- Singer Charli XCX has revealed all about her album Brat in an interview with Zane Lowe
- The British singer admitted that the record is an ‘albatross’ for what is to come next in her career
- Charli also opened up about her friendship with Lorde, and how the decision behind Brat’s lime green branding
Thanks to Charli XCX, we’ve all been out here living our best Brat summers.
But while the album may have been the soundtrack to 2024’s sunnier months, the singer, 32 – real name Charlotte Emma Aitchison – is already thinking about what she will create in the future.
In an interview with Zane Lowe while promoting her new remix album, Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat, Charli revealed, “I feel so much love for this project that I don’t feel like I’m doing anything against my will.
“Everything that I’m doing, relating to the music, it’s because I want to do it because I love the music so much. And I also, I know that I won’t have this moment again in this exact same way.”
She explained further, “I think the success of Brat and the success of the marketing of Brat is also in ways a curse. I am not going to be able to market my next album in the same way.
“I’ll pivot, but whatever I do next will be compared, even if the music is completely different, the scale, the way it’s rolled out, the level of conversation. I’m aware that whatever comes next, this is kind of the albatross, so to speak.”
Despite branding her work an “albatross”, fans are already excited to hear the new remixes on the new version of the album, which hits streaming services this Friday (October 11).
Charli has collaborated with the likes of Ariana Grande, Addison Rae, Billie Eilish and Troye Sivan on the song reworkings… as well as, of course, Lorde.
How Lorde and Charli worked it out on the remix
‘Working it out on the remix’ hit the vernacular of Charli’s fanbase when they heard her track Girl, So Confusing – which she wrote about her friendship with the New Zealand singer.
In the interview with Lowe, Charli revealed of the Royals hit maker, 27, “I was ready for her to never speak to me again. That could have been an outcome.”
Brat listeners were quick to work out that Charli’s lyrics were about Lorde upon the album’s release on June 7.
‘Sometimes I think I might hate you / Maybe you just wanna be me and ‘People say we’re alike / They say we’ve got the same hair / We talk about making music / But I don’t know if it’s honest,’ the vocalist candidly admitted.
And while Charli did try to give her pal a heads-up, she was a little too late – as she’d forgotten the time difference!
“I was like, ‘I’ve got to tell you about this song.’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard it.’ I was like, ‘How have you heard it? It’s not out till tomorrow,’” cringed Charli. “She was like, ‘I can guess which one it is.’ And so I was like, ‘F*ck’. But she was so cool, and I was like … We sent these voice notes back and forth.”
The chat went so well that Lorde immediately agreed to feature on the remix record – even being the first of the pair to suggest the collaboration.
“I had always wondered whether she would possibly want to do a response on the remix,” Charli continued. “This was, as I said, I’d always wanted to do this remix album, but she actually suggested it first. She was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I did this response?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, my God. I can’t believe this is happening. Yes.’
“And it was so quick. I mean, she said that on, I think, Friday, and she sent me the verse by Monday.”
‘This album is not going to appeal to a lot of people’
For lovers of Brat, the album wouldn’t have been the same without its striking branding – with the color lime green becoming synonymous with Charli’s aesthetic.
But Charli revealed to Lowe that the creation of the album artwork happened to cut costs.
“Where the actual first idea of doing a text cover came from was to save money. I was like, ‘This album is not going to appeal to a lot of people,’” she further explained. “I was like, ‘I think I will do a press shoot and then maybe we just save on the album cover.’”
Noting that her manager, creative director and friends all thought the lower case cover text was “the stupidest idea ever” – begging her, “No! Not the text cover!” – Charli went on, “This actually is really good. It actually feels like it very much embodies the word ‘brat’ to kind of not be there because that is sort of less of the norm, I suppose, for female artists.
“That felt punchy. The pixilation makes it look like it’s kind of been done in this rush… you didn’t get the proper hi-res file… I knew it would generate this conversation.
“I knew that a lot of people would be sort of frustrated or disappointed by it. And I think for me, it’s like I would rather have those conversations – which actually, in some cases, became quite explosive – than a picture where people are like, ‘She looks good.’”
