brat - girl, so harrowing
i think the apple's rotten right to the core
brat is the album of the year and we’re only halfway through 2024.
hyperbole on hyperpop aside, brat is truly something special, somehow managing to deliver both a cunty collection of club bangers alongside deeply painful admittances of pain and guilt - sometimes within the same track! brat delves into charli’s altered perspectives on girlhood, lost connections, family (found and biological) and the industry as a whole, all under gliding synths and crushing beats. while i could write about 365, 360, von dutch and club classics easily being the definitive songs of the (brat) summer, i’ll particularly be focusing on a few of my favourite tracks that stand out for how uniquely vulnerable and human they are.
the most outwardly upbeat track in this discussion, apple, meditates on charli’s conflicted feelings towards her parents and fears of generational trauma, alongside the common worry of ending up just like them despite her best efforts. the anaphoric verses are emblematic of this, beginning with variations of the phrase ‘i guess the apple could’, highlighting her hopes that the fate of turning out like your family isn’t set in stone, and ending with an attempt to avoid thinking about it by driving her worries away — ‘i’m gonna drive, gonna drive all night’.
initially, there’s an acceptance that ‘the apple don’t fall far from the tree’ and she inevitably sees herself in her parents, lamenting that they’ll never understand her. yet the second verse takes a more balanced approach, noting that ‘the apple could turn yellow or green / i know there’s lots of different nuances to you and to me’. while her parents are still difficult to reach, there’s an acknowledgement that they are just as complex of people as she is, full of history that shaped them, and could have turned out differently themselves had that history occurred differently.
finally, the third verse concludes that ‘the apple’s rotten right to the core / from all the things passed down / from all the apples coming before’. while charli still wishes wishes she didn’t have to experience generational trauma, she appreciates the fact it’s generational for a reason — her parents likely went through the same issues with their own parents, and can’t be entirely to blame for how it shaped them and their relationship with charli.
with this realisation, the arc of the track resolves as charli opens up and asks ‘i wanna know where you go when you’re feeling alone’ — she knows driving works as therapy for her, but wants to find out what her parents do to cope with that same pain and loneliness they inevitably experience too; viewing them not just as her parents, but as people sharing her suffering.
from relationships with parents to motherhood itself comes i think about it all the time, with the titular ‘it’ referring to the ever-present, societally pressuring question for women as to having a child. these thoughts are noted to have initially come about when visiting a friend in stockholm who had recently had a child herself; looking at her, her partner and their child, thinking ‘she’s a radiant mother and he’s a beautiful father / and now they both know these things that i don’t’. there’s an evident fear that motherhood inherently changes the person you are, in both wholesome and difficult ways. she wonders ‘would it make me miss all my freedom?’ and yet, simultaneously, ‘would it give my life a new purpose?’
with every chorus opening and closing with the eponymous wondering, there’s an inescapable feeling that she’s utterly lost and drowning under the uncertainty, metaphorically staring at the box of birth control on her bedside table. yet there’s also a recurring reassurance that being a mother doesn’t change absolutely everything about your life. lines such as ‘same old clothes she wore before’ and ‘they’re exactly the same but they’re different now’ imply a blooming acknowledgement that being a mother does not make you a different person; she’d still be charli first, just also a mother second.
the existential worries of this track are quite unique on brat and in pop music in general, and it’s a deliberate choice; in an interview with rolling stone, charli mused “there’s a lot of pressure on women to not talk about that stuff super openly, especially not in pop music or in music generally; we’re supposed to be sexy and free and fun and wild.” you can’t have the neon club rat veneer of brat without the quiet worry and fear burning quietly beneath it; besides, experiencing the horrors of existentialism and our ongoing place in this world is so julia.
from motherhood to girlhood, we have a double feature of tracks — an original and a redux. the original version of girl, so confusing on brat is a a sort of anti-disstrack, an exploration of charli’s difficulty connecting with a fellow unnamed female artist, musing on her uncertainties in their relationship and wishing they could be resolved: ‘i don’t know if you like me / sometimes i think you might hate me / sometimes i think i might hate you’.
this uncertainty is solidified in the chorus’ ending line ‘man, i don’t know, i’m just a girl’, borrowing the common sarcastic response ‘i’m literally just a girl’, often used to cope with horrific and painful situations, and transforming it into a considerably more serious statement amidst the complex struggle to connect emotionally with this artist. based on lines like ‘they say we’ve got the same hair / one day we might make some music’, fans began to speculate that the subject of the track might be lorde, as the two have been compared and needlessly put into competition as female popstars by audiences and the industry before.
just two weeks post-brat, the question would be answered with the release of the girl, so confusing version with lorde. according to an interview with billboard, lorde’s verse came about quite organically as a response to hearing the original and instantly messaging charli with (paraphrased) “oh my god, i had no idea you felt this way. i’m so sorry” and suggesting a guest feature to literally ‘work things out on the remix’, which might be the most meta element of brat. lorde then took three days to write her verse, and the rest is history; to be clear, lorde’s featured verse is fucking incredible. truthfully, i could write a paragraph about every single line individually, but our time in this world is far too limited for you to read all that.
lorde’s verse responds to charli’s own uncertainty with the unfortunate reveal that she feels exactly the same way, and this shared fear and uncertainty of misunderstanding their friendship led to a self-fulfilling cycle of miscommunication. lorde admits that ‘i was so lost in my head / and scared to be in your pictures / cause for the last couple years / i’ve been at war with my body’; what charli could have perceived to be a deliberate choice to not be in pictures with her was simply a consequence of lorde’s own insecurities, with no actual ill will towards charli.
if anything, it seems to have been the opposite: lorde felt that ‘your life seemed so awesome’ and so ‘i never thought for a second / my voice was in your head’. all this time, lorde herself felt intimidated by charli’s life and fame just as charli did towards her, with both women shocked to find the feeling was always mutual.
their confident, strong outward personas are challenged by the line ‘“girl, you walk like a bitch” / when i was ten, someone said that / and it’s just self-defence until you’re building a weapon’ which highlights just how deep an insult in a girl’s formative years can cut and affect their self-perception and attitude for the rest of their life, even to the point of inadvertently weaponising it by projecting that insecurity onto others. (also, what kind of monster says that shit to a ten-year-old girl?)
the idea of being ‘just a girl’ is then reiterated by lorde in the end of her verse with the line ‘forgot that inside the icon / there’s still a young girl from essex’; beneath the fame and confidence of being women in the pop industry, there’s still a small part of them that carries with them all the fears involved in being a young girl. with it all worked out on the remix and the uncertainty put to bed, lorde’s feature ends with the endlessly powerful line ‘i’m glad i know how you feel / cause i ride for you, charli’. girls. supporting. girls.
finally, in the most explicitly painful track on brat and what i think is its standout, so i, charli explores her relationship with her late, great friend, collaborator and industry icon sophie. the title itself is a pairing with sophie’s track it’s okay to cry, with the chorus’ end encapsulating the relationship between the tracks: ‘and i know you always said “it’s okay to cry” / so i know i can cry, i can cry, so i cry’. charli is unafraid to open up about every aspect of her feelings towards sophie, detailing both the love and admiration as well as her regrets knowing that they have no more time together.
with lines like ‘your star burns so bright’ and ‘you had a power like a lightning strike’, sophie is presented almost mythically, which is deserved given sophie’s place in and effect on the industry, yet charli later clarifies ‘you’re a hero and a human’; even with all of the incredible star power, sophie was still just charli’s friend she loved dearly.
with sophie having tragically passed away in 2021, charli is left to grip onto the memories she still has, and as with anyone experiencing grief, wish she had done things differently. open regrets such as ‘wish i’d tried to pull you closer’ and ‘track was done, i’d make excuses’ paint a picture of a friendship in which both people were unsure of how close they could be to each other, but truthfully both were clamouring to be closer beneath that uncertainty.
the heartbreaking ‘you’d say, “come on, stay for dinner” / i’d say “no, i’m fine” describes an otherwise mundane experience of turning down a friend’s spontaneous invitation to stay longer which could usually be remedied by taking them up on it a week or so later, but one transformed into a harrowing regret by sophie’s passing making that an impossibility, with the gentle whisper of ‘now i really wish i’d stayed’ making charli’s desperate wishes to change the past abundantly clear.
her unknowing last chance to speak to sophie is mentioned when she ‘got a phone call after christmas / didn’t know how i should act / i watched you dance online’. after not answering a private call in late 2020 out of fear, charli’s last interactions with sophie would be playing mid-pandemic online-only virtual sets together, as well as watching sophie’s h3aven suspended stream, which would turn out to be sophie’s last performance. although it was common for friends to only interact via screens during the pandemic, charli feels a unique guilt and regret in knowing that she could have spoken personally to sophie when she got the call, but will never get the chance again.
one line that is incredibly understated and yet so powerful is ‘your sounds, your words, live on, endless / when i make songs, i remember’. it’s a wonderful celebration of the unique power of music and art as a concept; while inherently tied to its creator, it is not tied only to their life. even when an artist’s mortal life comes to an end, their existence in the world will live on forever in the art they create and in all the souls they have touched with it.
sophie may have been taken from us far too soon, but sophie is far from gone. with the line ‘when i’m on stage, sometimes i lie / say that i like singing these songs you left behind’, charli elaborates on this phenomenon: she’s proud to be ensuring sophie’s words and legacy live on, but has to smile through the bittersweet pain of knowing she can never speak to sophie again with every performance.
in a statement following sophie’s death, charli wrote:
i wish i had told her more how special she was, not just her music, but her as a person. i love you and i will never forget you, sophie.