Charli XCX has spoken about whether ‘Brat’ is officially over, claiming that it is “up to the world” when it ends.
The musician dominated much of the summer of 2024 with her sixth album ‘Brat’, its accompanying remix record and the runaway cultural phenomenon that came with it, with the ubiquitous lime green cover filling social media as well as major international arenas and festivals.
When she headlined the Other Stage at Glastonbury 2025, however, she burned the signature ‘Brat’ banner on the stage at the end of the show, which many interpreted as a deliberate attempt to draw a line under the era.
Now, in a new interview with Vanity Fair, she has suggested that ‘Brat’ in fact lives on, with the final decision on when it comes to a close being out of her hands.
“I don’t really get to decide when it’s over or not,” she said. “I think that’s up to the world.”
Adding that she thinks the ‘Brat’ phenomenon will live on “as a relic”, she added: “I don’t think people will forget it,”
“The end will be interesting,” she continued. “Because then I have to look at myself in a different way and be stripped of the thing that everyone identified me with.”
Speculating on what will happen next, she said: “I won’t be staring into the abyss wondering what I’m gonna do. I not only know that this won’t last forever, I’m also really interested in the fact that it doesn’t.”
Elsewhere in the same interview, Charli said that she “probably will get” a mid-facelift at some point. “I’m fucking thinking about all the shit that I could do and pull and stretch and morph on my face, all the time,” she said. “I have to just remind myself that maybe I can’t get too sucked into that.”
She also refused to be drawn on the supposed diss track aimed at her on Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’. Many believe ‘Actually Romantic’ contains a dig at her in response to ‘Sympathy Is A Knife’ from ‘Brat’, but Charli chose not to add to the speculation in the interview.
She did, however, open up about finding it difficult to know where she fitted into the music industry for a long time. “I don’t even think my driving factor has been, ‘I wanna be the biggest pop star ever in the world,’ or anything like that,” she said. “I always just wanted to make music on my own terms and have as many people listen to it as possible, which sounds really simple.”
“But I think I’ve really struggled over the years, because I’ve never felt like I fit in,” she continued. “Am I supposed to be this underground left artist, or am I supposed to try and be this commercial package? And I think before ‘Brat’, I just gave up on fighting with myself on that. I really said, ‘Okay, I am going to make this record in this specific way, and I’m actually fine with the consequences of that; if it means no one hears it, if it means I get dropped by my label.’”
In May, she hinted that she was expecting her next album to go in a completely different direction, saying: “You can never really do the same thing twice and my next record will probably be a flop which I’m down for to be honest.”
And in February, her producers A.G. Cook, Finn Keane and George Daniel – also her husband – said that the follow-up is shaping up to be “anti-Brat”, Keane saying: “Some of the conversations we’re having and music we’ve been playing around with the last couple of months have been completely the opposite.”
NME gave ‘Brat’ a four-star review at the time of its release, saying: “Driven by her desire to fully embrace club music, the British artist’s sixth record fuses well-earned confidence and vulnerability in thrilling fashion.”
