Charli XCX says Brat gave her a new audience who “didn’t really get” her.
The 33-year-old singer has opened up about the huge success of her 2024 album, which is her most successful to date – charting at number one in the UK, New Zealand, Ireland and Australia, and number 3 in the US – and helped spark the Brat Summer craze, while also inspiring new mockumentary The Moment in which she plays a fictionalised version of herself.
Reflecting on the rise in popularity brought on by Brat, Charli told Billboard: “I’d been this relatively niche artist, and then had suddenly been opened up to this huge new audience, some of whom really connected with me, some of whom only connected with aspects of me, some of whom liked me, but didn’t really get me.
“How much you’re under scrutiny, in the spotlight, being listened to, watched, is a really interesting thing.
“It made me so acutely aware of how hard that transition can be.”
The film was shot over 29 days and helmed by Aidan Zamiri, who helped created a “party” atmosphere.
She added: “Every single weekend, we would just go out and party. Sometimes Aidan would just blast The Prodigy whilst they were setting up a shot.”
Charli has sought to move on from the Brat era, and she’ll soon be dropping her Wuthering Heights companion album as she makes a conscious decision to shift to new projects.
She explained: “Nothing lasts forever — and no one lasts forever.
“I think I’ve always known that. It’s cooler to just leave it all behind.”
The Guess hitmaker enjoyed being on a different path creatively.
Speaking at the Sundance Film Festival premiere of the mockumentary last month, she said: “Right now, I’m like — like me in the film — I’m really wanting ‘Brat’ to stop.”
She continued: “I think for all of us as artists, it’s like, you wanna challenge yourself, and you wanna totally switch the creative soup that you’re in and go and live in a different bowl for a while or whatever, you know?
“I really just want to work with these incredible directors like Aidan [Zamiri, The Moment director], Gregg Araki, Cathy Yan, like who I feel like I can just live completely different lives with.”