Charli XCX Keeps the Brat Revolution Rolling

From the ashes of Brat Summer, all hail the rise of But Also Still Brat Autumn. Charli XCX’s world conquest with her zeitgeist-seizing Brat just keeps surging on her fantastic remix album, recruiting a dream team of big names to admit that it’s obvious, she’s their number one. The auteur who soundtracked the summer chanting “I wanna dance to me” has plenty of famous friends who agree — Lorde, Ariana, Billie, Matty, Robyn, and more. So Brat And It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat is more than just a remix — it’s a summary of the neon-green Brat worldview. 

Charli’s brutally high-energy punk-disco cyborg aesthetic just comes alive with these other voices chiming in. Part of the kick on Brat is Charli’s delirious solipsism, all synthetic robot rah-rah in the beats, but with vocals swerving between defiant egomania and vulnerably tormented self-doubt. She’s in a world of her own where every hot stranger on the floor, every dealer in the bathroom, is a disco-ball mirror for her own larger-than-life bravado. But it’s a surprise to hear all these familiar voices as guests in the Charliverse, working angles and racing to keep up with her. Everybody wants their turn to be 666 with a princess streak.

So the Brat remix isn’t just a piece of promo product — it’s an ass-kicking party album in its own right. The bubble-pop electro of the sound stretches every which way, starting out with Robyn and Yung Lean in “360.” It’s a tribute to Charli and her collaborators, especially producer A.G. Cook, as heard on his own excellent Britpop.

The cleverly curated pairings add nuance to songs you already know. Ariana Grande fits right into “Sympathy Is a Knife,” with her own litany of heartaches to add, as if this song comes from the same place as her “Yes And?” “It’s a knife when you’re so pretty they think you must be fake,” Ari laments. “It’s a knife when they dissect your body on the front page.” She also roasts social-media culture (“The mean fans hate the nice fans”) and that feeling “when somebody says, ‘Ari, I think you’ve totally changed.”

Charli gets indie rockers past the velvet rope: Caroline Polachek brings a new level of drama to “Everything Is Romantic,” while Bon Iver adds his ghost-synth vocals to “I Think About It All The Time.” In “Mean Girls” she hits the floor with the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas, the ultimate mean girl of NYC club-punk, for an awesomely snotty meeting in the bathroom. Charli bonds with Addison Rae in a hyped-up “Von Dutch,” singing, “Linked with Addison on Melrose/Bought some cute clothes and wrote this in the studio.” There’s Troye Silvan on “Talk Talk,” the Japanese House on “Apple,” Shygirl on “365,” nowhere near enough Tinashe in “B2B.” “I Might Say Something Stupid” is a whole new song with The 1975, since few can match Matty Healy’s game in that department.

Billie Eilish steals the show in “Guess,” turning it into a ladies-who-lunch duet. She leers, “Charli likes boys but she knows I’d hit it/Charli call me if you’re wit it.” They commiserate about the high cost of fame, their disrespectful texts, and how Charli’s rocking the underwear Billie picked out for her in Tokyo. On one level it’s an old-school moment of celebrity schmooze, as if they’re Dean Martin and Ann-Margret. But on another, it’s Billie feeling free to get candid about her adult life, knowing she has Charli shielding her as a protective force field.

Yet the showpiece is the Lorde dialogue in “Girl, So Confusing,” going deep into body image and self-loathing and jealousy, with deeply sad candor about eating disorders. Lorde confesses, “Your life seemed so awesome/I never thought for a moment my voice was in your head.” It’s an emotionally powerful duet. But it’s also the ultimate validation of the Brat concept: we start out engaging with Charli about her problems, until we end up seeing ourselves in her mirror.