Charli xcx Doing A Rock Album Is Actually The Most “Brat” Thing Ever

Charli xcx has declared that the Brat era is over, but her next move might be the most “Brat” of all. In her new British Vogue cover story, the singer revealed that she secretly made a new album in late 2025 — and she’s going rock. “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music,” she announces on one new song, as previewed by the outlet.

Charli is trying to convince us that “Brat Summer” is dead, ditching the electronic soundscape of her Grammy-winning 2024 album, and in turn, rejecting the cultural phenomenon it turned into. “If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” she said. But really, making a rock album is perhaps the most “Brat” thing she could’ve done.

The Collins Dictionary defines “brat” (yes, it was their word of 2024 thanks to Charli) as someone with a “confident, independent and hedonistic attitude,” with Charli adding that being “Brat” is embracing both one’s own confidence and the insecurity behind it, as she told Gwyneth Paltrow on an episode of the goop founder’s podcast.

By that guideline, there is nothing more “Brat” than Charli asserting her independence and making music that’s the polar opposite of Brat in some ways, trading the pounding synths for guitars riffs and the “365 party girl” mindset for something more earnest, as British Vogue called it. “For me, it’s fun to flip the form,” she said. “We know there’s gonna be people who are bothered by it, but that’s fine.”

For longtime fans, Brat felt like the album Charli has been building up to for her entire career, merging her ear for hypnotic melodies with the hyper-pop sounds she helped pioneer on mixtapes like Number 1 Angel and Pop 2 to create a club-ready album that was in equal parts hedonistic and vulnerable.

But one thing about Charli, is that after every album, she swings in the total opposite direction for her next project, as seen when she ditched her experimental fare to make traditional pop bops for her 2022 album Crash, calling it her “major label sell-out record.” Therefore, doing a rock album rather than trying to replicate Brat’s success is exactly in line with Charli’s modus operandi.

However, rock music is also the perfect genre to channel her frustrations from the Brat era into, something she started doing in her mockumentary film The Moment. Plus, many songs from Brat are inherently punk thanks to their unapologetic attitude and brutally honest lyrics, so they’ll sound right at home next to Charli’s rock anthems at her upcoming festival shows, if she happens to release the new music before then. As of now, there’s no official word on the release date for the rock album.

Plus, this is Charli xcx we’re talking about. She told British Vogue that watching a band is her idea of hell (relatable), and that she was inclined to make rock music in part because “what’s interesting for me is to bend the possibilities of what my perspective on that could be.” Akin to what Beyoncé said about Cowboy Carter, this won’t be a typical rock album — this is still a Charli xcx album.