Charli xcx, brat, and girlhood

This article was published in The Oxford Student as part of my 'Womansplaining' column on 29 Oct 2024.

Riding on her Brat Summer high, Charli xcx released the remix album Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat last week. It’s teeming with glorious remixes featuring Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Lorde, The 1975, Troye Sivan and many other artists. With some songs almost completely unrecognisable from their original versions, the album offers a thrilling, bold, and electrifying synthetic electropop experience. Most importantly, it means that we are heading into Brat Autumn. Goodbye red and brown hues, hello neon-lime-green.

But this is not (just) a soppy article gushing about Brat. Across the three versions of Brat -- BRAT, Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not, and Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat -- Charli touches on the full spectrum of girlhood and the gloriously messy and confusing whirlwind of emotions that come with it. Some of these are self-explanatory in the song names -- insecurity (I might say something stupid), nostalgia (Rewind), and over-romanticisation (Everything is romantic). Some are defiant party anthems -- 360 professes “That city sewer slut's the vibe”, “I don't fucking care what you think” and 365 asks “Should we do a little key?/ Should we have a little line?”. Others require a deeper dive into their lyrics.

Apple, which inspired the wildly viral TikTok dance, is about generational trauma, the inevitability of inheriting traits from your parents, and the fear of passing them down (“I think the apple’s rotten right to the core/From all the things passed down/From all the apples coming before”). Girl, so confusing evokes the toxic friendships that everyone who has once been an adolescent girl can relate to (“Yeah, I don’t know if you like me/Sometimes I think you might hate me/Sometimes I think I might hate you/Maybe you just wanna be me”; “Can't tell if you wanna see me/Falling over and failing”). And Sympathy is a knife is about insecurity and jealousy (“Cause I couldn't even be her if I tried/I’m opposite, I’m on the other side”).

The stand-out track for me, however, is I think about it all the time. It explores the existential tension between motherhood and career, freedom and purpose that many women face: 

I think about it all the time

That I might run out of time

But I finally met my baby

And a baby might be mine

‘Cause maybe one day I might

If I don't run out of time

Would it give my life a new purpose?

[Would it make me miss all my freedom?]

Charli visits her friends in Stockholm, who are basking in the bliss of a newborn baby:

And they’re exactly the same, but they’re different now

And I’m so scared I’m missin’ out on something

So, we had a conversation on the way home

Should I stop my birth control?

‘Cause my career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all

These honest, vulnerable lyrics explore the perennial question of motherhood. Charli, 32, repeats that she might “run out of time”, presumably because of her “biological clock” and social pressures on women to have children. She contemplates how children may also make her miss all her freedom, but could also give her life a new purpose, especially when compared to her career which pales in comparison. 

This pressure is almost unique to women -- men hardly get questioned about their ability to juggle fatherhood and careers, nor is there similar scrutiny of their biological clocks. But for women, the “mommy wars” debate that began in 1990 pits mothers who work against those who stay at home. If you stay at home with your child(ren), you are boring, unambitious, and setting the feminist movement back; if you go to work and leave your kids at home, you are an awful, heartless mother. God forbid being a woman without a child; smug male politicians like J.D. Vance will brand you a “childless cat lady”. 

Perhaps the takeaway from Brat is that there is just no winning. In the evergreen words of Charli, “it’s so confusing sometimes to be a girl”.