Brat is the sixth studio album by English singer Charli XCX, released through Atlantic Records on 7 June 2024. It features production by Charli XCX, her longtime executive producer A. G. Cook, Finn Keane, Cirkut, her partner George Daniel, and others. The album draws influence from the 2000s English rave music scene, with a more aggressive club sound than her previous album, Crash (2022).
Commercially, Brat peaked at number one in the UK, Australia, and Ireland, and reached the top ten in 12 other countries, including the United States, where it marked Charli XCX's highest debut on the Billboard 200 (number three). A deluxe edition, Brat and It's the Same but There's Three More Songs So It's Not, with three additional tracks was released on 10 June 2024. A remix album, titled Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat, featuring 20 guest artists, was released on 11 October 2024.
According to Metacritic, which compiles scores from music critics, Brat is the highest-rated album of 2024 and the 16th-highest-rated album of all time. The album was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize for 2024 Album of the Year.The cover art and aesthetic became a popular Internet trend, and was adopted by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign after Charli XCX tweeted about the candidate. Brat was nominated for seven Grammy Awards at the 67th annual ceremony, including Album of the Year.
Brat is Charli XCX's sixth studio album and first after renewing her contract with Atlantic Records in early 2023. It was announced on 28 February 2024, a day before the release of the lead single "Von Dutch".
On 22 February, during her Boiler Room warehouse set, XCX debuted snippets of tracks identified as "Spring Breakers" and "365". She was joined onstage by Addison Rae and Julia Fox; a "Von Dutch" remix with Rae and A. G. Cook was released on 22 March. On 6 March, she premiered "So I" at the Billboard Women in Music event. "Club Classics" and "B2B" were released on 3 April as a two-pack promotional single.
After teasing the song for a few days, on 29 April, Charli announced the release of the next single, "360". It was released on 10 May alongside its music video, which was teased earlier that day, and was described by her as her "best music video ever". The video features multiple "it girls", including Gabbriette, Chloë Sevigny, Julia Fox, and Rachel Sennott. A remix of "360" soon followed, featuring Swedish artists Robyn and Yung Lean, which was released on 31 May. During her 1 June headlining set at Barcelona's Primavera Sound festival, she debuted two unreleased songs live, "365" and "Everything Is Romantic".
Brat was released on 7 June 2024. A deluxe edition, titled Brat and It's the Same but There's Three More Songs So It's Not, was released on 10 June, containing three additional songs. On 21 June, a remix version of "Girl, So Confusing" featuring New Zealand singer Lorde was released. On 1 August 2024, a remix version of "Guess" from the deluxe edition was released featuring singer Billie Eilish. The following day, "Apple" was released to Italian radio as the album's third single. On 12 September, a "Talk Talk" remix featuring Troye Sivan was released along with the announcement of a remix album titled Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat which was released on 11 October 2024.
Brat's artwork and packaging was designed by New York City-based studio Special Offer, Inc. The cover is a lime green square with the title in lowercase imposed in Arial font. In a cover story interview for Vogue Singapore, Charli told Chandreyee Ray that criticism led her to question why fans feel "ownership over female artists" so much so that they demand their photograph be on all their work; she had previously called it "misogynistic and boring" on X. Of the album cover's colour—which is specifically Pantone 3507C—she said that green was heavily oversaturated in the media and fashion: "I wanted to go with an offensive, off-trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong. I'd like for us to question our expectations of pop culture—why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad? I'm interested in the narratives behind that and I want to provoke people. I'm not doing things to be nice".
Despite its simple appearance, the album cover's design underwent a five-month development process, maintaining a green square with text. Freaney selected the colour after examining around 500 shades, aiming for an off-putting, garish effect. The final shade resonated with Charli's vision of bold irreverence. The typography, based on Arial, was chosen for its non-"precious" feel. While considering various Swiss typefaces, Freaney wanted to surpass Helvetica. The text, slightly stretched to "give it a personality", is awkwardly placed to be neither small and tasteful nor large and loud, creating an opinion-less aesthetic.
In the weeks leading up to Brat's release, a wall in Greenpoint, Brooklyn—which fans called the "brat wall"—was painted and repainted with the album's signature green color and various messages. Over the summer, its messages changed frequently in line with the album's promotion cycle. The first message was "i'm your fav reference"—a lyric from the single "360"—before it was repainted to simply "brat". On June 10, when Brat's deluxe edition was released, the wall was changed to white with the message "brat and it's the same but there's three more songs so it's not". By the middle of June, the wall remained white but changed its message to "lorde", indicating Lorde's possible involvement with future releases pertaining to Brat, which soon appeared in the remix version of "Girl, So Confusing". The final message of the Brat wall—"ok bye!" in the album's signature green—was painted on July 1.
People's Sadie Bell linked the album cover with the nature of the album, which Charli XCX called "confrontational". Dubbed the "Brat summer" trend, the style of album cover and the specific shade of green became a viral sensation after a "Brat generator" tool surfaced online that allowed users to replicate the cover with their own custom text. The London Eye landmark was lit up in lime green on the day of the album's release. National Geographic acknowledged the album and the "brat girl" persona in a Brat-themed article discussing rebellious female icons throughout history, including Cleopatra, Wu Zetian, Lucrezia Borgia, Georgiana Cavendish, and Aurore Dupin (aka George Sand).
On October 31, 2024, "brat" was named the word of the year by Collins English Dictionary.
In political campaigning
As part of their 2024 United Kingdom general election campaign, the Green Party of England and Wales posted a replica of the album cover to social media that read "vote green" instead of "brat". Mayor of London Sadiq Khan received a mixed response when replicating the cover on his Instagram to promote the success of the Ultra Low Emission Zone scheme.
Banner picture of Kamala HQ
After Joe Biden decided to withdraw from the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the official Biden-Harris campaign profile renamed itself "Kamala HQ" and changed its banner picture in imitation of the album cover, replacing "brat" with "kamala hq". This occurred after Charli XCX tweeted about Harris on X (formerly Twitter), saying "kamala IS brat". Charli XCX later stated that although not meant as an explicit endorsement, she was "happy to help prevent democracy from failing forever". Multiple TikTok videos have shown edits of songs from the album with footage of Harris in the background. Some analysts suggested the connection between the campaign and album would create enthusiasm among young voters. On Real Time with Bill Maher in October, former Obama aide Van Jones made reference to the album in a negative assessment of Harris' campaign, stating it has gone from "brat to flat".
