Brat Summer, the unlikely internet phenomenon named after Charli XCX's sixth album that briefly broke pop culture — from motherhood to analog cigarettes to nose drugs — through the lens of Chartreuse, has died on Sunday, July 21, on X, formerly known as Twitter. It was just over 80 days.
Brat Summer kicked off in early May this year when Charli XCX, born Charlotte Emma Aitchison, dropped by for a surprise set at Brooklyn's Lot Radio. Her performance drew crowds of fans to a small container on Nassau Avenue, while an army of popper-carrying Brooklynites blocked the already troubled traffic pattern at the Williamsburg-Greenpoint border.
As Charli perched in front of a large wall painted in the album's now-iconic shade of messy green (Pantone 3507C), lip-syncing to “360,” BRATHer second single springs, the viral potential of her album release came through. When four words — “I'm your lover's reference” — in the album's lowercase sans-serif font appeared on a Brooklyn wall seemingly overnight a few weeks later, the online community seemed to rally in unison around its mandate: to having a Brat Summer.
Brat Summer's possibilities ranged from annoying your boyfriend on vacation to making frozen pumpkin soup to waving at the “original 365 party girl,” the Statue of Liberty. Every time Brooklyn's “Brat Wall” got a new coat of paint, legions of Brat Summer fans eagerly dissected its message like some ancient cuneiform script. It's hard to forget where you were the day the billboard suddenly read “L Orde,” a preview of his collaborative remix BRAT“Girl, so confused.” Brat Summer, it turns out, was also out to make amends.
During its short but intense existence, Brat Summer captured the hearts not only of Charli XCX's fans (known as “Angels”) but also of a broad coalition of fans old and new: Millennials clinging to false memories of dance music from dirty first-grade bags, zoomers who lost many of their precious hedonistic years due to the pandemic lockdown, even toddlers, whose adorable renditions of the album's raunchiest lyrics would become apparent after its demise. The slippery definition of—Did Tony Soprano have a Brat Summer in his green pool float? Could you still have a Brat Summer if you had a stretching routine?—it only enhanced the impact of Brat Summer. Even the G train passed Brat Summer—he worked sometimes, mostly hanging out in Brooklyn.
Social media managers noted the low-effort, counterintuitive elegance of the album art, and soon, X and Instagram were flooded with copycat performances. By late June, the month of the album's release, some began to worry about how long Brat Summer would last. Could he survive being co-opted by brand executives who will come into contact with a Rush sensation? Or would it, like so many other online phenomena released from internet monasteries, shrivel and die in the real world, like a row of flowers wilting in a heatwave?
