In 2024, the release of a deluxe album means three, maybe four new songs and the paltry modern remix: an otherwise unchanged song with eight lines from the Internet’s artist du jour. Charli xcx doesn’t do it like that.
With the summer behind her, Charli xcx is taking an autumnal victory lap with a sprawling double album. “Brat and it’s completely different but still brat” (BAICDBSB) is the British pop star’s maximalist take on the deluxe album. Arriving straight from acronym hell, the album adds new collaborators and instrumentals to each song on the album that ruled the summer.
BAICDBSB shows Charli’s ability to pause and reflect on the most explosive four months of her life while pushing her momentum even further. “Sympathy is a knife” is now a reflection on how people treat superstars. “Talk talk” has gone from a love origin story to a celebration of the honeymoon phase. “B2b” literally says this out loud: “oh shit, I kinda made it.”
Every song from the original album has returned. Except for previous releases “Girl, so confusing featuring lorde” and “Guess featuring billie eilish,” they contain a completely different structure or instrumental to what listeners heard first.
In an age where artists release deluxe albums in a forced display of fan service after all other avenues of profit have been exhausted, or immediately after the original album to boost streaming numbers, Charli refuses. There’s no speculation on whether the material here was held back from the original to stretch the original project further. She wants fans to know that she’s such an unrelenting creator that while she was blowing up from her most personal album to date, she went and finished another one just to show she could.
This was no solo undertaking. From top to bottom, Charli has filled in each track with artists not present on the original. With an assembly of features the most terminally online pop fans could not have predicted, Charli subtly reminds you that the first time she did this, she did it all by herself.
Julian Casablancas appears on “Mean girls” to complain about girls who are mean to him and throws in a mess of spiraling instrumental and vocal touches so no one forgets he does The Voidz, too. Caroline Polacheck calls in to advise Charli on a reflective rework of “Everything is romantic.” Ariana Grande can’t fight the urge to continue defending herself on “Sympathy is a knife,” a week’s worth of sustenance for Internet discourse already putting up big numbers on the streaming boards.
One collaborator appears far more than the rest. A.G. Cook, the mastermind behind the original blend of club beats and early 2000s-inspired instrumentals, appears on nearly every song. His handiwork is just as defined here, with his second take on “So I” being a career high point.
The slow moments on “Brat” represented a pause in the action, a moment for insecurities to rear their head in the downbeats of “Girl, so confusing” and “I might say something stupid.” The slow moments on its successor take you deeper into the pits of despair only hinted at by these songs’ original June releases.
Listening to the new album all the way through does not feel as complete as the perfect circle created by the original “360” and “365.” The songs on this album work better on their own, added to a playlist shuffled in with songs that convey similar emotions. Those drawn to the unity of “Brat” may be disappointed by the scattered focus of its remixes.
As its own body of work, BAICDBSB has unfocused moments and less vocal contributions from Charli herself. The Japanese House fails to raise the disengaged new “Apple” with a short but well-written verse. But as a response to the undeniable popularity of the original, it fits right into her discography next to fan-favorite albums like “how i’m feeling now” and “Pop 2.”
Charli’s unique view on the fluidity of music has produced a one-of-a-kind reimagining of a core cultural moment of the 2020s. We can only hope other artists, in pop and beyond, are taking notes.
