“I'm famous, but I'm not,” Charli XCX declares on the distinctively ballad-like “I Could Say Stupid Things.” The moment immediately dispels any notion that BRAT, the singer's sixth studio album, will play out like any other club record. It's an incredibly fitting statement for an artist who topped the charts with 2022's CRASH and contributed songs to Barbie's decade of pop soundtracks, but their relatively underground affiliation with now-defunct label and collective PC Music and shared love of musical unpredictability define them far better. Charli may have found herself at a crossroads as CRASH opened the door to pop megastardom, but BRAT plays out as an unmistakable expression of who she is at her core. An exhilarating ode to the various facets of club culture that have formed the foundation for everything Charli has built over the last nearly two decades.
“Sometimes I wanna rewind,” she sings over an unapologetically heavy digital soundscape, where her shared debt to pioneering producers and friends AG Cook and Danny L Harle shines brightest. “So I” is one of the most fitting posthumous homages in recent memory, embracing every page of the rulebook that iconic music powerhouse SOPHIE masterfully tore up before her untimely death in 2021. Charli strikes a complex balance between celebration of sound and lamentation of lyrics: “You always told me it was okay to cry, so I know I can cry.” This candor is joined by the album's most underground dancefloor call-to-arms, “Club classics” and “B2b,” threading the past to the present on both ends of the record, the latter of which lives up to its name with startling precision. But even in these moments, Charli keeps her vulnerability firmly in the forefront. “I don't wanna come off as fearless,” she sings on a record that, musically at least, presents her as exactly that: fearless.
The album essentially begins and ends with a love letter to rave and everything that comes with it, with the thunderous “365” elevating the first “360” to a level that will turn any conservative-minded soul on its head. And that's the real joy here. It's perfect hedonism, an exhilarating ride through the ups and downs of “going out,” whether that's fundamental friendships and relationships made and lost, setting the world right in the dark corners of a club, or the pure ecstasy of an unforgiving dance floor. It remains to be seen whether “BRAT” will ultimately propel Charli XCX into the top tier of mainstream pop, but it certainly guarantees the best night of your life.