She is not quite the enfant terrible of modern pop, although there’s no discounting the impact she has had on it. Charlotte Aitchison’s knowledge of what makes a great pop song is undeniable, given her many writing credits, but on her sixth album the 31-year-old is treading a slightly different path.
Brat was supposedly influenced by her teenage incursions into London’s illegal rave scene and, in her own words, is her “most aggressive and confrontational record” to date. That claim is borne out by the songs that bookend it. The album’s opening track, 360, sees her venomously spit: “If you love it, if you hate it / I don’t f**king care what you think.” Its closing track, 365, paints an unapologetically hedonistic portrait: “When I’m in the club, I’m that 365 party girl / Shall we do a little key? Should we have a little line?”
It wouldn’t be a Charli XCX album, however, without some banging tunes sandwiched between the snarl and snark. Her tendency to write lyrics without hiding behind subterfuge or metaphor is often fascinating, if occasionally jarring. I Might Say Something Stupid and Rewind both contemplate her standing on the pop scene, the latter reflecting on her ambition and success and looking back to a “simpler time”. Girl, So Confusing is an open letter to a fellow pop star “with the same hair” whom she is often compared to. The reflective So I is a touching tribute to the Scottish pop star Sophie, who died in 2021. I Think About It All the Time documents the conflict between her career and her desire to have children.
Stream-of-consciousness lyrics aside, this is as musically adventurous as anything Aitchison has done. The clubby rave element is front and centre on the Hudson Mohawke-produced Talk Talk and the deliciously squalid Von Dutch. Everything Is Romantic’s sweep of strings ushers in a jittery dance-hall-influenced beat, while parts of the disconcerting Club Classics sounds influenced by Aphex Twin.
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On paper it sounds chaotic and disjointed, but somehow it works; amid an arguably sanitised pop landscape, Charli XCX’s brattish innovation has never been so essential.
