STREAMING: BRAT SUMMER

An iconic pop star and an internet sweetheart combine their powers to create the song of the summer, and we’re lucky enough to be living in the same lifetime as these women break the internet. 

Charli xcx, formerly known as Charli XCX, has a new album “BRAT” taking the world and most importantly, the internet, by storm. Although the “xcx” in her name has gotten smaller, her impact on the pop music scene and rise in stardom has done quite the opposite. Leading up to the album’s release on June 7, 2024, singles such as “360” and “Von dutch” gave the internet a much-needed shock of adrenaline, reviving the allure of the party girl, club rat culture with a hyper-pop electronic beat we haven’t seen the likes of since Y2K. The brats are awake, and they know what they want–to dance to Charli. 

In today’s blog I’ll dive into the first single we were gifted from the brat era and that’s “Von dutch.” “Von dutch” was released on February 29 of this year, acquiring 45,891,959 plays on Spotify as of today. The song is a hard-hitting, upbeat track that delivers radical confidence and exposes the competitive, exclusive culture that exists in the music industry. If that wasn’t enough to shake up her listeners, the music video features Charli running wild through an airport and going as far as to mount an airplane, showing no limits to her fierce confidence and daring artistic expression. 

Charli’s fanbase was hooked and the excitement for her next project was well underway, but how could Charli leverage the immense power of social media to carry this track from another single of hers to a viral sensation? 

She makes the genius idea to partner with the internet’s sweetheart, Addison Rae, known for her beauty, bubbly personality, and ability to achieve an unheard-of number of likes and views on her dancing videos on TikTok. I can’t say if Charli knew exactly how iconic this collaboration would be when she invited Addison to join her in the studio. 

During the recording session, Addison got behind the mic and released the scream heard around the world. It was the perfect pitch, sustained for the perfect time, quickly making her scream the highlight of the remix, the moment that makes you play the track over and over again. Addison added the missing piece the song needed to reach the next level. 

Charli has her dedicated fanbase curated over a career spanning across the last decade, and Addison has her millions of followers at her fingertips. The 

combination of their individual star power and their fingers on the pulse of social media make “Von dutch” an unskippable, unforgettable, club classic. 

In response to the insane number of streams collected between Spotify and Apple Music, on top of the thousands of videos using their sound on Tiktok, Instagram, and Twitter, during her performance in LA, Charli brought out the internet sensation herself, Ms. Addison Rae for the first-ever live performance of “Von dutch” featuring Addison Rae and AG Cook. On stage together, they delivered an electric performance that left the audience begging for more. 

The girl power surging through the record doesn’t stop there. Upon the album’s release, rumors quickly began to circulate on the internet that the girl in question in the song “Girl, so confusing” was Lorde, the popstar from New Zealand, known for her long dark curly hair and cutting-edge approach to making unique and emotional music. 

As Charli so clearly writes in her song, “People say we’re alike; they say we’ve got the same hair”, but she wonders where they stand as friends when you take away all the music and fame. Here Charli offers a vulnerable take on the confusing nature of female friendships where we’re socialized to let our issues build up under the guise of passive-aggressive dodging and gossip to avoid the true problem at hand. Instead of giving in to this regressive way of navigating friendship as a girl, she addresses her issues head-on and puts all her feelings on the table, even the ones many of us are scared to admit. 

But did she leave things there? Nope. Out comes “the girl, so confusing” version with lorde, where they “work it out on the remix”, truly. While Charli worried that Lorde was uninterested in her life or her success, Lorde admits that her own struggles have gotten in the way of her personal relationships over the last few years and would have never guessed that her absence would have affected Charli whose life seems so perfect. They put their issues to bed and reassure that they ride for each other regardless of their differences. In the original version Charli predicts that if they were to make music together the internet would go crazy, and crazy they went. 

Women all over the world have been moved by such a powerful, vulnerable track and some are even inspired to “work it out on the remix” with the female friendships they’ve lost or neglected over the years. Girlhood is a special thing because it can feel so personal and yet be so universal. 

Charli’s brilliant collaborations have not only skyrocketed her numbers on the charts but empowered the concept of women supporting women and feeling 

free to be their authentic selves and speak the truth even when it’s uncomfortable. We’re lucky to be alive at a time when girlhood is a shared experience we can all participate in online and around the world. We rally around the icons we know and love, Charli, Addison, and Lorde, and stream their music with a shared purpose, to abandon pettiness and jealousy in exchange for something real. 

The internet has spoken and declared this summer, BRAT SUMMER.