A comprehensive breakdown of Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat

Yesterday, Charli xcx hosted a listening party for her highly – and we cannot emphasise this enough – anticipated remix album, Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. After letting us catch our breath following the relentless ubiquity of Brat summer, Charli was ready for a reload, as she dropped the 16-tracker to a rapturous crowd congregated at New York’s open air museum, the Storm King Art Center.

Taking a quick break from her Sweat tour with Troye Sivan (does this woman rest?) Charli appeared in front of a giant installation of the album’s vinyl cover, and got to explaining why this isn’t your typical remix album. Rather than adding vocalists to original productions or dropping 4x4 beats for club play, ​“one of the reasons I wanted to do this project was to show the infinite possibilities of dance music,” she told the crowd.

Most of the tracks are complete overhauls, with new genres, ideas and lyrical themes thrown into the mix. Some are partygirl bangers, others melancholy meditations – you know, a classic Charli spread, and then some. Keep scrolling for a proper run-through…

360 featuring robyn & yung lean

For the opening remix, Charli pulls in her Swedish pals. The trio call themselves ​“three child stars out here doing damage” in the lyrics – Charli was signed at 16, Robyn at 15, and Yung Lean started dropping music at 16. There’s a three-pronged, Promiscuous-style call-and-response on this tune, too, as Lean references ​“David Beckham in the noughties” and Robyn reminds us that she ​“started so young I didn’t have email”. A great tune to kick things off with.

Club classics featuring bb trickz

Some sentences are so beautiful that it doesn’t really matter whether or not you know what they mean. ​“Muevo como jelly” and ​“No estoy en el mood” are such sentences, which Spanish rapper BB Trickz brings to this George Daniel-produced track in bucketloads. The revamped version of Club classics has an addictive garage-house bounce to it, with hollow synths that recall 2010s-era Disclosure and Joy Orbison. ¡Es un clásico automático!

Sympathy is a knife featuring ariana grande

On this rework, Ariana Grande adds to Charli’s long list of things she considers to be ​“a knife” – aka grievances that might seem small on the surface but cut deep. When your old friends hate your new friends, body-shaming, when a journalist misquotes you, that kind of thing (we would never). Ari’s harmonising brings a caramel sweetness to A. G. Cook’s abrasive synths – which hits even harder given she addresses public scrutiny surrounding her appearance: ​“It’s a knife when you’re so pretty, they think you must be fake”.


I might say something stupid featuring the 1975 & jon hopkins

Anyone who assumed this one would be a rave track was dead wrong – this is Music For Psychedelic Therapy Jon Hopkins, not Open Eye Signal Jon Hopkins. For the uninitiated, this basically means beatless, transcendental music rather than a techno churner. It doesn’t really live up to its name, either, which is apt given the slew of dodgy things Matty’s been known to come out with. Low and meditative with gentle Avril 14^th-esque piano, it marks a moment of calm, quiet introspection. Matty Healy sings softly about bed-rotting, eating junk food and self-medicating – a mood. The closing line ​“I’m famous but I’m not quite” sums up an uneasy feeling about being in the limelight that Charli’s been pondering for some time.

Talk talk featuring troye sivan

A remix in the more traditional sense, Talk talk is given a breezy piano house lift as Duo Lingo Dua Lipa dials in, presumably from a holiday destination, to say some phrases in French and Spanish. Troye Sivan, meanwhile, does his thing. Anyone else get Spice Girls vibes from ​“Kay, here’s the plan”? A Euro beach bar future classic.

Von dutch a. g. cook remix featuring addison rae

Addison Rae’s rise from TikToker to supreme It Girl has been fun to watch. In typically self-aware Charli style, on this remix Addison nods to the shift in the public’s perception of her while foreshadowing her song Diet Pepsi as a cult classic. Oh, and she sure can scream.

Everything is romantic featuring caroline polachek

Goodbye Brat summer, hello Brat autumn. Or brautumn (sorry). This is a sulky, slightly moody comedown to the cinematic original, as Caroline sings about being kept awake by ​“fucking foxes” (relatable), getting rained on (relatable), and catching your tired reflection in a window (also relatable). Caroline’s operatic vocal and the sparse, Richard D. James-esque production are perfect for this flavour of dreamy anti-romanticism.

Rewind featuring bladee

This one sounds like it could be a cut from Charli’s 2017 mixtape Pop 2, as her and bladee muse about fame and the nature of celebrity – ​“LA makes me so competitive, sometimes I wanna wake up dead” Charli sings, while Bladee confesses he’s ​“under stress”. We get it. But things never get too heavy, thanks to the tune’s shuffly UKG rhythm.

So I featuring a. g. cook

So I is a touching tribute to SOPHIE. Charli traces her relationship with the late, great producer, from first meeting her on the ​“outskirts of Stockholm” to chatting together on Zoom in 2020. Rather than expressing outright sadness, though, Charli opts to reminisce about the good times instead. We’ll cheers to that. A.G’s gorgeous production Easter eggs, from party 4 u to Beautiful and Xxoplex, matched with a strobe-lit club beat, make it a fitting tribute to SOPHIE’s legacy.

Girl, so confusing featuring lorde

This one needs little to no explanation. ​“Didn’t she just eat this verse up? She ate me up,” Charli told her listening party crowd about former frenemy Lorde. Sure, the rest of the Brat remix record is a no skips affair, but this will remain the standout track until the end of time.

Apple featuring the japanese house

Where the original Apple is a fun bop with a viral dance, it also communicated complex ideas about generational trauma. This new version builds on this, tackling tricky family dynamics: ​“I’m living in another country, got another girlfriend that you’ve never met”, The Japanese House frontwoman Amber Bain sings. The closing refrain, ​“Just wanna drive” is a cute nod to Charli’s Barbie OST contribution. It’s a cry-in-the-club banger.

B2b featuring tinashe

Anyone who listened to the leaks (this journalist definitely didn’t join a Telegram channel for that purpose) might be surprised to hear a completely different version of this track. Charli’s album campaign has documented the often-gruelling process of promoting a record in real time, and here she spitballs about that: ​“I’m fucking tired but I love it and I can’t complain… Oh shit, I kinda made it”. In Lady Gaga bus-club-another-club style, b2b is about the relentlessness of it all.

Mean girls featuring julian casablancas

Charli is putting this Julian guy on the map – lucky him! While some fans were disappointed that this isn’t a clubbier version of Mean girls, it’s safe to say that Julian Casablancas helps flip this track in a great way. The Strokes’ vocalist interpolates Yes banger Owner of a Lonely Heart, with a vocoded treatment that makes sense considering his work as part of the experimental group The Voidz.

I think about it all the time featuring bon iver

Sampling Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time, this rework leans into Charli’s complex feelings about motherhood. Her stream-of-consciousness style and cadence very much references The Streets – she even tried bringing Mike Skinner on board for the remix, to no avail, sadly. The unflinching openness of Charli’s writing shines particularly bright on this one.

365 featuring shygirl

“Oh, the poppers are out at the front!” Charli laughed as she played this track to the Storm King crowd. One of the remix album’s most anticipated tracks, Shygirl’s red-hot salaciousness is an ode to sweaty club culture. Appropriately, 365 samples rave skids from Altern‑8’s Frequency. At just two minutes long, it’s a short, sharp hit of serotonin, which someone on the Charli subreddit jokingly called ​“homophobic”. Will there be an extended version on the remix remix album? We can only hope.

Guess featuring billie eilish

Another track that needs little explanation. Billie rarely does features, so this one was a bit of a coup; her thirsty, Technologic-interpolating vocal contribution has been divisive, with some feeling her laid-back style doesn’t fit the vibe of the track. But Billie’s sultry addition has proven to be a serious grower. A blockbuster moment all round.