Charli XCX’s Year of the ‘Brat’

While recent albums from Dua Lipa, Grande and Lorde treated self-care and introspection as a kind of therapeutic salvation, Charli shifted hard into goblin mode, unfurling a litany of barely euphemistic drug references and proudly owning her messiest contradictions. (

“You can play games with it,” she said of stardom (in another unexpected place, “The Howard Stern Show”), “and I think that’s a very interesting part of being an artist as well, when you can use that thing — fame, publicity — as a tool.”