Brat Remix Album Review

Brat summer marches on. The nearly year-long album era pushes forward, showcasing a sonic landscape perpetually unfolding and evolving, forever shaping what listeners we call ‘brat.’.

Charli XCX is not done just yet. Since February, the Essex-born musician has been serving remix after remix, snippet after snippet, each teasing her new club record.

In June, listeners were finally treated to the album “Brat,” an undeniable success of neon green and rave music, as well as a meditation on where XCX, 32, finds herself in life, as well as her career.

The album comes as the 6th album in her discography, two years after “Crash,” her self-proclaimed ‘sell-out’ record, and served as a return to form, a more personal collection of songs featuring her signature hyperpop sound.

But she wasn’t done there, as the cultural phenomenon has effectively proved she still has quite a few fascinating tricks up her sleeve.

Now, XCX has released “Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat,” a complete reinterpretation of the original album, as well as its deluxe, “Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not,” which had added three more songs to the self-dubbed ‘Bratosphere.’

The album features all-new remixes for every song, save for “Hello goodbye,” with new features to match. It’s a bolder work, a reimagining that doesn’t look for new listeners to jump onto the brat-wagon.

Instead, it rewards the intensive listeners, those who have been there for the long term. It’s brasher, louder, and high-octane throughout. The once subdued “I think about it all the time” is now propelled by a thumping house beat, as well as a Bon Iver feature, which adds an ethereal quality to the confessional track.

It’s a motif carried on throughout every track on the album, the sadder songs flipped to more uptempo, optimistic tracks, while initially happier songs feel more downtrodden. Tinashe aids “B2b featuring tinashe,” transitioning the song from initially avoiding heartbreak to a celebration of just how far the two singers have gotten in their careers.

Meanwhile, Julian Casablancas takes the party girl anthem “Mean girls” and flips it on its head, wailing about a past relationship that ended in pain. Both are sublime reinterpretations, clearly fueled by a passion present in all parties to explore “Brat” even further.

The album is host to a slew of high-profile guest stars, including chart-toppers like Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande. Both find themselves well-matched to their remixed songs, although the former’s, “Guess featuring billie eilish,” is notably without a complete reworking.

It feels a bit lackluster, given that it follows the show-stopping, “365 featuring shygirl.”

“365 featuring shygirl” is an adrenaline-pumping rave track, a peek into the greatest party you’ll ever attend. At only two minutes, it also clocks in as the shortest track on the album, but it certainly makes its presence felt. It’s loud, slamming, and intense, an absolute highlight of XCX’s career.

It’s a sprawling work, almost a reflection of life post ‘#bratsummer.’ Lines are looped across songs, re-sampled and pushed to backing vocals throughout. The stellar “Club classics featuring bbtrickz” utilizes the verses from the original “365,” while “Guess featuring billie eilish” utilizes the addictive ‘work it out’ line introduced in “Mean Girls.”

While “365 featuring shygirl” is undeniably the anthem of the album, the heart of it all lies with “Everything is romantic featuring caroline polachek,” now with the former ‘Chairlift’ member.

While the original painted a picturesque image of a vacation with friends, finding love in the mundane, the new version paints a much starker picture: “Am I in a slump? Am I playing back time? Did I lose my perspective? Everything's still romantic, right?”

It’s a riveting direction to take with an album like “Brat.” It’s certainly not all sadness, but injecting existential crises into tracks meant for club speakers just works to show how no one’s doing it like her.

Undeniably catchy and assertive, it’s a stellar example of remixing done right. Gone is the day of incoherent guest verses, now is the time for complete recontextualization, a la Beyoncé’s 2022 “Renaissance” era, which also featured reworkings of songs, often paired with A-list stars. It’s a promising direction for pop, with XCX at the helm of it all.

No one expected “Brat" to break into the mainstream, least of all XCX it seems. With these remixes, she finally reveals what it’s all for, her master plan: it was never about the instant gratification and reckless abandonment celebrated during the fleeting brat summer.

It’s much more than that, it’s the time to embrace the good, the bad and whatever it may entail. And listeners have you’ve been provided an entire brat year to do so.

9/10

Reviewer’s favorite songs: “365 featuring shygirl," “mean girls featuring julian casablancas,” “talk talk featuring troye sivan”

Reviewer’s least songs: “Guess featuring billie eilish,” “I might say something stupid featuring the 1975 & jon hopkins”

Felix Rivers is a first-year majoring in communications. To contact him, email frr5054@psu.edu.