sibrary

[sibrary]

Rave, rave against the dying of the brat

A Charli xcx concert and it’s the same but there’s creative curveballs so it’s not.

The map says Barclays Center is located at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues but last weekend it was more like bratbush and bratlantic. (Hell yeah. I regret nothing.)

Gen Z women in long leather coats, short skirts, and Y2K shades swarmed the area. Local bars hawked radioactive-green ‘brataritas.’ In the arena, corporate partner Dove doled out samples of their whole-body deodorant because an exec must have realized the #synergy between coke-fueled raves and comprehensive odor control.

For all the excitement, you could almost miss that this was a farewell party, the last of Charli xcx’s sold-out run of four Brooklyn shows and the end of the brat tour. But in keeping with the wild inventiveness of its namesake album, this concert really knew how to put the ‘fun’ in funeral.

From the moment it dropped in June 2024, brat kept boldly and admirably asking “why not?” Why couldn’t an album cover just be this annoying lime green + a font that looked straight-up bad? What if — between club bangers about looking really hot — the lyrics could dip into feeling weird about your friendship with a fellow popstar, or generational trauma (with a cute TikTok dance!), or the fear that you might miss the window on motherhood? What if the album itself wasn’t a locked-down collection of songs but a starting point, one that other artists could build on, eventually leading to a (maybe just as good) remix album?

For all the cable news chatter about what ‘brat’ meant, the best thing about it - as album and ethos - was that it was never ever boring. The concert? Same.

Exhibit A: We entered the brat-mosphere immediately

Most shows, there’s a predictable rhythm to the opening-act portion.

• Arrive to brightly lit arena. Glance around at jerseys hanging from ceiling and ads for local businessess.

• Watch an act you don’t care much about.

• Cheer when they ask if you’re excited for the headliner. Kill another 30 mins before headliner plays.

At the brat show, you entered Charli World right away. As soon as the doors opened, warmup act Finn Keane was playing a DJ set of brat remixes and Charli-adjacent dance tunes. The lights stayed down the whole time as attendees started snapping so, so many IG photos. (I feel like they must teach posing and 'knowing your angles' in pre-school now, such was the youths' proficiency.) No Charli fan had to feel even for a moment like they were trespassing in a (vomit emoji) sports facility.

Exhibit B: Artificiality was its own kind of realness

To me, a concert is just more organic, human, immediate, exciting (okay, better) with a live band. So when a performer emerges solo, singing to a backing track - as Charli did - my ‘this seems fake!’ alarm gets tripped. My little Arthur-the-Aardvark fist starts to clench and shake.

But at this show, a switch flipped. Instead of thinking about what I was losing from the solo setup, I considered what I was gaining. What was she saying with that choice? And I think the answer was something like: “Oi, bruv. Look at my complete and total confidence as I hold this arena of 19,000 people who love me in the palm of my hand with nothing more than my banging songs, relentless energy, and amazing sound system. Innit. Also, I didn’t write these chunes with live instruments, so why would I perform them that way? Bloody git. Sod off. Chimney sweeps.”

And she completely pulled off all of the above. (And made a good point in that last sentence, I thought.)

The lack of bandmates and instruments didn’t make the show any less "real." It still had the in-the-moment excitement of a more organic show — but one where all the pressure to deliver falls exclusively on one person. Eep. The fact that she could keep the energy and showmanship up the entire time? Insane. To paraphrase some of her stage banter, she really was ‘that bitch.’

Exhibit C: Is the cure for bad phone etiquette at concerts… more phones?

Like, probably not. Phones have a million percent, without a doubt, made concerts worse. AND YET: I felt less mad about phones at the Charli xcx show than I have at any other concert in recent years. It was weird! Maybe it was because everybody was shooting a video or photo on their phone - off and on - throughout the show. The phones felt so omnipresent that they almost weren’t there at all. (Is this what it feels like to be Gen Alpha?) 

What probably also helped: the fans’ affection for Charli xcx was so palpable and off the charts. Frequent phone use at a concert doesn't read as disrespectful when the offending party is clearly super-psyched to be there and singing along to every song.

Stray observations:

• Has Charli secretly been Andrew W.K. the whole time? When a massive banner with the word “PARTY!” dropped during the beat-heavy outro of “365” and remained for “party 4 u,” I realized the brat philosophy might be a generational echo of Andrew W.K.s early 2000s positive “party til u puke” mentality. Factor in the letter-heavy surnames of “W.K. and “xcx” and it gets eerie. All I’m saying is I’ve never seen them in the same place at the same time.

• If there were any sponsors of anti-trans bathroom bills at the show (unlikely), they would have had fainting spells over the number of cis women invading men’s rooms to cheat the long women’s lines. Gender anarchy fr.

• The lighting and staging were really impressive; totally of a kind with the brat album's spare design aesthetic. A few simple backdrops. Some lighting rigs that popped off at just the right moments in the songs. It felt like a strategic and badass counterpoint to the visual excess of concerts lately, or screen-centric venues like The Sphere. It wasn't quite “punk” stripped-down, but definitely lean, mean, and considered.

• Man, the absolute excitement (and scream volume) that the girls, gays, and theys can achieve when they love a popstar is just a delight. This show was the closest I think I’ll ever come to witnessing Beatlemania.

• I like to think my elder millennial ass still has some cool left in the tank but then Charli xcx sang “you’re from the ’70s / but I’m a ’90s bitch" and I realized that today the lyric would be “you’re from the ’80s / but I’m a ’00s bitch." It immediately felt like Charli was firing a hail of Luigi-esque bullets in my general direction, all inscribed with the phrase “u old.”

• As the green Brooklyn cabs lined the street after the show, you could almost hear them declare "sheeeit. We've been brat."