They say that the dead never really leave us, as long as they live on in our hearts. And so it is for Brat summer. She was the bra strap we refused to obscure, and the bra we didn’t wear at all. She was the cigarette butt that burnt a hole in our sheets. She was the fifth bottle of wine at a dinner for two. And now – she’s gone. She was killed, as many good things are, by a bank. I’ll explain.
If you have existed online or in proximity to a queer person over the past four and a half months, chances are your timeline and life have been drenched in neon green (Pantone 3507 C, to be precise). This is the doing of the British pop singer Charli XCX, whose sixth studio album, Brat, dropped in June 2024. XCX has been on the brink of superstardom for almost a decade. Her low-fi aesthetic and shameless party girl energy have seen us through two of the longest things that have ever happened on this Earth: a John Green film adaptation and the pandemic. Prior to Brat, XCX collaborated with the likes of Troye Sivan, Christine and the Queens, and Icona Pop. But with this latest album, XCX has crossed the fame Rubicon.
