Charli XCX is marking the most iconic pop era of 2024 with ‘Brat’, an album that is already among the best of her career, if not the best. It is certainly one of the best of 2024 for strictly musical reasons, and also for other reasons that go beyond the musical.
In addition to the popularisation of the ‘brat’ cover aesthetic and the craze caused by remixes with Lorde or Billie Eilish, ‘brat’ songs are actually having commercial success. Right now, Charli has two hits in the UK top 20, ‘360’ at number 12, and ‘Apple’ at number 14, and a third, ‘365’, is up from number 65. And, this Friday, Charli will add a fourth hit to the British singles chart with the entry of the ‘Guess’ remix with Billie Eilish, which is expected to score an immediate number 1.
Among the memorable moments of the ‘brat’ era is of course the viralization of other songs from the tracklist that have spontaneously taken off in the charts. This is the case of ‘Apple’, whose TikTok dance has become a sensation. Everyone is doing the little hand dance, from Cara Delevingne to Alan Sparhawke. Yes, Low’s.
The viral ‘Apple’ song has taken the song to the 28th position on the list of most listened to songs in the world on Spotify, perhaps because, behind said viral song, there is actually a fantastic song. Charli wrote it “imitating Caroline Polachek”, in her words, and, although it is “different in sound to the rest of the album”, from the beginning it has been one of its key pieces.
In ‘Apple’ – today’s Song Of The Day – influences from electropop and synth-pop from the 80s converge with Charli XCX’s own hyperpop aesthetic (especially in the vocal production). Of course, these influences sound as simplified in ‘Apple’ as the album cover is (or seems) simple. ‘Apple’ is an example of how Charli XCX’s music also works when reduced to its maximum expression.
But the lyrics of ‘Apple’ are anything but simple, using the metaphor of the apple to meditate on generational trauma and the love/hate relationship with oneself. The line “I think the apple is rotten inside” is one of the most haunting – and enlightening – on the album, despite appearing in a song that is so light-hearted in principle.
In ‘Apple’, Charli sings that she discovers this about herself by watching her parents, it makes her scared and makes her want to ‘drive’, to escape. But, although she would like to ‘throw the apple in the air’, to get rid of the behaviours learned by mere family imitation, she can’t. Deep down, she wants to ‘grow the apple’ and keep ‘all the seeds’, but she must continue working on herself. Isn’t that what ‘brat’ is all about?
