why am i crying to Charlie xcx on the london underground?

BRAT is iconic (and sort-of heart shattering)

I’ll be honest, Charli xcx hasn’t been on my radar since the last time I was rolling off my face, jumping up and down to ‘Boom Clap’ in a field full of sweaty people.

But when my colleague said I should watch the star-studded music video for Charli’s single ‘360’, I swiftly obliged. Roll on Friday, I’m bumping the latest releases on Spotify and along comes BRAT, a brand new album by miss Charli xcx herself.

To my pleasant surprise, it hit me pretty hard.

To give a little context, I’m currently finding myself fighting the desire to be as reckless and financially irresponsible as I was in my early 20s. I’m becoming secure with fresh signs of ageing and a changing body, just as society worships glass skin and Ozempic-thin physiques.

Edging towards thirty while in a relatively new but promising relationship has resulted in a lot of Googling for scientific papers about the longevity of my eggs, which are – according to like, almost every person on Earth – diminishing by the day.

BRAT explores each of these themes (and then some) with rigid honesty, giving me newfound affinity for a pop star who I’ve sparsely paid attention to during the last decade. While I’ll leave the full review to the people at Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, I want to talk about a few tracks from Charli xcx’s latest project.

I’d encourage you to listen to these songs as we go through them together.

TRACK 1 – 360

90s babies oscillate between feeling like shit or believing they are the shit – a result of having to diligently fight being dragged down by our male (and sometimes female) peers for decades.

We, too, had to justify our alien behaviours to virtually everyone, including our family members who didn’t remotely understand their internet-obsessed rugrats.

Growing up, we idolised the likes of Britney Spears and Mariah Carey, who were publicly humiliated and ostracised throughout their careers. From unchecked misogyny to slut-shaming and public accusations of eating disorders, as well as professional and personal subjugation at the hands of men in power – there was no limit to the ways the world tried to force young women back in their boxes.

Still, they continued to do things their way, and remain household names to this day.

These women inspired us to wear glitter on our faces and butterfly clips in our hair. To wear crop tops and dance unapologetically and a little too provocatively for our age.

They conjured dreams of stepping into clubs that resembled the well-choreographed music videos of the early 2000s, which we would later find were full of leery men with eyes that showed they wanted to eat us alive.

Regardless of our jilted fantasies and culturally-programmed insecurities, we have continued to push through. The struggle has actually banded us together.

We climb the stairs to rooftop bars where extra-strong cocktails await (goodbye existentialism), eat unashamedly at bougie restaurants and delicious bakeries with our girlfriends on Sundays (an eventually raised middle finger to the ED culture of the 90s), and gaze out the window of airplanes on our self-funded trips abroad (because we know there’s more to life, somewhere).

Call it girl-bossing, call it whatever cringey catchphrase you want, but we got there in the end. We are BRATs because we believe we should get everything we want, and we’ll make it happen ourselves. We demand to be heard, seen, and not touched. We don’t ask for permission and owe you nothing.

I’m everywhere, I’m so Julia – uh oh OoOhhhhhh.

TRACK 3 – Sympathy is a knife

In the worst and most melodramatic moments, we want so badly to escape it all. We can – just like Charli – think: oh god ‘I wanna buy a gun. I wanna shoot myself.’

Look, we’re not actually suicidal.

The fact is that our insecurities can scream at us, saying we’re inferior by default. With all the pressure building up inside our minds, it’s enough to make us ask… what’s even the point in trying if this is what I’m up against?

Making things juicier, contributors at genius speculate this song is about Taylor Swift.

As this break-down of lyrics points out, ‘insecurity is often irrational.’ But it doesn’t mean the feeling of it isn’t real.

It’s very real. Social media has us constantly dialled in to the world’s most beautiful and successful people at a whim. Spiralling through the dreaded comparison game can cause us to contemplate throwing all our efforts at greatness to the wind.

Hearing a successful artist be so candid in the face of this kind of crisis – especially up against another globally famous peer – is refreshing whether you like the delivery of it or not, because it’s all too relatable.

TRACK 9 – So I

While it’s a cliché that we don’t fully appreciate anyone until they’re gone, it’s sadly true. We don’t say I love you enough. We don’t give people their flowers until they’re inside the grave.

Sometimes it’s because we’re bad at verbalising our emotions. Other times we can’t distinguish between the good and bad feelings we’re left with after being around people who make us feel seen, yet uncomfortably vulnerable.

Mostly, we don’t know how significant our bond with another person is until we struggle to replicate it.

I think this song emulates this feeling in a very nuanced, real (and wholly upsetting) way, but unfortunately, it could only have been created so truthfully when the person it is about was no longer around to hear it.

TRACK 11 – Apple

It’s inevitable that we’ll become like our parents (at least in some ways), given that our genes are made up of 50/50 from either of them. We can never entirely escape being predisposed to their influence – good or bad.

Charli explores the awareness that we could turn out like our parents, despite the fact that we have our differences:

In the end, she realises that although we might want to cherry-pick our parents’ positive traits, we will likely end up with the good and the bad.

To cope with this realisation, she decides she needs to get as far away from it all as possible (to the airpooooooort). We can’t change where we come from, and we certainly can’t change our parents.

Sometimes the best thing to do is create a little bit of space.

TRACK 12 – B2b

TRACK 14 – I think about it all the time

I recently became an aunt, because my sister had a baby. The way I see my sister has completely changed. I have a different kind of respect for her, because while we had shared most of our life experiences for decades, she’s been through something I can hardly begin to imagine. She has a new identity now.

My sister is no longer just a daughter or a sibling or a wife. She’s a mother. That’s undoubtedly the most important part of her life these days. I can ask as many questions as I want about it, but I know we operate on different playing fields than we used to. She lives in a realm I can never understand unless I do it myself.

Then comes the feeling a lot of people will feel once their friends and family start having babies:

I’m so scared I’m missing out on something.
Will it give my life a new purpose?
Should I stop my birth control?
Cause my career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all.
I think about it all the time.

Okayyyyyy, now I’m crying. While this might sound similar to something I’ve read in novels, I haven’t heard this topic spoken about in such a raw and vulnerable way in a song before.

I think a lot of people around Charli’s age will be feeling the same.

To wrap things up – this album was a pleasant surprise for me.

I wasn’t expecting to rave and cry in the span of 41 minutes, but here we are. Charli’s got a new fan in me. I appreciate the bops and the deep dives in equal measure and it’s been so fun to see this side of her.

The entire album is worth a listen, so now it’s your turn to find the ones you like most.

Happy listening & thanks for reading my ramblings!