In the most surprising success of 2024, the queer cult star Charli xcx leapt not to the top of the charts, but to the cultural zeitgeist. The New York Times and New York Magazine documented the ‘brat’ phenomenon through its use of color and marketing (the latter also through a lengthy profile of the star), pundits on CNN were discussing it, and the Vice President of the United States adopted the sloganeering and marketability for her Gen Z outreach. The last time I wrote about Brat, on its release day, it was just a pop album — now it’s a movement.

Part of the reason why is because of Charli’s exhausting (yet brilliant) aim to extend the Brat life through remixes and posts, which fulfills the need of a new pop capital-E Era. The last major one was Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia (2019-2021) and perhaps before that, Taylor Swift’s 1989 (2014-2016). They felt ubiquitous and fun, like everyone was in on the same joke, evolving their tastes within a community. In a time when Swift would rather release a 31-track album and let fans do what they want with it rather than crafting her own narrative, Charli’s Brat Summer was inclusive, thrilling, collaborative. Fan and artist collided.

This is part of the dilemma of her new remix album, Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. After a whirlwind three months after the initial album’s release, Brat has been commodified and repackaged, rocketing Charli to new heights — good and bad. She’s always had a poor relationship with the public spotlight through her continuous tiffs with fans alike. This was given some time on Brat, but on the remix, it’s the only thing she can talk about, to mixed results. Charli et al. dissect the pull of fame, most notably on the anticipated “Sympathy is a knife” with Ariana Grande: “It’s a knife when somebody says they like the old me, and I’m like, ‘Who the fuck is she?’” It’s a simple concept, trading ‘knives’ as hurtful instances in life: journalists pulling misquotes, rude fans. Its opposite is “B2b” with Tinashe, equally rudimentary, but celebrating fame (“Oh shit, I kinda made it,” she says). On their first collaboration since the 2015 cultural relic Ty Dolla $ign’s “Drop That Kitty”, Charli and Tinashe sound at home on a bouncy reinterpretation of a Brat lull, living through each others’ success.

Others are more trite: “I think about it all the time” with Bon Iver is oddly stunning, but when Charli dives deep into the process of crafting an album, it registers like a magician revealing their trick, more fitting for a personal essay than song. “First off, you’re bound to the album / Then you’re locked into the promo,” she sings, downtrodden, and it calls to mind a prior lyric, “I’m fuckin’ tired, but I love it and I’m not complainin’.” It’s a thin line. On other places in the song, where she discusses her relationship at odds with her music, it’s more affecting, and her harmonies with Bon Iver work, surprisingly. On the other hand, Caroline Polachek’s vision is so singular, it feels stilted in conversation with anyone else. On “Everything is embarrassing”, Polachek yells, kept up by foxes fucking, but the best moments come when she drops the pretentious veneer and calls Charli from a hotel room, the women discussing a down period in the rough touring cycle: “It’s like you’re living the dream, but you’re not living the life,” she tells Charli. Despite its ambition in merging their two styles, it’s not necessarily fun to listen to.

The best guest features from Charli & Co. inject the songs with a jolt of electricity — the aforementioned Tinashe and Grande among them. Other hits come with the opener, where sweet swedes Robyn and Yung Lean trade verses over a largely unedited beat (as if “360”’s backing track needed to be changed). It’s a cocky side of Robyn we haven’t seen since her self-titled and Body Talk days — “Killing this shit since 1994, got everybody in the club dancing on their own,” she brags. “Von dutch” transforms up-and-coming pop princess Addison Rae to, well, a brat. “Got a lot to say about my debut,” she warns with anger under her breath, later letting out another scream. The bouncy electro-house rager “Talk talk” with Troye Sivan doubles down on the insinuated sex on the original, and the techno “365” with Shygirl is appropriately hyper, even if it could stand to be a little longer.

But of course, the best song on the remix album — and what really granted Brat legendary status only weeks after its release — is the collaboration with Lorde, “Girl, so confusing.” Despite definitely goading Lorde into it with the original’s cutting, often off-putting lyrics, they forgive and forget, with Lorde admitting her perspective and own faults. Her bevy of instantly iconic quotes — “Let’s work it out on the remix”, “Girl, you walk like a bitch”, “It’s just self-defense ‘till you’re building a weapon”, “Forgot that inside that icon there’s still a young girl from Essex” — elevate the track, not to mention adding a triumphalist spin to what was once a nasty cut. It’s pretty revolutionary.

A lot of the album comes and goes: “Mean girls” with Julian Casablancas, “Rewind” with Bladee, “Club classics” with BB Trickz don’t offer much, and “Guess” was already a hit without Billie Eilish’s sleepy verse. “I might say something stupid” is a total surprise, starting dreadfully slow but takes on a pulsing life. It’s a bit like “Everything is romantic” and “I think about it all the time” — prioritizing moving, chill soundscapes actually works well for an artist who prioritized being a 365 partygirl.

Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat gains major points for its ambition — it’s a fully reworked, reengineered album that can stand on its own. Usually, a “remix” from a normal artist means slapping on a verse from a guest rapper, but most of the songs here are indistinguishable from their counterparts. Fault her all you want, but Charli’s love of music, the deconstruction and proliferation of it, is obvious through the remix record. She’s working through her feelings alongside the evolution of the album, which is as good a side project as any. Brat lives on in a shapeshifting form.

Order Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat HERE