Listicle – Four charli xcx songs to listen to because brat summer is over…
By Ben Copas
Few pop stars have quite as capricious a relationship with fa
me as Charli XCX. The Essex-raised musician first broke into the music industry by performing at warehouse raves at age sixteen, leading to a record deal and long-lasting career as a cult pop icon. In the following years, she would go on to be featured in hits like Icona Pop’s “I Love It”, Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”, finding individual success with “Boom Clap”, the lead single of the soundtrack to The Fault in Our Stars.
Charli was on track to become a consistent figure in commercial pop, perennially making radio hits to be playlisted at retailers and in Just Dance games. However, the release of her EP Vroom Vroom, in collaboration with the late SOPHIE, as well as several other artists affiliated with burgeoning pop collective PC Music, ushered in a new identity for Charli XCX; she was no longer a radio star, but an experimental indie darling, a cult favorite leading the way to a new era of pop music.
Brat, Charli’s most recent album, released this June to widespread critical acclaim, with an unprecedented marketing rollout, sprinkled with slogans about being a party girl, sponsored by NYC “it girls”, and laying claim to a specific electric shade of chartreuse. The “Brat Summer”, as it has been called, was culturally dominating enough to rival the “Barbie Summer” of yore, while still maintaining the image of Charli’s “angels” as a secret, invite only club— just one that had grown exponentially.
Now, as Brat Summer comes to an end, co-opted by out of touch corporations and political campaigns, newer members of her audience may feel disoriented. The once exclusive community around Charli XCX has gone mainstream, as it were, and digging into the history of all of her unreleased music, much less her existent discography, is a daunting task. As the verdant green of falling leaves begin to brown, the limey brat-green has begun to dull for many following the wave, and as such, I want to guide any stragglers through her extensive discography to help populate any autumn playlists. To help you work backwards from the ceaseless “Brat Summer” to a hopeful “True Romance Fall”, here are five essential Charli XCX songs that are far more mellow than the blasting rave pop tracks that she released this summer.
Twice | CRASH
CRASH, Charli’s final foray into full on, classic commercial pop, was intended to be her final album commissioned by Atlantic Records. Ultimately, she ended up renewing with a new deal, but the greater idea of this album was that she was selling out, which played up heavily in all of the promotions. While this era is certainly divisive amongst fans, it’s full of hidden gems where Charli hits the nail on the head with deeply reflective lyrics on the isolation of micro-stardom.
No song exemplifies this better than “Twice”, where each chorus brings in a lamentation on the impermanence of love and friendship, the inevitability of death, and how we need to cherish the limited time we have on this planet. While it’s uncharacteristically macabre for Charli, the general themes of fearing isolation and the passage of time are throughlines of her body of work— and will be perfect to accompany any sulky autumn walk home!
party 4 u | how i’m feeling now
how i’m feeling now, prior to the release of Brat was easily Charli’s most universally appraised album, held up by fans and critics as her magnum opus. Developed over a month in 2020 during the beginning of COVID quarantine, it’s easily one of the best early-pandemic time capsules. A mix of songs developed from scrapped demos and from complete scratch, with even more abrasive production than usual, these songs perfectly toe the line between devastating and danceable.
“party 4 u” is a contender as not only her greatest masterpiece, but the best showing by her frequent collaborator and producer, A.G. Cook. It’s a deceptively simple song in its production, carried by the reverb of Charli’s autotuned vocals, which are just as much an instrument as any of the orchestral synths that slowly trance the listener. Most recently, it was featured in the much-beloved film, Bottoms, which released last year, scored by XCX. If you need a good song to cry to, whether that’s with pure ecstasy or agony, this song is a beautiful companion.
Backseat | Pop 2
“Hyperpop” is a nebulously defined term to describe a range of music that abrasively pushes the boundaries of what pop music is traditionally supposed to be limited to, almost parodying the conventions of pop. There’s three major anchors that hyperpop’s spread can really be attributed to. The first is the rise of PC Music, a British music collective headed by A.G. Cook. The most recent, I would argue, was the release of musical duo 100 gecs’ debut album 1000 gecs, which blew up shortly before the pandemic, leading to further popularization beyond its niche, and a rise in American hyperpop artists.
However, the dark horse contender for the most significant spread of hyperpop was the release of Charli’s Vroom Vroom EP, produced by frequent collaborator SOPHIE. It was, at the time, widely perceived to be an exchange of mainstream respectability for artistic freedom. The release baffled critics, who derided its lack of commercial appeal. Nearly a decade later, the release seems relatively tame, especially with the trends in pop it ushered in. It was shortly followed by Pop 2, an album that featured a series of collaborations with fellow starlet tastemakers like Caroline Polachek, Tove Lo, and cupcakKe.
There is an oddly liminal quality to the opener of the album, “Backseat”. Along with fellow cult favorite ex-one hit wonder Carly Rae Jepsen, Charli sings a slowly building hyperpop ballad that strikes, again, at some of XCX’s core themes and motifs: drowning out your sadness with parties, the fear and comfort of loneliness, and of course, the inescapable imagery of cars.
Nuclear Seasons | True Romance
I would be remiss to take a crash course through Charli’s discography without going back to the album that started it all. True Romance was her debut album, and was released to decent critical acclaim and middling commercial success. The only hit she had to her name at the time was her feature on “I Love It”, and while it would be easy to overlook this album as the artist finding her sound, it still holds up spectacularly 11 years later.
“Nuclear Seasons” is a dark synth pop opener for the album (eagle-eyed listeners may recognize it from either the original Gossip Girl series or the intro to X-Men podcast “CEREBRO”) that feels perfectly moody for a murky fall. The ethereally bleak, 80s influenced single describes a nuclear fallout, moving away from the comfortable familiarity of summer into the hazy unknown.
