was getting on the train to my boyfriend’s house, I was hit with a rush of melancholia about the future: “Wait a minute, I am about to turn 30, I’ve just found someone I think I can spend my life with—so why do I feel this rush to start a family? Am I right in thinking I’m running out of time? Can’t I just enjoy being with him for a while before we think about buying a home together? Do we all feel like this at some point in life? Why am I so scared of running out of time?”

As the train left the station, I found myself confronting the reality that growing up means accepting that in life, you can’t have everything. Time flows for all of us quite inexorably, and at some point, we all have to face the fact that gaining something often means giving something else up. Though I’d been internally wrestling with this idea for a while, hearing those beautiful chords on the train somehow felt like the proverbial spoonful of sugar that helps the bitter medicine go down.

I suppose I now have to add “life lessons” to my personal “bumpin’ that” list. Brat autumn seems to be in full swing.

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