Brat by Charli XCX

Review written by Frilled Doll

I would like to preface this review with the following phrase: most of the critiques that I will have are not a reflection of the quality of the album in question, and more have to deal with my own personal tastes. I did genuinely like the album, and can see why others would too. That said, this isn’t the type of music that I would typically find myself listening to, much less enjoying.

With that disclaimer in place, Brat by Charlie xcx was an interesting album experience for me. While I did enjoy bits and pieces- which I will be happily highlighting later- the album as a whole fell flat for me. That said, on the whole, I can tell that Charlie xcx is a capable and skilled singer. Her british accent paired with the common use of vocal fry made the talk-singing portions of the album enjoyable, and her actual melodic singing voice was pleasant to listen to.

But it is with this voice that I come to my first personal gripe with this album: the overuse of an autotune filter. There are songs where it works, such as the verses in “Mean Girls” in which the autotune adds to the talk singing. And then there’s songs like “Girl, So Confusing”, where I found the autotune personally ruined the melody for me. I strongly believe that Charlie xcx is a good singer, and it’s frustrating to hear what I imagine are heavenly vocals drowned underneath autotune which changes the pitch and natural timbre far too much.

My second biggest gripe with the album was in the instrumentation. The majority of the songs consist of very simple synthetic instruments. This isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, however it feels as though the lyrics, melodies, and vocals from the main singer was just screaming for something more complex and deep. What this ends up doing is making an album where it sounds as though the producer was just doing what he needed to to get it out there, while Charlie was putting in a ton of effort.

It got to the point where I lost my mind when actual instruments like violin and piano were used, as even though they were also simplistic in melody, the inherent texture that comes with those instruments just scratched an itch the rest of the album hadn’t for me. It makes me wonder what an acoustic version of this album would sound like, and if I’d personally like it better. It’s a minor thing but it snowballs pretty quickly when you get to these songs that have intense lyrics and vocals, and the instrumentation just isn’t on the same level. I also really, really didn’t appreciate the anti-climax in the song “Rewind”, as that buildup to nothing was just cruel. But that is more than likely my own personal dislike of anti-climaxes, and you will probably enjoy it if you enjoy them.

That said, I’ve been negative for much too long, and would like to highlight some of my favorite parts of the album- the first thing being the lyricism. Though the autotune did make it difficult to discern certain words, I did connect to quite a few lines. Two stand outs were “Exactly the same but so different now”, from the song “I Think About it all the Time”. It was a pensive song thinking about how everything is changing around the singer – their friends and settings – and how they’re changing too, always running out of time. It was a heavy hitting line in what was a heavy hitting song for me. Another line that I enjoyed was, “Who are you I’m a brat”, from “365”. Something about that line and just embracing that part of yourself brings a joy to my heart that’s really difficult to describe.

I also really, really appreciated the variety of styles that this album played around with. “Talk Talk” reminded me heavily of a 2010’s party girl pop song, and many a song felt like they took inspiration from 90’s experimental pop. How this album was able to go from a club song to a ballad seamlessly through its instrumentation is incredibly impressive, and kept the album as a whole very cohesive. I would have to say that my personal favorites off the album were the ones which reminded me of 2010’s party girl pop, those being “Talk Talk” and “B2b”.

Overall, while Brat isn’t for me personally, I did still enjoy my listen on the whole. I can see why it got so popular this summer, and may keep up with it’s artist in the future, and check up on their past. I hope to be able to listen to Charlie xcx’s vocals without the filter sometime soon, and can’t wait to see what she’ll do next.