Content warning: This article contains discussions of substance abuse.

As the summer of 2024 is left behind, and the world outside loses its colour, a specific shade of neon green is left behind. Brat green, or rather the ‘retina-singeing chartreuse’, no longer absentmindedly slips our mind as another colour. If you were anything like me over summer, you may have found yourself spotting Brat seemingly everywhere, on cars, the sides of buses, in the trees. These were not explicitly Brat marketing campaigns however – the colour itself carries an unconventional intention to present accidental advertisements. It begs two questions: after not even being released for six months, how has Charli XCX managed to claim a colour, and how does Brat already have such an important impact on the social and cultural powers of Western society?

How does Brat already have such an important impact on the social and cultural powers of Western society?

The answer is, perhaps more broadly, the Brat aesthetic, and the lexicon that comes with it. ‘Brat summer’ initially started in June of 2024, when singer-songwriter Charli XCX released her sixth studio album titled ‘Brat’, alongside a lime green background with some simplistic sans-serif font as the core subject of the cover. Inspired by the 2000’s English rave scene, Brat explores a gritty yet unapologetic genre of electropop, richly nuanced in production and subject matter, yet with an endearing simplism for listenability. With a high tempo and low vocal arrangement from Charli herself, it’s no wonder we have been subconsciously hearing Brat all over TikTok all summer. It is no secret that TikTok is one of the most influential sites for the contemporary music scene to flourish, and the numbers do not lie: according to Launchmetrics, since the release of Brat, it has ‘generated $22.5 million in media impact value (MIV)’.

One song that particularly represented Brat for me was ‘Guess’ featuring Billie Eilish, released in August as a remix for Charli’s original song. Billie Eilish’s contribution to ‘Guess’ introduces a ‘Sapphic pop horniness’, something which I think is such a gorgeous and subtle contribution to what Brat stands for. If you ask me what Brat represents, it is an unapologetic release of manic female energy on a sweaty club dance floor, probably at night, with an essence of intoxication thrown into the mix. Glamour similarly describes Brat as a ‘feral party girl energy […] laced with a vaguely unsettling dose of millennial anxiety’, illustrating the idea that there is something more endearing about this record. Vogue touched on something similar, expressing how ‘the English songstress has captured the zeitgeist this summer by celebrating women’s insecurities as well as their confidence’. 

An unapologetic release of manic female energy on a sweaty club dance floor

While Brat is playing in the background of all our parties, gatherings and pre-drinks we attend, the repetitive ‘bumping that’ we hear throughout the outro track ‘365’ raises the question, does Brat represent glorified substance abuse or a liberative party attitude? Part of the attractive nature of Brat is the unapologetic loudness, featured in both the music but also the irreverent language of Charli asking the burning question: ‘Should we do a little key? Should we have a little line?’

Ultimately, controversiality sells. And Charli XCX has managed to find a happy medium within unconventional pop music, conforming enough to the listening ear while offering us a concept so likeable and exciting.

Charli XCX has managed to find a happy medium within unconventional pop music

It is no wonder with the popularity of Brat over summer that the album was appearing in all sorts of political campaigns. Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, had good fun online using the style of the album cover in a pro-ULEZ Instagram post, until Tory rival Susan Hall commented how London could have enjoyed a ‘true Brat summer’ if London had a conservative leader. Whatever keeps you up at night Susan – something tells me a true Brat summer is not spent idealising the Right-Wing.

To elaborate, across the course of June and July, the United Kingdom’s general election took place, which saw the Green party achieve ‘the best result in its history, with four MPs being elected’. The forefront of the Green Party’s marketing campaign was Brat, to which the party remade the album cover to say ‘vote green’ and posted it on X, utilising the younger audience of those on TikTok to promote their left-leaning policies.

The forefront of the Green Party’s marketing campaign was Brat

Perhaps the most prolific of all the political interconnections with Brat is American democratic nominee Kamala Harris receiving validation from Charli XCX herself. Hours after Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and Kamala Harris stood to back him, Charli XCX stated on X: ‘kamala IS brat’, a post that may have altered the political discourse for the fifty-five million people who have since viewed it.

Whether the tweet was a serious political endorsement or was an innocent support of Harris’ campaign, supporters of Kamala were linking her to Brat even before her campaign page on X, @kamalahq, changed its banner to lime green. It could be genius marketing; it could be a cringe attempt at connecting with the youth. Either way, attempting to relate to a wider audience by rewriting yourself into a pop-culture moment, especially one like Brat, which truly does rewrite a unique female experience, is an example of bad publicity being good publicity. Glamour acknowledges this, and expresses how ‘these memes illustrate a sort of gentle mocking of Harris underpinned by real support’, and I get it, the colour and the idea of being bratty is so endearing to us, it crafts this unapologetic activism.

The colour and the idea of being bratty is so endearing to us, it crafts this unapologetic activism

Ultimately, following on from the Barbie summer of 2023, where everything was pink, and perpetuated a unique stance on the societal expectations of women by expressing individuality, I feel as though Brat summer is Barbie summer all grown up. The colours and outfits are still as glamorous and unapologetic as ever, and the clean, submissive conventions of femininity are resisted through a loud attitude that does not just subvert conventions but considers how even acknowledging conventionality is holding us back. Enjoying life as a woman is not always straightforward, yet Brat makes it seem easy and shameless, so why are we not all Brat, realistically?

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