Charli xcx and BRAT
Charlotte Aitchison (better known by her stage alias Charli xcx) had a rise to fame in 2024 that propelled her from an underground pop figurehead revered by club kids and music nerds on twitter to a celebrated titan of pop culture, and she knows it, ‘I’m your favourite reference baby’ (Charli xcx, ‘360‘, 2024). It’s no secret to anyone that the reason for this was her critically acclaimed sixth studio album BRAT. However, the success of this project seems to teeter between complete luck and meticulous planning, she herself told W Magazine that ‘I wasn’t thinking that it would be very successful at all, despite believing in the music massively. I was making it for myself. To please everybody is sort of pointless.’ (Newsdesk, 1/2/2025).
The first step in the campaign was a ‘hidden’ private Instagram account created in 2023, months before the album was even announced, called 360_brat. This account would post crumbs of information like BTS footage of music videos of songs that hadn’t been released, short snippets of singles, lyrics, exclusive early listening events and producer mentions. Even the official album teaser video released on there before it eventually made its way onto other platforms like TikTok and her official instagram page.
By far the most significant feature of this account however was the fact that it would intermittently become a public account at random intervals for short periods of time, similar to fellow competitor Lana Del Rey’s instagram account ‘honeymoon’. This is use of both the social exchange marketing theory and the relationship marketing theory; hardcore fans would periodically check the account to see if it was open, relay the message on other platforms like X and other fans would rush to their phones in the hopes of being part of this exclusive club, lest they miss out on intimate content from their favourite artist that they wouldn’t see anywhere else. This achieves the same effect as items such as exclusive or signed merch. Today the account still has nowhere near the amount of followers as her official account (181k vs 8.9m)
Charli herself knew that the content she posted on there would get leaked one way or another (as she had realised from having a full LP leaked in 2017) so she made sure not to give her followers too much information which only added to the exclusivity of this account. The account still retained its value after the album released through early access to merch drops like one time vinyl releases.
BRAT’s success as a brand was also due to how polarising the whole project was through the themes, album cover and its sound. Nowadays the album cover is one of the most recognisable parts of 2024; you couldn’t go anywhere on the internet without seeing that sickly shade of green, which became synonymous with the tour visuals, merch and many, many memes. When compared to other pop artist’s covers that year, or even Charli’s own previous covers, it was clear she and her team were deliberately trying to spark discourse about the cover amongst the general public. Pop artists, especially female ones almost always have had their face and/or their body on the cover looking perfect and attractive, because pop especially as a genre has shown that sex sells, for better or for worse.
Even the standard arial font isn’t in high definition, conveying the themes of vulnerability in the album. This departure from a typical pop cover for the industry and her in general is an example of the blue ocean marketing strategy, showing that artists don’t have to market their body in the genre to achieve success, and reinforcing the ethos of this album as Charli’s independent decision separate from what has normally been expected of her.
This simple album design also made way for many people to take advantage of their own versions of the cover through a text generator with the same font and colour that Charli herself posted on her official Instagram – https://www.bratgenerator.com. This is an example of the User-Generator content theory, and arguably one of the biggest reasons why the album was as big as it was.
This simple cover design was expanded through the deluxe version and remix album, injecting humour through unnecessarily long titles when other artists tend to just add deluxe or another word.
Finally, after having one of the most successful albums in the world, and inevitably receiving hate from the general public about how long she was milking the success, she gave people exactly what they wanted, crossing out the text on the album and eventually burning a giant flag of the cover at her Glastonbury 2025 performance.
The vulnerability Charli shows through this album rollout through the cover and the social media posts of course extends to the music itself. Lyrics that convey emotions and thoughts that the large majority of the general population create hit songs, songs about sex and love have been popular since music has existed and not just in the pop genre. Yes, some of the songs on this album are about that, but many explore minimally covered themes in pop music like jealousy, not comparing to your competition, ‘Cuz I couldn’t even be if her if tried – I’m opposite I’m on the other side’ (Charli xcx, Sympathy is a knife – 2024) the mourning of a close friend, ‘Sometimes when I’m on stage I lie – say that I love singing these songs you left behind’ (Charli xcx, So i – 2024) or even wanting to experience motherhood, ‘She’s a radiant mother and he’s a beautiful father – and now they both know these things that I don’t’ (Charli xcx, I think about it all the time, 2024). Lyrics like these emphasise to the listener that at the end of the day despite being a famous artist she is still just a person with the same insecurities as us all, something a lot of pop stars before her haven’t really explored as they tend to be marketed as perfect godlike beings. Women in pop are more marketable when listeners feel like they can relate to them, this is the reason why events such as meet and greets, signings and listening events are so popular and sell out fast. This can be seen in her fellow competition with artists such as Tate McRae, who charges fans extra on top of their ticket price to see her soundcheck where she will answer questions and sing acoustic covers of other songs.
Charli organised a similar event few months before the release of BRAT where a select few fans got to hear the whole album and received exclusive ‘BRAT’ cards as a souvenir. She did the same for the remix album.
In stark contrast to the vulnerability she shows much of the album’s sound is an amalgamation of different types of dance music ranging from acid house to eurodance. A lot of the pop music coming out around that time such as ‘Espresso‘ by Sabrina Carpenter and ‘Good Luck, Babe!‘ by Chapell Roan capitalises on this false nostalgia Generation Z has for the 80s sound to a point where the scene was getting oversaturated by it. BRAT was a refresh on music meant to be played IN the club, from a team of people who know exactly what is going to sound good in that environment. In an album context BRAT is not a pure club album (the song about taking cocaine comes directly after the lo-fi lullaby about yearning for motherhood) the pumping floor-fillers don’t shy away from being bass heavy and in your face.
This heavy club sound enabled her to make most unorthodox move in an album campaign for a female popstar: A collaboration with Boiler Room. Boiler Room is an organisation that was meant to strengthen and bring up the dance music community, allocation event slots to up-and-coming DJs along with the best of the best, and rarely sees an artist like Charli taking centre stage. A risky move from her team yet worked out better than anyone anticipated. Even the fact that a popstar secured a place in Boiler Room history immediately set the tone for the aesthetic and sound of the BRAT era, with Charli DJing herself instead of being a guest appearance like many other pop artists featured in their sets. In addition, it was an extremely exclusive event that sold out instantly, and allowed Charli to tease many songs from the album and remix album to generate discourse with the safety of not being expected to play the whole song, or the song in the state that it would be released on streaming services. The event was so popular on social media that she did another set in Ibiza in the renowned club Amnesia.
Charli, as someone who was a teenager growing up with MySpace, has always been very in touch with internet culture in general ever since she started making music, has a strong presence on social media and therefore has built a fierce relationship with her fans dubbed ‘Angels’, regularly commenting and reposting content like memes, edits and mashups from fans in accordance with the brand equity marketing theory. She understands deeply the fan’s top picks and favourite projects in her discography and this is reflected in features of the campaign like the tour setlist, where songs that fail in terms of streams but are beloved by the community are either staples of the setlist or in regular rotation. On the song ‘Spring breakers‘ Charli lyrically references arguably her most iconic song amongst fans ‘Vroom Vroom’ and her biggest ‘sellout’ track from The Fault In Our Stars ‘Boom Clap’ in the same verse, all in a song about blowing up the Grammys. Her fans devotedly claim to the internet that she was underrated and the acknowledgement of this by her in ‘Spring Breakers‘ and ‘Rewind‘ (‘I used to never think about Billboard, but now I’ve started thinking again – wondering if I think I deserve commercial success’) confirms the solidarity between the fans and her and the mutual understanding between both of them. Ironically both of these songs are on her mainstream breakout album. Despite this she hasn’t alienated her fanbase with this new direction and instead has only strengthened the bond they have.
A display of Charli’s mastery over internet culture can be seen all over the music video for ‘360‘.
Instantly in the first ten seconds of the MV, there is a reference to a popular meme account on X ‘skyferrori’ who is well known amongst her fanbase. Furthermore, everyone featured and name-dropped in the music video are all fairly niche micro-celebrities that have all been dubbed as internet ‘IT girls’ much like how Charli is viewed in the pop scene. Famous, but not too famous, and much more likely to be recognised by fans of Charli and similar niche pop artists in the same vein. In the opening minute, there is a humorous meta conversation between the girls before the song about being inducted into this mini hall of fame; ‘Charli, that’s literally Julia Fox’. The self awareness and ability to laugh at the fact most people won’t know who she is yet also stating how prominent she is in Charli’s Gen Z circle of the internet is an example of the understanding between her and her fanbase through the AIDA model, and Charli’s ability to know her niche and expertly navigate the strengths of it that she can manipulate.
