Charli’s “Teenage Era”

In early 2016, Charli XCX, who at that point was known for songs like “I Love It”, “Fancy” and “Boom Clap”, shocked the online pop world with the release of “Vroom Vroom”: A complete rebrand, featuring dark electronic production by upcoming electronic producer SOPHIE and a provocative music video. Charli was starting to work on her yet unnamed third studio album. In 2016, PC Music’s producer A.G. Cook became her creative director and in 2017 she released a bonus mixtape as she kept working on the album that would later be named by fans “XCX World”. I say named by fans because the album never got an official name, it in fact never released. After several delays due to label issues, the project was leaked in its entirety by hackers, and thus fully scrapped. This was followed shortly by a second mixtape, produced entirely by A.G. Cook and made in a few weeks in New-York with a slew of collaborators, mainly from the rave and LGBTQ+ scenes. This mixtape (named Pop 2, as in the sequel to pop music) ended up being extremely influential, placing Charli as the poster child for the niche subgenre that would later be called Hyperpop. A role that would turn her into the face of alternative, creative, experimental and fun pop music. This period was extremely messy and stressful for her, as several projects were dropped and scrapped and songs were reworked and changed by her music label who wanted to go for a more mainstream approach. After dropping the last few singles from that era in the summer of 2018 (including the greatly underrated “Focus”), Charli XCX kept working on the project, which at this point had been through several reboots, and in late 2019 the world was introduced to Charli, her self-titled third studio album.

The project is once again almost exclusively produced by A.G. Cook. It features the maximalist approach and creativity that are landmarks of the hyperpop genre. The album is a direct result of her changing style, with songs evolving between albums. “Blame It on your Love” is the finished and much more radio-friendly version of “Track 10,” the ethereal electro-prog ballad that closed Pop 2, while “Click” was later remixed by A.G. Cook on “c2.0” from Charli’s next album.

The aptly-named opener, “Next Level Charli,” is a really nice mood-setter, painting the picture of being on your way to a party and playing music to hype yourself up in your car. It is a moment that is weirdly both energetic and emotional. The album is always trying to strike a balance between experimental PC music tendencies and mainstream appeal, and the second song, the insanely catchy and danceable “Gone” featuring Christine and the Queens, is a perfect example of that. With its creative use of bubblegum bass, weird sound effects, vocal interpolations and clever use of pop tropes, it sounds like a song that could play on the radio everyday while still closely following the PC Music handbook. It also makes the bold choice of having the bass be the main melody of the song. “1999,” another good example, features Troye Sivan (who appears twice on the album and co-headlined her post-brat tour). It’s about the universal feeling of nostalgia and carefree youth, over simple catchy chords. “Cross You Out” is the first of many sad moments on the album, this one with alt-pop legend Sky Ferreira. It features both odd sound choices and beautiful vocal melodies that compliment each other really well.

The cult following and critics approval that were generated from Vroom Vroom and Pop 2 allow her to sometimes go into an even more experimental direction, showcased in songs like “Shake It” (spiritual successor to Pop 2’s “I Got It”), an extremely unorthodox and minimalist club banger featuring unhinged verses from CupcakKe and Brooke Candy. Returning features Kim Petras and Tommy Cash show up on “Click,” easily one of the best songs on the album. Charli raps with confidence about spending and partying on top of distorted basslines and loud twisting snares. The features both do a great job at what they usually do, and the songs end in a hyper loud and distorted instrumental passage that only PC Music producers could pull off.  

When working on the first iterations of the album, Charli described it as "crying in your champagne,” and you can definitely hear that on a lot of the tracks. Charli is an introspective party album, full of both overflowing confidence and crippling insecurity along with hedonistic fun and heartbreak. This is explored in the variety of genres of songs present and also in the lyrics, as confident party songs sit right next to self-loathing breakup ballads (On “White Mercedes” she sings: “Hate myself, I really love you [...] All I know is I don’t deserve you”). 

The album unfortunately isn’t as consistent in the second half, with some of the slower songs missing the mark. “Warm” featuring HAIM feels too understated, while the aforementioned “Blame It On Your Love” sounds like an awkward attempt at a 2016-era electropop radio song, with a very uncharacteristic Chainsmokers style drop and passable Lizzo feature. It pales in comparison with the original version heard on Pop 2 and makes me wish it was never touched. Some songs bring some welcome experimentation, like “Thoughts” and “Silver Cross,” but it feels like something is missing from the following ballads and the closing songs feel a little forgettable.

The album's inconsistency in quality is clearly explained by it being a very complex and multi-faceted project, born out of a frankenstein-style collection of new and old sounds that emerged from the tumultuous two years that preceded its release. It is interesting to look at its position in Charli's discography. When asked about Brat in relation to her other albums, Charli described Pop 2, how i'm feeling now and Brat as a trilogy, leaving Charli out of the picture, although this album sits as the middle child of what would be called her "hyperpop era.”. Whereas her early work like “I Love It” and “Boom Clap” were huge pop hits, and projects like the Vroom Vroom EP went all the way into the other direction looking for new sounds in the underground, Charli sits in the middle as her “teenager” moment: maturing in sound and going in a new direction while still trying to craft the next big hits that her label is looking for.

It is particularly interesting to contrast this to her latest effort and big moment that was Brat. Charli was followed by her collaborative pandemic album how i’m feeling now, which got universal praise from critics and led to the explosion of hyperpop of the early 2020s. Using her growing popularity, she decided to do a complete 180 and release Crash, an album that she described herself as her “sell-out” album, fully going into a mainstream pop direction by working with new writers, interpolating other famous songs and working with A&R “for the first time in 10 years.” Crash underperformed, and Charli later expressed regret over the whole album. Although most of her fans and critics disliked the album, and it didn’t quite catch on in mainstream pop circles, Crash’s relative failure was necessary to lead to her next project: Brat. In a lot of ways Brat feels like the culmination of the movement Charli started in 2016 with “Vroom Vroom”, and maybe of her whole career. Using the lessons learned from Crash and her years of experimentation, Brat finds a perfect middle ground between pleasing her alternative music fanbase and making accessible, radio-ready songs and it pays off in every way. She re-uses a lot of elements from her older music: the album closes with “365,” which ends in a several minutes long techno remix, the exact same way that “visions” closed how i’m feeling now. “360” uses PC Music synths and bass hits, which are used as the center of the melody in a way that is similar to “Gone” from Charli. “Rewind” feels very similar to “1999”, both with its lyrical themes of nostalgia and its production that sounds straight out of an A.G. Cook solo project. Finally, the theme of Charli’s self-esteem issues is one that is at the center of all her albums: Whether it be on Charli, how i’m feeling now (where she sings “My therapist said I hate myself really bad”), or on Brat. “Sympathy is a knife” talks about insecurity-driven jealousy and “Girl, so confusing” dives into the complicated relationship between women in the music industry. “I might say something stupid” brings the album’s pace to a halt and is a moment of vulnerability and self-awareness caught in the middle of a party, where Charli mentions her place in the pop landscape as an icon of the alternative music world (“I’m famous but not quite / But I’m perfect for the background”). Ironically, it is by blending all her styles and trusting her own vision on Brat that Charli found the perfect compromise and fully broke through to become part of pop’s royalty. Enjoying a second mainstream success moment, 10 years after the success of “I love It,” Brat is the logical next step and victory lap for Charli XCX. At long last, her ultra loyal fanbase gets to see her enjoy the success they always wished for her; she is no longer the “next big thing”, she is simply the big thing, and as “Brat Summer” was the place to be in 2024, Charli has a lot of reasons to celebrate, and a lot of champagne to cry into.

Gabriel Rousseau is an international student at SUNY Geneseo and member of WGSU's Music Selection Staff.