Over the last decade, Charli XCX has been carefully carving out her lane as a slightly niche, left-field pop artist with a ferocious (and markedly queer) fan following. With its lurid green cover, intentionally pixelated cover, and abrasive, club-influenced sound, Charli’s sixth full-length album Brat felt like it was heading down the familiar path of brilliant-but-lesser-known cult classic, to be filed next to other inventive, experimental releases such as Vroom Vroom and Pop 2.
Instead something far weirder happened: it transformed into the incredibly strange phenomenon of Brat Summer: an still-ongoing onslaught of retina-scalding neon-green that has transformed Charli into a cultural powerhouse.
