If you are texting the culturally aware teens in your life to ask “Um, what is ‘brat?’” I’m here to tell you, in the words of Charli XCX’s fans, that brat is a state of mind.
You have almost certainly known Charli for longer than just a week. Her 2012 collaboration with Icona Pop, “I Love It”, with its irresistible crux (“you’re from the 70s, and I’m a 90s bitch!”) is a staple of wedding dance floors. And you may also have heard her 2014 hit “Boom, Clap”, a top ten single in which “the beat goes on, and on and on and on”.
This June, Charli released her sixth album, with a slime green cover that went inescapably viral, its words spelt out in lower case, low-fi, pixelated font: “brat”.