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Charli XCX Launches an Exhilarating New Chapter of Pop With the Innovative ‘Brat’: Album Review
Charli XCX's kaleidoscopic new album 'Brat' combines her incisive songwriting instincts with the shimmer of hyperpop, and a lot more.
The album changes moods surprisingly smoothly with nearly every track, not just musically but lyrically: The songs swerve between boastful swagger and shriveling insecurity and vulnerability, and are autobiographical in their conflicted feelings about fame, success and her own worth; there’s also a heart-rending tribute to Sophie, who died in 2021 after a fall, called “So I.” Along with all that comes a lyrical maturity she hadn’t shown before, as a couple of the songs have character studies, like the one in “Mean Girls”: “Yeah it’s 2 a.m. and she’s out there in a sheer white dress wearing last night’s makeup/ All coquettish in the pictures with the flash on, worships Lana Del Rey in her airpods.” As always, she’s a serial collaborator, and A-list coproducers here include Cirkut, George Daniel, El Guincho, Gesaffelstein, Hudson Mohawke, Finn Keane and others, and A.G. Cook is back in the copilot seat, bringing his shimmering arpeggios and countermelodies to a majority of the songs.
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