Charli xcx on Her Dream Grammys Scenario, ‘Brat' Collaborators, & What's Next

Charli xcx is the biggest brat in the world—in the world—and she has made brattiness a battle cry. She’s so brat that the word has been redefined in her honor. From the Collins English Dictionary: “Bræt: adjective. Characterized by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude.” Last year, all year long, early in the morning or late at night, we met her in the bathroom, “bumpin’ that” like an after-dark ritual. Being a “365 party girl” didn’t just solidify her status as the Brat Queen, of vape and regal might—it also made her relatable. She was us. She knew us. She chain-smoked the same packs of cigs, sweated it out in the same sketchy Bushwick warehouses, and raved illegally in the same back-alley basements. And even as the world spiraled into chaos—political tides shifting, tech bros imploding—her strappy white top, sans bra, was the beacon of soft power we all needed. In our present hellscape, her French-manicured nails were there to “wipe away the residue.”

The Grammy- and Mercury Prize–nominated Brat isn’t just the highest-rated album of 2024. It’s now officially the 16th-highest-rated album of all time—of all time—according to Metacritic. Her chart-topping collection of club anthems hit No. 1 in the U.K., cracked the Top 10 in a dozen other countries, and became our shared BIC lighter in the dark. She taught us to “party through it,” and we endured. She embraced being “very honest, very blunt” and “a little bit volatile,” and we learned to do the same. She found catharsis in doing “dumb things,” and we, too, stopped caring about what anyone thought. “Who the fuck are you? I’m a brat,” she sang. It’s brat. She’s brat. That’s brat. We’re brat. “When you’re in the mirror, you’re just looking at me,” she told us, and we felt that.

Tally up her artistic collaborators, concert attendees, and famous fans, and you’ll realize that 2024 had more than a few brats. Deep breath: Jake Tapper. Addison Rae. Barack Obama. Ariana Grande. Kyle MacLachlan. Lorde. Deutsche Bank. Richie Shazam. Hans Ulrich Obrist. North West. Howard Stern. Billie Eilish. Rachel Sennott. Chloe Cherry. Gabbriette. BTS. Salem Mitchell. Julia Fox. Kaia Gerber. Chloë Sevigny. A.G. Cook. Finn Keane. Cirkut. George Daniel. Dua Lipa. Robyn. Fortnite. Daisy Edgar-Jones. Yung Lean. Another breath: Selena Gomez. Bb trickz. The 1975. Jon Hopkins. Troye Sivan. SKIMS. Emily Ratajkowski. Malia Obama. Caroline Polachek. Kamala Harris. Kim Kardashian. Emma Chamberlain. Bladee. Hari Nef. Ella Emhoff. The Japanese House. Benito Skinner. Tate McRae. Janelle Monáe. Sasha Obama. The Dare. Tinashe. Julian Casablancas. Bon Iver. Lily-Rose Depp. Shygirl. Anya Taylor-Joy. Kesha. Glen Powell.

Now we can welcome Hedi Slimane into the international brat pack. “This is my first time working with him, but I’ve wanted to for a long time,” Charli said of Slimane, who shot the pictures you see here in a Los Angeles studio in early January. “We’d been talking about it on and off for a little while, toying with how and when it would happen. It just felt like the right time. So, yeah, it was very, very cool to work with him. And honestly, it was just such a calm set inside, which was nice”—a moment of respite from a world gone “a little crazy,” she said.

Like Slimane, Charli is a polymathic creative force. For Brat, she collaborated with producers A.G. Cook and Finn Keane. Tracks like “Club Classics” and “365” echo clubland pioneers from Avenue D to Daft Punk, yet the album is as much about quiet introspection as it is about hedonism. Songs like “So I” grapple with pop artistry in the shadow of the late musician, producer, and songwriter SOPHIE, who was a mentor to Charli, while “I Think About It All the Time” explores the stakes of her relationship with her fiancé George Daniel of the 1975.

“Hedi likes what he likes, whether it’s the biggest artist in the world or a band no one’s heard of,” Charli continued, speaking to me by phone from Paris, where she was shooting The Gallerist, Cathy Yan’s art world dark comedy, costarring Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega. (Last week, news broke that Charli will also be producing and starring in The Moment, a film based on her own original idea.) “I operate in the same way: I like what I like. I’m not ever thinking about—especially recently—the success of something. And that was very true for Brat. I wasn’t thinking that it would be very successful at all, despite believing in the music massively. I was making it for myself. To please everybody is sort of pointless.”

It’s perhaps ironic, then, that everybody seemed to want to please Charli over the course of last year. The remix LP Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat was cosigned by the likes of Lorde, Robyn, Julian Casablancas, Ariana Grande, Bon Iver, and Billie Eilish. She cast style setters Chloë Sevigny, Rachel Sennott, and The Dare in her music videos. “All of those people make completely different works,” she said. Each member of this motley crew (a braternity, if you will) of actors, producers, singers, artists, and subculture powerhouses “inhabits this general atmosphere, this tone,” she said. “They have this defiance to them. The connective tissue that makes them all work together is a je ne sais quoi. It’s just this thing that they have that’s undeniably unique to them. I think most of these people probably have crossed paths at some point in life.” In a year when Charli transformed from pop underdog to critical darling, her willingness to share the spotlight felt radical.

Charlotte Emma Aitchison was born in 1992 in Cambridge, England, and grew up in Essex, the only child of a Gujarati Muslim mother and a Scottish father. The stage persona Charli xcx comes from her MSN Messenger screen name. She idolized Britney Spears and the Spice Girls (“1999,” a duet with Troye Sivan, is an ode to her ’90s upbringing) and, like so many other kids at the time, uploaded her music demos to Myspace—except that local rave promoters booked her before she could even drive. Her parents chaperoned.

In her early 20s, she cowrote Icona Pop’s “I Love It” and crafted the inescapable hook for Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy.” Though she scored her own Top 10 hit with the euphoric “Boom Clap,” her 2014 album, Sucker, didn’t catapult her into the big leagues. Undeterred, Charli leaned into experimentation, teaming up with innovators like A.G. Cook and SOPHIE while reshaping her public image. She focused on real friendships instead of chasing likes and followers. The music video for “360” features Charli and her crew unapologetically toying with their public images. “Everyone in that video is very aware of how people view us,” Charli explained. “Sometimes it’s positive, but other times it’s ‘Oh, those girls on the Internet who just vape.’ It’s about being aware of those perceptions while reflecting on relationships and how they evolve.” Her Sweat tour with Troye Sivan was an ode to both late-night antics and the bonds forged in those blurry moments. (“Truly a celebration of friendship,” she said of sharing the stage with Sivan.)

The many facets of friendship got turned into a sublime piece of pop artistry with the remix of Brat’s knotty tenth track, “Girl, so confusing,” which featured Lorde and Charli trading voice note verses about their platonic “situationship,” music industry hypocrisy surrounding young female artists, and the toxic fog of fame. The remix exploded online, marking what Charli called “a huge milestone” for the two artists’ intertwined narratives. “It brought us so much closer together,” she said. “People are people, and people are tricky sometimes, and relationships are confusing. There are so many different colors to the spectrum of friendship. To actually come out and talk about that was really powerful for both of us, especially since everything is so quick to be dramatized and twisted into something that it is not. She just wanted to go there. She had no ego.”

Nowadays, blockbuster records seem to disappear after a weekend, but Brat challenged the norm, sustaining a moment reminiscent of pre-streaming eras. Yet seeing the album dominate the Grammys, with eight nominations, was still a bit of a shock. For her part, Charli, who had been nominated only twice before (both times for “Fancy”), just wants to let loose. “My dream scenario would be getting a plus-10 so I could bring all my best friends, but, realistically, I’ll probably get a plus-one,” she joked about the ceremony. “Maybe Troye and I can share and make it a plus-two.”

Whether she’s at an awards show or an after-hours club, she keeps it “666 with a princess streak,” to quote her lyrics in “360.” “My vibe is just wanting to have a good time,” she said. “Let’s be real, I wasn’t even on the Grammys’ radar last year, so it’s not something I ever expected. The thing is, wherever I am becomes fun anyway, so I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”

How so? “Well,” she said, choosing her words carefully, with more than a tongue-in-cheek hint of bratty transgression. “I’m just a good time. Maybe one day we’ll go partying, and you’ll see exactly what I mean.”

Style Director: Allia Alliata Di Montereale; Hair by Esther Langham for Oribe at Art+Commerce; Makeup by Aaron de Mey for Chanel at Art Partner; Manicure by Stephanie Stone at Forward Artists.

Production by AP Studio, Inc. Executive Producer: Alexis Piqueras; Producer: Anneliese Kristedja; Production Coordinators: Miranda Dos Santos, Meher Jalal; Fashion assistants: Tyler VanVranken, Molly Cody, Lauren Marron, Kaley Azambuja; Production assistants: Anatalia Zavaleta, Meredith Brezovsky, Wyatt Noble; Hair assistant: Ginger Ryan; Makeup assistant: Mila Kwan; Tailor: Irina Tshartaryan at Susie’s Custom Designs, Inc.