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Charli XCX has spoken out about her three-word tweet that helped kickstart Vice President Kamala Harris’s hugely successful presidential campaign.
On July 21, hours after President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection campaign and endorsed Harris as the Democratic Party nominee, the 32-year-old British pop star, real name Charlotte Emma Aitchison, shared her approval with a simple tweet: “kamala IS Brat.”
The Harris campaign quickly capitalized on the singer’s blessing, sharing a screenshot of her post on TikTok. They also included a photo of their own version of Charli’s lime-green brat album cover.
Addressing the viral phenomenon in a new interview with Vulture, the “Apple” artist admitted that she didn’t necessarily mean for her message to be construed as a political endorsement. She said she meant for it to be “something positive and lighthearted.”
However, she acknowledged: “To be on the right side of democracy, the right side of women’s rights, is hugely important to me. I’m happy to help to prevent democracy from failing forever.”
“I obviously knew what I was doing,” she quipped. “Did I think me talking about being a messy b**** and, like, partying and needing a Bic lighter and a pack of Marlboro Lights would end up on CNN? No.”
“Brat” culture, which was popularized by Charli, has since made headlines, with several news programs, including CNN, and political pundits trying to decipher the meaning behind the Gen Z slang.
The term “brat” is a noun and means an icon or an embrace of authenticity and confidence in oneself.
Despite enlivening the 2024 presidential election among young voters, Charli clarified that she is not “a political artist.”
“I’m not Bob Dylan, and I’ve never pretended to be,” she said. “My music is not political. Everything I do in my life feeds back into my art. Everything I say, wear, think, enjoy – it all funnels back into my art. Politics doesn’t feed my art.”
Elsewhere in the long-ranging interview, Charli addressed the inspiration behind her song “Sympathy is a Knife”, which is widely believed to be about Taylor Swift.
“People are gonna think what they want to think,” she said. “That song is about me and my feelings and my anxiety and the way my brain creates narratives and stories in my head when I feel insecure and how I don’t want to be in those situations physically when I feel self-doubt.”
The two artists have recently been rivaling each other in the music charts after Swift released new UK-only editions of her latest album The Tortured Poets’ Department, prompting her to pip brat to the No 1 spot in the UK charts.
Swift praised Charli’s “surreal and inventive” songwriting, telling the Vulture journalist: “I’ve been blown away by Charli’s melodic sensibilities since I first heard ‘Stay Away’ in 2011.
“She just takes a song to places you wouldn’t expect it to go, and she’s been doing it consistently for over a decade. I love to see hard work like that pay off.”
