Charli XCX Brings ‘Brat’ Autumn to Upstate New York

“We’re fine-art bitches now,” Charli XCX told a crowd of a few hundred fans and industry insiders on October 11. The musician—whose Brat album exploded into the public consciousness back in June like a bucket of Nickelodeon slime, and led to the cultural moment known as “Brat summer”—hosted a listening party on the lush, peaceful grounds of Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, New York for her remix album, Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat. “I basically just wanted to get you in this really convenient location to play you some songs from the album,” she said, standing at the center of a massive installation meant to look like an open Brat CD case—which coordinated with the art park’s collection of larger-than-life sculptures. “Thank you for coming, I was worried that no one would.”

The British singer had little reason to doubt her fans showing up. Charli XCX has had a diehard following—her Angels, as they’re aptly called—since she began making pop music in 2012. But since the June release of her dance-heavy sixth album, the singer and her stumbling-home-from-the-club aesthetic have been everywhere. Kamala Harris’s social media team of Gen Z first responders changed their candidate’s Twitter/X banner to match the Brat font. Deutsche Bank advertised that it was looking for a ‘Brat in finance.’ On CNN, Jake Tapper mused during a segment dedicated to the trend, “What is ‘Brat?’ Is the idea that we’re all ‘Brat?’” Charli—who has always seemed to be satirizing celebrity more than reveling in it, anyway—rode the neon green wave of her sudden global fame, gamely fulfilling the role of ruffled party girl and pop star who perpetually just arrived to the VIP at 2AM, sunglasses permanently affixed her face.

But no summer can last forever, and in the middle of October, as the green leaves turned to dusty orange, Charli XCX threw a party to say goodbye to the biggest season of her career so far. The remix album, which leaked Wednesday evening but is officially out now, plays off Lorde’s headline-making “Girl, so confusing” feature by having different artists reimagine each song. Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Julian Casablancas, Bon Iver, and The Japanese House all appear on the album, reworking the tracks into markedly more somber and introspective works. (If Brat was for the pregame and the party, the remix album is for the morning after, with Charli and her collaborators guiding us gently through the comedown.)

While rumors of Billie and Ariana showing up to preview their Brat tracks circulated throughout the crowd at Storm King, in the end, it was Charli herself occupying the stage. “I know it leaked, ha ha ha,” she said with an eye roll about the Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat rollout. “But I know that no one here listened to the leaks. So if you’re fucking singing the words, I’ll know, bitch!”

In her typically droll style, she added, “But yeah, I’m just going to play you some stuff. It’s like, not that serious.”

During the roughly 45-minute set, Charli played many of the album’s songs all the way through. While there were plenty of fans who took the day off of work or school (“I had to engage in a bit of corporate deception to come here,” one 25-year-old brand consultant from Brooklyn who wished to remain anonymous told me), many of the attendees were from neighboring towns.

A 29-year-old couple from the town of Minisink, who were unable to afford tickets to Charli’s recent Madison Square Garden stop of her Sweat Tour with Troye Sivan, were thrilled at the chance to experience Brat in person. “When we saw she was at Storm King, we were like, that’s in our backyard! We have to go,” one-half of the couple, Tom, said.

Gabby, 20, who grew up in nearby Monroe, drove down from college upstate just for the afternoon, feeling the singer’s stop at Storm King was nothing short of fate. “When I heard she was playing here, I was like, that’s why I didn’t get to go to Sweat,” she laughed.

The comedian Benito Skinner (known online as Benny Drama) was in attendance, bopping along to the music at the edge of the gathered crowd. “Seeing an absolutely massive Brat vinyl in the middle of a field in upstate New York…girl, so confusing!” he told W. “I don’t think New Windsor had ever seen the likes of the Angels yesterday, but it really was so magical. And even though the scale felt so big, there was still something intimate about the whole thing, like it was Charli playing the album for her closest friends in her backyard.”

Like Megan Thee Stallion’s Hot Girl Summer and many originally subversive subcultural movements before it, Brat Summer was swiftly (and predictably) co-opted by brands and devoured by the ravenous content machine. At this point, even Charli herself seems to ready to let it all go. On the Bon Iver-assisted remix of “I think about it all the time,” which references Bonnie Raitt’s similarly themed 1989 hit “Nick of Time,” the 32-year-old singer turns her sunglass-covered gaze to the future and the callings of adulthood—or more specifically, motherhood. On the anxiety-fueled track, she does the type of mental math women do to calculate their fertility windows, rather than how long it’ll take to grab an Uber to the club before closing time. “First off, you’re bound to the album/Then you’re locked into the promo,” she sings. “Next thing, three years have gone by (Scared to run out of time).”

In a recent interview with Apple’s Zane Lowe, she said she plans to take a break from her immensely successful music career for “quite a while,” with plans to pursue acting instead. (Over the summer, she secretly filmed a movie with Jeremy O. Harris, and will make a guest appearance on Skinner’s upcoming Amazon Prime comedy series Overcompensating). Charli may be ready to wrap up this role of a lifetime, but it certainly won’t be the last performance we’ll be seeing of hers. Until then, we can always catch her on the remix.