With just one word and a shocking shade of lime green, Charli XCX created a cultural phenomenon this summer that was seen everywhere from various clubs around the world to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. Since releasing Brat in June, Charli has embarked on two tours and released a handful of remixes to select tracks from the smash album. Now, the ever-evolving artist has reinvented the album entirely with her first-ever remix album, Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat.
The remix album’s release was preceded by the buzzed-about “Girl, So Confusing” remix with Lorde and a remix of bonus track “Guess” with Billie Eilish. Here, Charli has taken on the task of creating full-blown new versions of each track from Brat, complete with new verses, in the same vein as true remixes from the ’90s or Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” remix in 2020. Along the way she’s joined by acclaimed collaborators both new and old, from Ariana Grande on “Sympathy Is a Knife” to her Sweat Tour co-headliner Troye Sivan on “Talk Talk.” Other stars like Robyn, Caroline Polachek, Tinashe, Bon Iver, and Shygirl also share the mic to create a project that, as the title suggests, is an exciting new way to experience one of the year’s biggest albums.
In a new interview with Zane Lowe, the singer opened up about wrestling with being “caught in this dichotomy of, ‘Am I a left-field, underground artist or am I supposed to be a pop star?’” Her 2022 album Crash was admittedly her attempt at adopting the traditional pop star image, albeit in her own unique way, but Brat—and especially the Brat remix album—represents Charli in her authentic, unbridled artistic form, free of industry expectations or boxes.
It’s a welcome return to the sounds of beloved (though less commercially successful) past projects like Pop 2 and Number 1 Angel. Specifically, Charli counts Brat as a sister project to the hyperpop-packed 2017 mixtape Pop 2 and her 2020 lockdown album How I’m Feeling Now. With Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat, she shows that while Brat might have seemed left-of-center for pop upon its release, she was only just getting started in showing how much she can push the limits of what she—and all the featured artists on the remix album—can do.
Charli and Sivan’s joint Sweat tour continues tonight in Denver and wraps up Oct. 23 in Seattle.
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