What makes a remix album? Is it simply heavier beats, chopped vocals, and buzzy guest features? Or can it be something more?
After releasing BRAT, the viral album that wrought 2024's "brat summer" zeitgeist, Charli XCX returned only 4 months later with a thoroughly original and inspired remix album.
Brat and it's completely different but also still brat is an extension of the volatile, yet vulnerable BRAT universe.
How do these two albums build on each other to create something new?
Through sampling and remixing, Brat and it's completely different but also still brat compounds BRAT's musical motifs into a self-referential world.
which brat is more popular?
Collaborations aside, if we pit album versus album, the winner is clear: BRAT's total album plays since release are over double that of Brat and it's completely different but also still brat, according to LastFM.
Track versus track, the remix album pulls its weight in play counts, especially on songs with featured guests that have large fandoms (Lorde, Billie Eilish, Troye Sivan, and Ariana Grande).
Guess feat Billie Eilish and Girl, so confusing feat Lorde are two songs where guest features add heightened drama to the existing narrative arc of the original tracks. The Guess remix, which has nearly six times the plays of the average track from the BRAT original album, layers an already raunchy, voyeuristic bop with Billie seducing Charli — and Charli flirting with queerness.
The Girl, so confusing feat Lorde remix builds on the original track's exploration of the isolation and anxiety of girlhood. Lorde's explosive verse (that briefly broke the internet) restores the alliance between Charli and Lorde while throwing a gauntlet against the music industry.
when is a feature more than a feature?
In Brat and it's completely different but also still brat, the lines are blurred between featured guests as musical collaborators, confidantes, nemeses, flirtationships, and friends.
Charli calls from a hotel bed
Hungover on Tokyo time
Charli: Hey, girl, what's up, how you been? I think I need your advice
(Caroline: It's crazy, I was just thinking of you, what's on your mind?)
6 tracks on the remix album reference Charli's
real-life memories with the featured guest
Now I wanna think about all the good times
Me and A.G. on Mulholland
Crazy Uber, straight from a video shoot
Got birthday cake on the way
Well, honestly, I was speechless
When I woke up to your voice note
You told me how you'd been feeling
Let's work it out on the remix
Charli's collabs open a parasocial window into her own relationships and memories. These features also create a communal, friend-group feeling (which appears, at times, more exclusionary and it-girl than welcoming):
Bb xcx es un clásico automático
'Cause I ride for you, Charli
10 tracks on the remix album give a shout out to Charli
Boy, come see me we could pop
our shit to Charli
Your favorite pop star is into me,
Yung Lean, and Charli
And of course, because the brativerse is self-referential, many features on the remix album reference other songs and lyrics from BRAT.
360, find a way to deal
Livin' that life is romantic, right?
8 tracks on the remix album reference other songs from BRAT
Think about you all the time
So you could work it out out out out
These references serve as winking in-jokes to the experienced BRAT listener, where Charli's guest features mirror BRAT's lyrical themes.
2024 has sadly come and gone, and with it, brat summer as well.
But the brat universe within Brat and it's completely different but also still brat is always there to escape to, where inside jokes, a cool-girl cast, samples within samples, and an ouroboros of BRAT await you.
