Charli XCX: Brat winter has arrived – and it’s a super party

Charli XCX performing at Co-Op Live in Manchester
Charli XCX performing at Co-Op Live in Manchester - Henry Redcliffe

The monoculture – a pop event that unifies the masses – is a phenomenon rarely experienced in this fragmented century. But Charli XCX’s sixth album Brat, with its messy ethos and lurid lime-green cover, comes as close as 2024 has got to one. Its aesthetic was co-opted by brands, banks, and political parties – most famously by Kamala Harris’s team as part of her presidential campaign – and it was named Collins Dictionary’s word of the year (defined as someone “characterised by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude”). And it certainly felt like a monoculture in Manchester on Wednesday night: the trams turned into Bratmobiles, full of passengers flaunting skimpy green outfits and high spirits, on their way to witness the 32-year-old Essex artist deliver a masterclass on how to sustain a cultural moment.

It was the first of four arena dates in the UK, a run that comes hot off the heels of a joint headline tour in the US with Australian pop singer Troye Sivan: booked at a time when Charli wasn’t big enough – “famous but not quite”, as she puts it on Brat – to headline alone. After more than a decade on the fringes of stardom, Brat’s success changed that, with its enormous, club-adjacent songs and meticulous marketing rollout that stretched from online memes to Times Square raves. The album ought to have burned bright and been swiftly extinguished by its own popularity.

But this show evaded any sense of Brat fatigue. Within seconds of strutting onto the Co-op Live’s stage, Charli had all 23,500 attendees raving to the recent remix of her party girl anthem 365, making the soulless arena — one that bans cigarette lighters, a necessary Brat accessory according to her — feel as intimate as a club. The newly-built venue, with its immersive sound design, actually suited the Brat-heavy setlist: from the sparkling pop of 360 and Apple to Everything is romantic’s more underground dance music production and Guess, her track with Billie Eilish.

A rain curtain soaked her during her penultimate song, fan favourite Track 10
A rain curtain soaked her during her penultimate song, fan favourite Track 10 - Henry Redcliff

Brat’s party energy offers an antidote to the more conservative pop of the likes of Taylor Swift, which was underscored when Charli smoked a cigarette during Apple – flouting that lighter ban – and licked her own spit off of the stage floor. Alone save for a cameraman who filmed her striding about as if on a catwalk, she sported as many outfit changes as a fashion show, her energy and charisma easily filling the vast space.

The bare-bones set design – a green Brat curtain, a hovering walkway, an LED rope she seized like a bolt of lightning, and a rain curtain that soaked her during penultimate song, fan favourite Track 10 – kept the show aligned to the album’s club origins and lo-res aesthetic. That no-frills approach extended to the songs, performed at such speed that the set felt short, with just a brief final section of older hits that included 2020’s party 4 u, Vroom Vroom, and I Love It, her 2012 hit with Icona Pop.

The first time Charli played in Manchester, “10 people were there: huge crowd.” Back then she was an enterprising teen with a DIY mentality. Now she commands arenas. It was surreal and moving to see the pop star reaching the height of her powers; Brat is showing no signs of collapsing under its own hype just yet.

Touring the UK until Mon; charlixcx.com