RALLY Festival 2025 Ones to Watch
21 August 2025
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To understand the significance one has to understand the cultural phenomenon that was the original album. Charli XCX dominated this last summer with her latest album “BRAT”, an inescapable and catchy, last hoorah for the hyperpop scene realising to critical and commercial success. It was an absolute phenomenon spawning the iconic “Brat Summer” phrase and making lime green become associated as brat green. This album was Charli fully embracing her impact on pop while giving it a nostalgic hyperpop sound embracing early 2000s club and EDM scenes. I also view it as her magnum opus after More so it also created anthems for the summer with tracks such as “365”, “Von Dutch” and “Apple” all achieving worldwide popularity. Tackling the issues of her party persona, hard drugs, a desire to be a mother and the conflict it creates with her career, “BRAT” is a truly raw album lyrically. On the musical side it embraces its synth sound, hard hitting baselines and autotune. It is at times meant to be played at 4 A.M. in a grimy club while in its timid moments it is a moment to sit down and cry.
The initial album already received a bonus track version with “Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not” adding the immensely popular “Guess” amongst the tracks. Simultaneously the singles “Von Dutch” and “360” received remixes. More importantly this “deluxe” version demonstrated what was coming in the ever expanding brat world. Shortly following the album “Girl, so Confusing,” “Guess” and “Talk Talk” remixes released building anticipation for the now announced remix album. The build up was one of the most anticipated as Billboards worldwide started appearing in the iconic green with the names of the artists featuring.
This latest version “Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat” (third for those keeping track) takes a different approach almost completely reimagining the album while featuring a star studded guest list of Ariana Grande, Caroline Polachek and Tinashe to name a few. Putting it simply the rollout for the remix had almost as much, if not more, emphasis than the initial album. In many ways it was a massive event as I can’t recall the last time a remix album occurred, let alone one with this amount of marketing. The push for “BRAT” has been so massive that in the time since I started this review a second version of the remix album was announced and released featuring a Kesha led remix of “Spring Breakers” on top of the 13 new tracks. This latest update further pushing the impact the album has on pop culture.
“They all wanna sound like me, All wanna be like Lean ” commences the opening remix to Charli XCX’s “360” featuring Yung Lean and Robyn giving us a taste of what is waiting. The three artists go back and forth having fun with their lyrics with examples such as “Hey why you do it so cold? They say I’m the realest ever, yeah, Thats what I’ve been told,” involving all three in a playful manner. On the whole it is a remix in the traditional sense maintaining the original beat while adding both features and updating Charli’s own verse. It’s a fantastic introduction to a brand new version of a track many of us grew familiar with over the summer. What I couldn’t imagine was how drastic some of the tracks would be.
Overall much of the album tracks lyrically are natural thematic extensions with the artists chosen for each track serving a purpose. Lorde’s feature changes “Girl, so Confusing” from a monologue into a dialogue between both artists, while showing us who the track was originally about. Similarly, Ariana Grande on “Sympathy is a Knife” flips its meaning into a commentary on how media can easily change the perception of someone, something Ariana is familiar with. Meanwhile, The 1975 featuring on the piano tinged “I Might Say Something Stupid” serves somewhat as a cheeky nod to Matty Healy’s tendency to say sometimes stupid things that cause controversy.
Other tracks change their original meaning such as “So I”, the slow emotive track honouring the late Sophie. Initially a song expressing regret of how Charli treated Sophie, now becoming a positive reflection, reminiscing about the good times they shared. As for “I Think About It All the Time” it similarly shows us the progression of Charli’s psyche over the last few months and how this new level of fame affects her. It is a continuation of the initial fears of her career, persona, and desire to be a mother, while adding in the pressure of focussing being amplified from this new fame. Both tracks are beautiful, if not a bit of a heartbreaking change from the mostly party centric vibes of the original album.
This version of “BRAT” is still very much in early on in its life and while I do not like every remix, I appreciate the distinct changes most tracks take. Significant highlights include “Club Classics” with Bb trickz, “Von Dutch” with A.G. Cook and Addison Rae, and “Mean Girls” with Julian Casablancas. In fact I vastly prefer these to the original versions. Some of the songs are deeply removed from their original becoming works of the featured artist rather than Charli XCX’s as seen with the 1975 and Caroline Polachek. The latter in particular gives the best verse on the whole project, it is truly beautiful both lyrically and melodically. Another track being vastly different from its original counterpart is “Club Classics,” sounding more of a remix of “365” than its own track. As for the remixes that do not change significantly, they still contain a great amount of love and care. Returning to “Girl, so Confusing,” it has one of the best verses as Lorde and Charli resolve their beef, with the former stating “I’m glad I know how you feel ‘Cause I’d ride for you Charli.” Other similar tracks “360” and “Guess” feature similar guest verses, while remaining mostly unchanged maintaining the core of the tracks. After listening to how radical some of the remixes can be, I can’t help but feel a bit let down by these tame mixes despite the quality (especially on “Girl, so Confusing”). I’m not quite sure if I will find myself coming back to this or the original more but I consider it a great follow up that lives up for the most part to the original album despite a few misses.
