It’s Charli, baby
A few reasons why this Minnesota mom loves party girl, avant-pop icon Charli xcx
The day before my birthday, the universe gave me a gift: Charli xcx released her newest album titled Brat. Since then, I’ve been listening to this iconic album and thinking about why it is that I love her so much. It turns out, there are a lot of reasons. Today, I want to talk to you about a few of them.
But before I do, a quick disclaimer. Charli xcx is not for the faint of heart. If you’re not into bad words, bumpkin’ beats, and discussions of brattiness, you may want to skip this one. To illustrate my point, a conversation I had with Michael recently:
Michael: What are you working on?
Kaia: An essay about Charli xcx.
Michael: For Substack?
Kaia: Yes.
A few hours later….
Michael: What are you writing about Charli xcx? You know my mom reads your Substack.
Kaia: I know! Mine does, too!
Mom, if you’re reading this (I know you’re reading this), sorry in advance for the naughtiness. (My mom wouldn’t let me get a Bratz doll back in the day, even when my cousin AnnaLise tried to explain: “Betsy, it’s pronounced Brazzzz.” Reader, it was not pronounced Brazzzz.)
But then again—to take a page from Charli’s book: sorry NOT sorry! I decided when I restarted this Substack that I would write whatever I wanted to write. Subscribers can come and go, but my writing and my voice are mine forever. So, friends, thank you for being here, thank you for reading, and now, finally, without further ado, buckle up for Charli xcx. VROOM VROOM.
I was first introduced to Charli’s music by my husband, Michael, which is no surprise; I learn about most new music through him (every year he posts his top 25 albums on Instagram––you should check it out!). He got on the Charli train right around the time she released Pop 2 (2017). I fell in love with her self-titled third album, Charli (2019), and we have both bopped to every subsequent album. The thing about Charli is that she delivers on her self-proclaimed existence on being “the best pop star in the world,” but she also Charli-fies pop music. It is not just sugary, bubblegum beats (which I love, don’t get me wrong), it is inventive and industrial, it is dancy and ravey, it is, as she sings on “360,” “666 with a princess streak.”
She’s iconic. I love her. I’m so happy that she’s blowing up even more than before with Brat. She deserves it. Here are some of the things I love about Charli xcx.
She gives generous airtime to her features. Charli xcx knows she’s a star. She gives whole verses and choruses to the artists she features on her tracks. You can tell she’s not keeping score, but rather playing to the strengths of everyone in the room in order to build a slapping track. For example, check out “New Shapes” featuring Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek.
I remember listening to a song by arguably the biggest pop star in the world (note: I did not say “best.” That title belongs to my personal pop trifecta of Charli xcx, Carly Rae Jepson, and Lorde) that had a Haim feature. I barely heard Haim. I was left wondering why the singer had even decided to feature them at all. This is the norm for features, though: the feature pops in for a verse, maybe gives a few cool “ooh’s” over the main artist’s final chorus, and, voilà, pop track. That is not Charli’s MO. Charli shares her spotlight. Her songs are all the better for it because she knows that bringing people in and allowing them to be their authentic, awesome, talented selves, is only going to raise her own standards and make her shine all the more. Some of my favorite features on her music include Troye Sivan, Lizzo, Carly Rae (obviously), Sky Ferreira, Rina Sawayama, and now (famously! iconically!) Lorde.
She’s not afraid to be messy. I love how Brat leans into all of Charli. As she wrote in her Instagram post announcing the album, “that’s exactly what brat is all about: me, my flaws, my fuck ups, my ego, all rolled into one.” In a culture obsessed with aesthetics, thinness, and achievement, I celebrate the radical invitation Charli gives us to not only accept, but to embrace, our messy, flawed, bratty, beautiful selves. I think a great example of this on the album is the way she opens up about her contradictions and the way having complicated relationships with other women doesn’t make you a bad feminist.
For example, on the song “Girl, so confusing”, Charli sings, “Yeah I don’t know if you like me / Sometimes I think you might hate me / Sometimes I think I might hate you” and goes on to describe a scene where she and this other girl go out to eat at a restaurant where it’s awkward because they don’t have much in common. Charli didn’t name who this person was until the remix dropped: “The girl, so confusing version with lorde.” In her (amazing) verse, Lorde sings: “Well, honestly I was speechless when I woke up to your voicenote / You told me how you were feeling / let’s work it out on the remix.”
And work it out they did. After their separate verses explaining their two sides to their friendship, the girls come in together and sing in unison: “People say we’re alike / they say we’ve got the same hair… And when we put this to bed / the internet will go crazy / I’m glad I know how you’re feeling.” And in a line that gives me chills, Lorde sings, “Cuz I would ride for you, Charli,” which Charli answers in an echo at the end of the song: “You know I’d ride for you, too.”
This song is so powerful because it literally shows listeners how to share your complicated, brutally honest feelings, listen to the other person’s side of things, and then come together and join voices in the end. I cry almost every time I listen to it! The girl anthem that we didn’t know we needed only because we didn’t know how to put it into words. Thank you, Charli and Lorde for going there and for showing us that we can go there, too.
She’s basically the Benjamin Britten of pop music. The twentieth century classical composer Benjamin Britten was experimental, cutting edge, ahead of his time, a queer icon for many, and––I’m gonna be real here––he was also a bit of a brat. (I feel I’m allowed to say this as I spent about seven years researching and writing about him and his art for my book The War Requiem.) All of these descriptors match Charli xcx. In an interview on the podcast Las Culturistas, Charli describes coming up in the club scene as a young teenager. Her parents would drive her to her gigs at underground raves where she would DJ and sing her sets at the 3 a.m. time slots (parenting goals!). She credits this underground scene as what made her her: bold, unapologetic, experimental, a “365 party girl.” She loved being in the middle of sonic boundaries being pushed. Britten was also a boundary pusher. Just listen to the first twenty seconds of the War Requiem and you’ll hear what I mean.
What I love about both of these artists is that they didn’t curb their own soundscapes or individualities to appeal to the masses. They basically said “eff it” at every turn and did their own thing, knowing that others would catch up. I am thrilled that people are embracing “brat girl summer” and that Charli is getting her due in the (neon green) limelight.
Her lyrics zing with specificity, especially on Brat. When I taught high school creative writing, the thing that annoyed me the most was when a student would write an utterly bland poem with no specific details, and then, when I pushed them on it, say that they wanted it to be relatable to anyone. These poems were not relatable. They were the equivalent of a slice of bread stuffed in a cup of water: soggy, unappetizing, and too bland to consume. What my students didn’t understand was that when we read the specifics of someone else’s life, their world becomes so vivid, so real to us, that we can’t help but step closer into their orbit. It is in that liminal, transformational space between author and writer that we can see “mirrors and windows.” That is, we can see ourselves in the author (mirror) or we gain access into a new perspective, a new way of seeing (window). A quick example from Brat: on one of the few slow songs, “I might say something stupid,” Charli sings about feeling on the outskirts of a party, both within and without. She sings the line, “I snag my tights out on the lawn chair.” Can’t you see the entire party and the look on her face with that one line?
In the song “Sympathy is a knife,” Charli knows exactly when to keep things vague and when to crystallize a moment with specifics. She sings: “This one girl taps my insecurities / Don’t know if it’s real or if I’m spiraling / One voice tells me that they laugh / George says I’m just paranoid.” Charli doesn’t need to invoke the name of the “one girl” that makes her feel insecure; for those of us up on her life, we can guess easily by adding in the specific details peppered throughout the rest of the song.
What makes this moment powerful is the way she brings in the name of her fiancé, George. If she had just said, “People say I’m paranoid,” or even “my fiancé says I’m paranoid,” she would have gotten the point across, sure. But by saying “George,” we immediately conjure a richer image: the two of them in a dressing room before a show, perhaps, or talking over dinner. She lets us into her life. We all know the power of invoking the name of a beloved. To hear her talk about a conversation she’s had with George tells us that this moment she speaks of is real, is important, and that we are real and important enough to hear about it from her.
She’s a great example of how to be a queer ally. From the start of her career, Charli has drawn members of the queer community into her music, but she never makes a big deal out of the fact that these people are queer. She simply exists and makes banging music alongside them. She has worked with numerous gay, non-binary, and trans artists, championing their visionary work, knowing that they can aid each other in a mutually beneficial and beautiful way. In a society where many people scoff at the idea of using a person’s correct pronouns, Charli’s actions are helpful: use the person’s correct pronouns and get on to what is really interesting about them. For there lies the richness of an individual, a person who could be your friend if you only let yourself move past what you may perceive as an uncomfortable (to you) surface.
When Charli performed at the 2024 Billboard Women in Music concert, she sang a tribute to her dear friend and force of electronic music, Sophie. Sophie was a trans woman who died in an accident in 2020, and when Charli introduces the number, she does not feel the need to point out Sophie’s being trans. To Charli, Sophie was a close friend, someone whose intensity and genius inspired and petrified her. I love that she sings a tribute to a trans woman at the Billboard Women in Music night and she doesn’t make a big deal of that. She doesn’t care about appearing like a good ally. She is just missing her friend. The fact that Sophie was trans was probably the least interesting thing about her to Charli. “You’re a hero and a human,” she sings. Exactly. Sophie was a human. Nothing beyond that should matter.
She loves her own music. I once attended the launch reading of a writer in my orbit. During the Q&A portion I asked what she was most proud of in regard to her brand new book. “I don’t know that I can say I feel proud,” she said, and then went on to say something no doubt insightful, but my inner monologue had piped up too loud for me to hear her. Why can’t you be proud? What’s wrong with being proud of something you made?
I think that there’s a time and place to be humble, and there’s a time and place to strut your stuff. So often when you’re an artist, it takes some serious gusto to get out there and do your thing. A certain ego is required to number one, make your art, and number two, share it with others, and number three, not let others’ thoughts about it and you affect you (see my recent post “I got my first two-star review!!).
Charli has said in interviews that she wrote “Club classics” to express the way she really only wanted to dance to her and her friends’ music when she went out to clubs. She constantly drops references to her other songs and albums in her work, and she sometimes samples her own music in new hits, peppering her oeuvre with Easter eggs that die hard fans will appreciate.
Sometimes, when you’re writing, you're singing, you’re dancing, you’re, I don’t know, spinning clay on a flippin’ pottery wheel, you have to do as Charli sings in order to produce the art that you want to create: “If you love it, if you hate it / I don’t fucking care what you think.” When you’re a writer, you end up reading your own words over and over and over again. I should hope that one would love one’s own work. The writing process is already maddening. I have to fall in love with my work to keep, well, working on it, and I am proud of what I’ve made.
Charli xcx is for anyone and everyone. I saw the below picture and quote on Instagram and I thought: huh. That’s probably true. Charli may not guess that a Minnesota mom who goes to bed at 8 p.m. is a die-hard fan of her club classics. I’m not in sheer clothing these days and my nipples are only out because I’m breastfeeding, but I need Brat. I need the reminder to own my own narrative, to take up space and give myself room to sweat. To dance, to take artistic risks and make myself nervous, to get vulnerable and emotional and to be real.
Charli xcx gives us language to sing in our heads or out loud when somebody tries to put us down or when we feel lost. She’s making every moment a party moment, a celebration of self, of friendship, of the absolute high that comes with inhabiting art.
If you’re ready to hit play on Charli xcx but don’t know where to start, here are some of my favorites, in no particular order.
“Gone” feat. Christine and the Queens (leaving a party early never felt so good. I was known as “Grandma Kaia” in college, so this one fits me quite well.)
“forever” (literally play this one at my and Michael’s joint funeral someday after we died in our sleep at 95 please!!)
“Beg For You” feat. Rina Sawayama. (Making out under the bathroom lights at the airport?? Please!! These details are so good.)
Femmebot feat. Dorian Electra and Makkai Blanco (such a banger, a bop, a jam!)
“360” (this is on repeat in our house currently, as is pretty much the entire album and every Charli song ever written.)
Which artists are you obsessed with? I’d love to hear about them in the comments. Sound off! Thank you for being here and riding the waves of my writing interests. I hope you’re all having a great brat girl summer.
With love from my kitchen table,
Kaia
Thank you for sharing this and spelling it all out so well. I think it’s embrace the mess, and be proud of it for me!
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