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Charli XCX before her powerful Brat album, from 2013 debut to pandemic music and beyond
Before ‘Brat’: Charli XCX and the rise of pop music’s Number 1 Angel
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If “Brat Summer” is indeed over, Charli XCX’s pop takeover is just beginning.
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The 32-year-old British pop singer, long branded pop music’s Next Big Thing by wishful thinkers and cultural forecasters, finally experienced her breakthrough moment with this year’s Brat, her sixth studio album, which laid her hyper-confessional lyrics about her fears, vulnerabilities and insecurities over banging, off-kilter club beats.
The noise around Brat (and its heavily meme-able fluorescent green artwork) became so loud that news broadcaster CNN was having debates over whether Democratic US presidential nominee Kamala Harris was indeed “Brat” (and whether that was a good thing, and what it even meant), Taylor Swift praised the album, and Charli’s pop peers Lorde and Billie Eilish hopped on remixes of the album’s tracks.
Former US president Barack Obama even added “365” to his summer playlist.
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But Brat did not come out of nowhere. Charli, born Charlotte Aitchison, has been scaling the pop music mountain since the release of her debut album, True Romance, in 2013.
And while she has had her share of success along the way – “Fancy”, her collaboration with rapper Iggy Azalea, hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 2014, and The Fault in Our Stars ballad “Boom Clap” reached the Top 10 that same year – Brat marked the moment where everything came together and she met the moment she had been flirting with for more than a decade.
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