‘Imperial era’ is a term often used in modern cultural parlance as indicative of a short period in a pop star's career when they are at the height of their commercial and creative success. They are for all intents and purposes—untouchable. Everything they touch seems to turn to gold, and each remotely relevant move becomes one for the iconic trivia books. Charli XCX is currently in the throes of her imperial era.
Nearly a decade of being one of the loudest and most forward-thinking voices has brought her to the pinnacle of her critical and commercial zenith as the now ubiquitous Brat stands as the highest-rated album of the year thus far with its cultural fingerprints sure to linger for years to come.
Her self-described thesis statement for Brat was this: “This fanbase I have built is so hungry for me and my peers and our slightly-left world of pop/dance music…that doesn’t mean that we have to do any pandering to any other side of the industry. We just have to do it for them because they’ve championed us for so long.” She did exactly that, for me and all the other ‘angels’ (the XCX version of Swifties) around the world.
The record, a return to the sound that made her synonymous with her distinct brand of pop music, often called hyper pop, stood as a cultural moment that defined this summer, much in the way ‘Barbenheimer’ did last year. For Charli die-hards like myself, it was an incredible time to be chronically online. No one saw this coming, least of all myself who was excited for Brat the moment Von Dutch dropped. And neither did Charli as she put it in the Brat interview with Zane Lowe—“I really was preparing for this album to be for my fanbase only, and not really break outside the walls of that at all.”
Never one to not stand out, Charli could perhaps hold the claim to be the only artist to narrate the intimidating success of her imperial era in real time. Rarely if ever do artists of her calibre do so. Listening to Brat and It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat, the awaited remix album thus became an almost surreal experience.
On it, Charli and her peers create a new album altogether. Reimagining tracks from the ground up, the remixes add to the enduring, alluring lore of the original. In the process, they create a mirrored inversion of Brat that turns the tracks on their head, adding layers of nuance to the elusive yet vulnerable party girl persona.
Delving into uncharted territory, hearing Charli speak about the weight of her recent success, the album is a sobering meditation on success. As a fan, one is both happy for her success yet simultaneously compelled to pause and reflect on the real impact of the same. One is faced with the realisation that nothing may be the same again for the art that you love. The sudden virality of a relatively niche subculture does, personally, come with the loss of the ‘if you know, you know’ of it all.
Charli’s swirling anxieties about taking a break come forth candidly in I Think About It All The Time featuring alternative music cult classic Bon Iver. Another personal highlight sees Charli collaborate with a personal favourite, Caroline Polacheck. On Everything is Romantic, Charli asks Caroline for advice, wondering if her unique perspective has been lost with the now smothering success of Brat.
Aptly musing, it's like you are living the dream but not living the life, the song brings in the quieter more melancholy side of the album. So I, a cathartic tribute to friend, mentor and collaborator SOPHIE, expressed aching agony and guilt over her passing. The remix, Featuring A.G. Cook now sees Charli reminisce on all the ‘good times,’ letting listeners into their most cherished moments with the late SOPHIE.
Other remixes, like the one for TikTok sensation, Apple, now Apple featuring the Japanese House, an indie pop group, transform the track from something that spoke to generational traumas and disconnects to now centring around the notion of home and distancing oneself from the family that one can't be oneself around.
On Brat and It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat, Charli is both liberated and trapped by her success, heightening her fears about fading into irrelevance, taking a break or experiencing a creative burnout. She paints a picture of an artist in a world of unlimited content and infinite consumption. Personally having followed her trajectory for half a decade, the success of Brat is bittersweet for me too. Seeing an artist whose vision you passionately connect with having the success they deserve is most certainly cathartic, and not just because I can say I liked her ‘before she was cool.’ It almost feels like a sibling accomplishing their dreams.
Although the fact remains that Charli has always been the curator of ‘cool,’ a tastemaker like none other, as a fan, the inevitable worry about the dilution of her uniqueness is bound to seep in. Exasperated by the mainstream’s hypercapitalist and near-industrial appropriation of her work and aesthetic (yes Kamala, I’m looking at you) and flagrant misinterpretations of her work, digesting the success of Brat has been just as difficult if not surreal.
In a music and media landscape that catalyzed and defined my moments with a capital M and the power of virality, I want Charli to be remembered as much more than the party girl behind Brat. Yet history has taught us that rarely, if ever, are artists defined in the cultural consciousness of the mainstream beyond their imperial eras. However, I’m confident her work will continue to be a force in the industry—here’s just hoping Charli’s legacy is more than “bumpin’ that.”
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