Charli xcx has released her remix album, ‘Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat’, highly anticipated for the spectacular portfolio of guest artists that her renewed sequence presents, from Ariana Grande to bb trickz through Billie Eilish, Lorde, The 1975, Robyn, Caroline Polachek or even an uncredited “featuring” of Dua Lipa reciting phrases in French and Spanish.
Charli, who is more than seasoned in the club world, has not called on these artists to leave the songs as they were. On the contrary, he has updated them to the point that, in some cases, they are “completely different” compositions. But they are still “brat” because the new lyrics written for the occasion evoke those of the original recordings, responding to them or adding reflections and of course additional voices – perspectives -.
Thus, Ariana Grande appears in ‘Sympathy is a knife’ to point out the toxic fans who obsessively analyze her physique. In ‘Club classics’ with bb trickz, Charli meditates on the pressure of touring and, in ‘b2b’, she alludes to the sudden success she has achieved this year, in a remix that could only feature Tinashe in the guest role. Charli’s concern about her motherhood, in relation to the future of her career, is explored in depth in ‘I think about it all the time’, transformed by Bon Iver.
Although the remix that leaves the original track most unrecognizable may be ‘I might say something stupid’, which in the hands of Jon Hopkins becomes a neoclassical ambient ballad, while, in the vocal part, some say that the presence of Matty Healy from 1975 couldn’t be more timely, given the song’s title. Other tracks respect their original forms more, as we have already heard in the remixes of Lorde or Billie Eilish.
On the other hand, although some announce that Charli has “reinvented” the concept of remix albums with this new release, her approach to remixing is actually similar to that of Björk, another artist who will not make a remix if it is not to transform the original recording in its entirety. ‘Telegram’ (1996) is a precedent for ‘brat and it’s completely different but also still brat’, although before, in 1994, a compilation of remixes of ‘Debut’ was released whose title, so direct and frank, apparently improvised, evokes Charli’s: ‘The Best Mixes from the Album-Debut for All the People Who Don’t Buy White-Labels’. Of course, in 2024, it’s Charli’s world.
