By Charlie Gainor, Staff Writer
On June 7, British singer-songwriter Charli xcx released BRAT, her eighth studio album. With mind-bending hyperpop production accompanying a blend of unapologetically confident and deeply vulnerable songs behind a lime green album poster and low-res Arial text, critics and fans alike declared the summer of 2024 to be “brat summer” in celebration.
When President Joe Biden announced that he was not running for reelection and endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, then, Charli tweeted out, “kamala IS brat,” which changed everything.
We are now six weeks into Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and still processing how to talk about brat, a term now irrevocably tied to her campaign. Pitchfork, an American online music publication, declared brat summer dead the moment she tied the album to politics. Some Palestine activists have condemned Charli as complicit in the genocide for her endorsement. Does BRAT even deserve the TikTok dances, number-one hits and pinned posts on Kamala’s campaign socials? What even is a “brat?”
Charli did answer the last question. “That girl who is a little messy and likes to party and says dumb things sometimes,” she said on TikTok. “Very honest, very blunt, a little bit volatile.” There are songs saying “I’m your number one,” and about being “so Julia” and “bumpin’ that” alongside enduring suicidal thoughts, having children and the plights of being a woman in the music industry. It’s unsubtle, loud, forward-thinking and groovy — the complete opposite of American politics in 2024.
Does artistic integrity die in the grip of political influence? Sometimes, but I don’t think BRAT is one of these cases.
Let’s take an example of when politics did kill integrity. Last fall, Appalachian country singer Oliver Anthony released “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a viral hit bringing his anger as a low-class worker to the politicians in Washington D.C. to life. The song is pretty bad, and it uses the unnecessarily fatphobic line “obese milkin’ welfare.” Still, the Republican party spotlighted the song amid the Republican primaries and gave it a debut at the very top of the Billboard Hot 100.
What followed was a media tour of Anthony trying to separate the song from being a Republican cornerstone. He attempted to defend the song and said that the song criticizes all politicians and isn’t as politically warped as its critics claimed. However flawed, I think this is a case where Anthony made a song that was clearly from a very honest place but was left overwhelmed by the target audience understanding the song more than even he did when he wrote it.
BRAT isn’t that. Yes, Charli also wrote BRAT from a very honest place like Anthony did, and the album was marketed as an applicable piece of media for a politically active audience. However, it’s difficult to find topics of intentional political divisiveness in a work about Charli’s inner conflicts and projections of self-confidence. In the wave of popularity, Charli has done pretty much everything she can to extend the peak of BRAT‘s album cycle. Before Kamala, she released a deluxe edition with three more songs, including a remix of “Girl, so confusing” with artist Lorde that squashed their alleged beef and spurred several live clubbing sessions in Ibiza and New York City. After Pitchfork declared that brat summer was dead, she brought Billie Eilish onto a remix and made it a no. 1 hit.
BRAT is definitely being used as effective marketing to Gen-Z voters by Kamala’s team to try to be hip toward kids, with Charli xcx’s blessing. Still, the integrity of an album like BRAT is pretty much untouchable because she set up what a “brat” is: messy and imperfect, yet valid in self-confidence. With such a broad demographic, a British artist who can’t even vote in the upcoming election saying Kamala fits the intended demographic shouldn’t be seen in the same manner as the Republican party taking hold of rural Virginia hick and country-folk singer Oliver Anthony.
BRAT was made for all of us. With the amount of praise it receives, BRAT will continue to be cherished well after this election cycle. There’s a difference between a piece of media becoming politically charged and media happening to fit the demographic of a major political candidate. We can direct our anger at Harris’s campaign marketing popular music at us and we can cringe at TikTok edits of her accompanying a song about bumping very illegal drugs. Still, the source of blame should not be the album that’s being used the way it was always meant to be seen.
Charli’s just living that “Von dutch” life after making an album that makes me want to embrace my problems and strut my stuff. I think she absolutely deserves to be the soundtrack to a highly chaotic summer.