Ahead of releasing BRAT remix collection Brat and it's completely different but also still brat later this week, Charli XCX sat down with Apple Music 1's Zane Lowe to dig deep into the summer-defining album, which she apparently initially thought wouldn't hit for everyone.
Regardless of Charli's misplaced insecurities about BRAT's appeal, most would agree that its barf-green marketing campaign was unavoidable and pretty effective at stirring up fan/media discourse online, even inciting its own H&M partnership, a Kamala Harris presidential campaign theme, a Weezer rip-off, NATO memes (for some reason) and, y'know, basically everything that happened culturally in summer 2024. Megan Thee Stallion's monumental Hot Girl Summer feels cutesy by comparison.
You might not guess, then, that the artist felt she should tone the visuals down for the sake of budgetary concerns. The pop star shared that the record's now-infamous cover art's simplicity was a result of its supposed esoteric quality, "Where the actual first idea of doing a text cover came from was to save money, because I was like, 'This album is not going to appeal to a lot of people,'" she told Lowe.
She continued:
I was like, "I think I will do a press shoot and then maybe we just save on the album cover and maybe it's cool." Seriously though, I was like, "I think it's also cool because I've been on every cover of mine apart from Vroom Vroom, so actually it kind of punctuates the pattern in quite a nice way, but also handy because it's going to be a lower spend." And then everyone was like, "Well, that's the stupidest idea ever." And I was like, "No, hear me out." Everyone, Brandon, my manager, my creative director, Imogen, all my friends, everyone was like, "No, not the text cover." And I was like, "No guys, seriously." And it actually feels like it very much embodies the word 'brat' to kind of not be there because that is sort of less of the norm, I suppose, for female artists. So that sort of felt punchy and the kind of pixelation, it sort of makes it look like its kind been done in this sort of rush, we didn't get the proper high-res file, we did, but it's like that's what people think. And the shade of green, we really honed in on what that should be and wanted to go for the one that the most people in our core group had the most adverse reaction to... because I think it's like I knew that it would generate this conversation. I knew that a lot of people would be sort of frustrated or disappointed by it. And I think for me it's like I would rather have those conversations, which actually in some cases became quite explosive, than a picture where people are like, "She looks good." It's like I enjoy the conversation because that's what I enjoy about music myself. I enjoy the conversations that I have with A. G. about whatever it may be, the artwork or the font of some release that we're into. It's really fun to dissect that, and it was so cool that I saw so many think pieces written by fans, essays about the cover, and then later about the marketing.
Hear Lowe and Charli talk everything BRAT below.