When Charli XCX presented her creative team with her idea for the brat album artwork – pixelated black text on a green backdrop – “we were skeptical,” says creative director Imogene Strauss. “He had a very clear vision of what he wanted, though… The goal wasn't to make something that everyone would like, it was to make something that would make people think about why no like.”
And in time, Charli's prediction that fans would have a strong reaction to the cover image proved correct. “There was a moment in this campaign where the general consensus online was that Charli's album cover was lazy and ugly, which of course was her whole point,” adds photographer Terrence O'Connor. “Charlie's natural instinct is to go against the grain, which is why she's so inspiring.”
Since the beginning of her career over a decade ago — when she scored three top 10s on the Billboard Hot 100 from 2013-2014 — Charli XCX hasn't just veered left of center, she's become a whole new center over time. . And not just her sixth album brat (in the Atlantic today, June 7) establishes the same, but celebrates that fact — while occasionally lamenting it. (As he sings on “Rewind”: I never thought about Billboard/But now, I'm starting to think again/Wondering 'if I think I deserve commercial success.)
Even before the album arrived, its release was met with praise from pop peers across the spectrum. While behind the scenes at Advertising signAt the Women In Music event in March, Katy Perry expressed her love for Charli, praising how “amazing” she sounded during her performance. (More recently, fans online have reported Charli as a point of reference for Perry's album launch, from KP6's hyperpop font to her fashion and photography). And just yesterday (Thursday June 6), after hearing brat, Lorde wrote on her Instagram Stories that, “There is NO ONE like this b—h.”
As the creative team around Charli say, this uniqueness is exactly what drew them to her in the first place. “I've always been a fan of hardcore pop music, but I've never really been in tune with the aesthetic,” says Strauss. “I want something more challenging.” Stylist Chris Horan, who began working with Charli ahead of the release of her fifth album in 2022 Conflict, shares a similar attraction. “We bonded over references to what makes a mainstream pop girl not only iconic but instantly recognisable,” she says of meeting Charlie. “Her appearance is sullen and distinct. It's never fully polished – there's always something a little off.”
Riding the fringes of pop music for so long – dating back to her early days performing as a teenager at illegal raves in London – Charli has finally blazed a parallel path where counterculture can co-exist with the genre. For her, the challenge is deciding how much she cares about how this coexistence is received. As he said Advertising sign earlier this year in her interview with Women In Music Powerhouse, “My big battle is deciding whether I'm more interested in being the biggest artist I can be commercially or being critically sound. Then sometimes I land in that place without being interested in any of those things.”
However, this ambivalence is precisely what defines its influence and aesthetic, from “lazy” brat album in her “never fully polished” look. Strauss believes Charlie has particular appeal right now because fans and artists are enjoying the “play safe 2010s aesthetic”.
Charli, on the other hand, is not only comfortable with risk, but could teach a master class in curated chaos, whether she's trolling fans on X (formerly known as Twitter) or referencing copycats on TikTok. As O'Connor says: “It doesn't matter if people copy our ideas, because next week we'll have a whole batch of new ones… We just laugh it off and move on – unless it's fun and annoying, then she does something that brings her in trouble, but it's also nice.”
But no matter how much Charli's every move was accepted or represented, it all fueled the hyperpop dream that was the brat presentation – from her viral rave at the Brooklyn Boiler Room in February called Party Girl (for which she wore an oversized shirt that read: “CULT CLASSIC”) to her much-talked-about “360” music video that arrived in May, in which and her friends (including Chloe Cherry, Quenlin Blackwell, Julia Fox, Rachel Sennott and more) are pressed to find “a new hot girl of the internet” — or in other words, an influencer to join their ranks.
Strauss remembers the video's premiere well, in large part because of something Charlie said: “It's hard to be in front.” Reflecting on the remark now, Strauss says, “I think that's very true. Doing things first almost never means becoming the biggest or the most famous. Being the reference means you have to make choices that go against the status quo.”
Just what Charli always did. And now, as a result, he's not only managed to make being anti-cool cool, but perhaps more importantly he's made an album that's undeniably confident and infectiously cocky. With lyrics like, “It's okay to admit you're jealous of me” (“Von Dutch”), the point brat it's not whether these statements are true, but that an artist like Charli XCX is saying them at all.
As the opening verse of “360” says: “I took my own path and I made it.”
“She doesn't have to conform to anyone's rules – that's what makes her career so enviable to other artists,” says Horan. “A lot of people want to replicate Charli's essence, but she really is one of a kind.”
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/charli-xcx-favorite-reference-why-1235703466/