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The “brat summer” has been consigned to the dustbin of history. What began as excitement for Charli XCX’s breakout album Brat, which came out in June, became fused with the excitement surrounding Kamala Harris’s entry into the presidential race in July. But an autumnal reckoning lay ahead. After Harris’s electoral flop, all the memes linking her to Charli’s album — “kamala IS brat,” the singer herself tweeted — now litter the internet like so much space debris.
Still they came, though, Charli’s fans, streaming through a chilly London night into the O2 Arena in their lime-green Brat T-shirts. Like Japanese soldiers refusing to believe the war was over, they were determined to fight on, or more precisely, party on. The notion behind the brat summer, to be who you are and do what you want regardless of how messy it gets, was to be preserved despite overexposure and association with failure. This, of course, was the correctly brattish thing to do — and it was rewarded with a superb show.
The staging reminded me of Rosalía’s gig at the same venue in 2022, bringing blood-and-sweat rawness to the hit-your-mark precision of arena-pop entertainment. Flamenco was the inspiration for the Spanish singer; raving was Charli’s British version. Like Rosalía, she had a cameraman on stage with her who filmed her in close-up for the backing screens as though making giant-sized TikTok videos. Other than him, and several guests — one of whom generated among the most fervent reactions I have witnessed at a show — she performed alone.
Although Charli has been recording since 2008, Brat and its companion remix album dominated the setlist. The tone was set by an instant acceleration into strobe lighting and beats for opening track “365”, a serio-comic panegyric to the nonstop party-girl lifestyle featuring the first of Charli’s guests, support act Shygirl. The sound quality was forceful and well-balanced. Charli’s live singing was electronically treated and blended with pre-recorded vocal parts. The music appeared to consist exclusively of backing tracks. Mechanistic, yes; but so are the sports cars that recur in Charli’s lyrics.
The show’s full-throttle tempo relented occasionally. “So I” was a spotlit ode to Sophie, the Charli-collaborating producer who died in 2021. “Apple” was a cute electronic pop number during which (a bit too cutesy, this) the singer’s musician fiancé, George Daniel of The 1975, was filmed in the audience awkwardly attempting the song’s TikTok dance. Meanwhile, Charli restlessly roamed her main stage, which had the word “girl” printed on it in capital letters, and a catwalk leading to a thrust stage. She was filmed offstage too, a clever use of the venue’s usually hidden innards.
Her dance moves were a mix of vogueing-style attitude (hand on hip, head toss, arch look towards audience) and wild party-animal routines (fall to knees, writhe, gyrate). A disobedient leotard threatened to result in a wardrobe malfunction, which was laughed off à la brat. During “Guess”, a lurid low-frequency banger about kinkiness, she spat on a transparent section of flooring and, to mingled ughs and cheers, was filmed from below licking it up.
The audience’s energy levels met that of the music head on, a heaving mass of people with hands and phones upraised. The atmosphere grew even more electric with the run of special guests in the encore. US singer Caroline Polachek whispered and trilled a pair of songs with Charli. Then rapper Yung Lean appeared with his fellow Swede Robyn for the remix of “360”. The elation with which Robyn was greeted was huge, but went through the roof when the singer stepped forward to perform her 2010 classic “Dancing on My Own”.
Charli followed this scene-stealing cameo from one of her inspirations by heading back to her own beginnings with a closing rendition of her first hit, 2013’s “I Love It”. She sang it on the thrust stage under a rain-like downpour of water, getting progressively more bedraggled while chanting its “I don’t care, I love it” hook. Message received, loud and clear: the brat summer might have met with a washout, but its spirit will not be quenched.
★★★★★