Robyn says Charli xcx “really” showed her “genius” by having the pair of them on a track together.
The pop innovators go way back, with Charli, 32, having been the opening act for Robyn, 45, at the start of her career, and last year the ‘360’ hitmaker had Robyn feature on the remix of the ‘Brat’ song with Yung Lean.
Speaking about how she came to appear on the track, Robyn told PAPER: “Well, we’ve known each other for a long time. We’ve known each other since we were on the same tour [15 years ago] doing festivals in Australia. We had this moment where we connected at an after party, hanging out. I was really young, like 30 and she was 20. Whatever little experience I’d had I was able to share with her, and she was very inspiring to me. We just stayed acquaintances. She spent a lot of time in Sweden, but we never really hung out that much. Whenever we did see each other, it was very special. I just always really loved her mind and I think it was very obvious, even when she was 20, that she was a smart girl. I was challenged by our conversations, and I always was a fan.”
‘Brat’ sparked a whole pop culture phenomenon with the ‘Brat Girl’ persona and the sickly green colour used on the album inspiring TikTok trends, fashion, and even a crossover into politics with the US presidential election when Charli branded Democrat Kamala Harris “Brat”, while the term was also crowned Collins Dictionary word of the year.
Robyn says she could sense Charli was on the brink of something massive with the “new energy” she had.
She continued: “Then she started taking on this new energy. You could see her ramp it up over a few years. I think it’s interesting, it usually takes quite some time to get to that point, and I really recognised it like, She’s gonna do something soon, I can feel it. So when she called me, she was in Sweden and she wanted me to work on something, I was like, Yes, whatever, it just feels so exciting. I didn’t know that she was making a new album, but she asked me to do this remix for the remix project with Jonatan [Yung Lean], who’s someone that I love, as well. I think it really shows her genius that she put us together on the same track. Me and Jonatan actually have a lot in common, too.”
Robyn was lucky enough to hear songs from ‘Brat’ right before it “all exploded”.
She recalled: “We were in the studio, [Charli] came to my house and we had dinner. She told me everything about Brat, it was right before it all exploded. I think it’s gonna be called Brat, and she played me a lot of songs. She’s such a cool chick, she’s always been like that.”