‘Brat’ and ‘Britpop’: The Art of the Album Rollout

This summer, Charli xcx claimed the season for herself, breaking new ground with the release of her album, BRAT. Once a hyperpop princess, she recently ascended into mega pop-stardom with a marketing strategy carefully curated to appeal to her cult following. At its core, BRAT was Charli allowing herself the freedom to feed her small, dedicated fanbase what they were so desperate for: more experimental, EDM-injected hyperpop as found in the Vroom Vroom EP, Pop 2, and how i’m feeling now.

Charli xcx on BRAT release day via Instagram.

Musically, BRAT deserves every accolade it got. Fans and critics alike appreciated her dedication to the party girl persona, innovative production, and unexpectedly vulnerable lyricism. See, for example, how “Apple” explores generational trauma and familial conflict, or how she shared her guilt-ridden confessions of regret after the passing of a loved one in “So I.” But an important takeaway from BRAT’s commercial success, as many long-time angels (Charli’s nickname for her fans) have pointed out, is that Charli’s music has always been boundary-pushing and worthy of acclaim. So, what was the catalyst that launched this particular album into the mainstream? Notably, it was how she masterminded the art of the album rollout.

In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Charli expressed her fascination with the marketing side of music: “I talk about music in terms of marketing and campaigns more than I do music sometimes, but it’s the part I’ve always been really interested in, even more than the music.” She went on to explain that her 2022 album, CRASH, was her last-ditch attempt to pander to a larger audience. It also happened to be the final of ten albums that she owed her label according to a contract she entered when she was only 16 years-old. After CRASH, she explored other options but ultimately re-signed to her same label, Atlantic Records, presumably with better terms allowing her more creative leverage for the direction of future projects. When presenting the concept of BRAT to her team, she wrote a “manifesto” of sorts to go along with it. In it, she declared how important it was that this record appeal to her fanbase, and no one else. As the world was catching up to the niche artistry of her and her peers, the label actually listened. “Yeah, they got it — they got on board — and they left me alone! And that’s really all I’ve ever wanted, to be left alone. I could just do my thing, and it worked,” she said.

So, Charli did her thing. It involved an exclusive private Instagram account, long-winded teasing of the lead singles, a Boiler Room set attended by every it-girl and guy in NYC, a controversial album cover reveal, a stunning debut music video for lead single “Von Dutch,” and, famously, painting announcements on the iconic BRAT-green wall. 

Watch the music video for “Von Dutch” on YouTube.

Unsurprisingly, her ideas were often met with disapproval. Not one person on her team was in favor of a photo-less album cover for fear that it wouldn’t be received well. But Charli liked the idea of controversy; she hoped it would make a statement and generate a conversation, which is exactly what happened. Once revealed, the cover was extremely divisive. Discourse ensued, many expressing disappointment in the lack of effort they perceived of the simple design. Yet, here we are in fall and the BRAT lime green and blurred Arial font have practically been trademarked, solidifying their association with this moment in pop culture.

A pivotal landmark of the rollout was PARTYGIRL — Charli’s record breaking Boiler Room event hosted in Bushwick. It was the prime example of what BRAT was predicated on: exclusivity. Rather than just an album, BRAT was an event; better yet, one that everyone wanted to be a part of. And what feels more exclusive than not being able to get in?

About 40k people RSVPed to attend PARTYGIRL — the most in Boiler Room history, by the way — and only 400 were allowed in. I could almost hear Charli wishing “good luck!” to the hopeful fans lined up around the block. Her private Instagram account, @360_brat, operated the same. She made it public for very small windows of time and if you missed it, you didn’t get in and weren’t among the followers that got first looks at song snippets and other announcements. This was all a part of it. Charli curated a scene so hot that people were drawn in for fear of missing out. And once in, they stayed for the music.

Watch the PARTYGIRL Boiler Room set on YouTube.

PARTYGIRL was thrown to showcase the album in the context it was meant to be listened to: a rave. A real one, in a warehouse, as God intended. One may think it unwise to play songs from an unreleased project at such a watched event. Surely afterward anyone could stream bootleg versions of those songs and become uninterested by the time it came out, right? This would be the case if the songs were played as they appear on the record, but for the most part they were not. Instead, Charli and lead producers A.G. Cook, Easyfun, and George Daniel played extended club-remixes of the tracks, getting the feeling of the album across without spoiling it. Contextualizing the record as an experience, rather than focusing on its sound alone, was what made this event such a successful marketing tool.

A.G. Cook, a longtime collaborator and friend of Charli’s, had a feature set as part of this event. As one of the key producers on BRAT, it only made sense. When it was his turn on the CDJ turntables, he conjured up twinkly synth spells so beautiful that actress and model Julia Fox had to take a moment to let it all in. 

Cook has had a legendary career thus far, impacting the music landscape with innovative, genre-nonconforming sounds released over the course of a decade on his label, PC Music. The label just had its final year in 2023, as they announced that by 2024 there would be no new releases and they would instead pivot to archival projects. At the time of PARTYGIRL, Cook had an album on the way via his appropriately named new label, New Alias. This made his performance a big deal for fans keen to follow him into this new era. PARTYGIRL, in turn, was a unifying moment where two major album rollouts crossed paths, leveraging a subculture that already existed to amplify hype for both of their upcoming projects. Its tagline, afterall, was “a cultural reset,” and looking back, this event certainly laid the groundwork for the scene to explode the way it did.

Photo of A.G. Cook by @hredcliffe.

Much like Charli did for BRAT, A.G. Cook was on his own journey of crafting the perfect roadmap for the release of his album, Britpop. Before the Boiler Room event, Cook had already released the lead single from the record, “Silver-Thread Golden Needle,” in January. The song is a winding ten-minute track that ebbs and flows between punchy dance beats and heavenly vocal-sample symphonies. On the eve of PARTYGIRL, ravers in that Bushwick warehouse were the first to hear his album’s second single and title track, “Britpop,” a normal-length, bubbly electropop song featuring vocals by Charli herself. She repeats “Brit like Britpop” over an increasingly bouncy arrangement, making it the perfect song to debut to a room full of Charli’s angels.

Following PARTYGIRL, clips from the night circulated online and created what I can only assume was the planned outcome of mass jealousy. The fans that lined up around the block to no avail and those of us outside of New York that never stood a chance were united in living vicariously through the shaky videos taken by the lucky attendees. At least that was the case for about a month, because on Mar. 28, the entire thing was uploaded to Youtube by Boiler Room. Now anyone could watch the professionally filmed set and feel a little bit closer to the scene and a lot more excited for the album.

Coincidentally (or not), A.G. Cook launched the central parts of his album rollout the same day. They are, bear with me, fully functioning website-parodies of Pitchfork and Bandcamp called Witchfork and Wandcamp. 

Witchfork features articles written by real writers and covers a range of satirical and fully serious music-related content. In a few ways, it seems to poke fun at Pitchfork, satirizing its tagline to read “Least trusted voice in music” and using a similar structure for music reviews like the numbered rating system.

The review for Kacey Musgraves’ album Deeper Well, is written in flowery language that speaks almost in riddles. It veers in and out of reviewing the music, taking long detours to discuss themes of elemental magic, mythology, and medieval fantasy, until it finally arrives at a very interesting statement: “If Hell is other people, then critics are surely demons of the Highest Order? And what to call that ruby red trident if not a Witchfork? An impossible object for that impossible, magical act of objectification.” This passage strikes me as a dig at Pitchfork, and perhaps at mainstream music criticism as a whole. But, it’s hard to gauge its sincerity given the satirical nature of much of the site. For example, the review for Cocteau Twins’ album Heaven or Las Vegas is written in an almost illegible font similar to wingdings. If you squint you can make out most of the words, which end up repeatedly describing the whimsy of the album in redundant, theatrical language. 

Watch the Witchfork Music Festival on YouTube.

The site also features various other types of coverage including real Q&As with the likes of Avery Tucker, Arlo Parks, MUNA, Rostam Batmanglij, Porches, and Caroline Polachek. The artists are asked questions that often allude to dreams, magic, technology, and alternate dimensions. Sprinkled in between are classic, fun questions like “Who’s your celebrity crush?” Caroline Polachek answered, “Joan of Arc”. Cook even put together a virtual music festival with a lineup featuring himself, Babymorocco, Avery Tucker, Loraine James, Victauria, and Witch Post. The Witchfork Music Festival was streamed live on April 14, and is now archived on the site.

I would be remissed not to mention the Discord channel Cook created to go along with these sites. On the Witchfork channel, a bot was programmed to churn out Pitchfork style reviews, along with a numerical score, for what seem like randomly selected albums. The bot wrote terrible reviews of In Rainbows by Radiohead and even Britpop itself. It scored the albums a 3.27 and 2.12039, respectively, and whined about how much they missed the mark. But, it’s worth noting that albums occasionally got reviewed more than once by the bot, as is the case with In Rainbows, which was given a score of 8.72 in a separate review where it raved about its ingenuity. I think Cook was certainly hinting here and there at his own frustrations with the current state of music criticism. But Witchfork as a whole was an extremely clever and well made publication. A large team of talented journalists and artists made the site genuinely fun for fans to consume and parse through. The serious articles are interesting and beautifully written, and the ones written in ancient poetry are puzzling and just as amusing.

Witchfork was rolled out in tandem with its sister site, Wandcamp. Thematically, the two are very similar. Both offer what the site they’re mimicking does, except their content is exclusive and riddled with magic-related ramblings. Wandcamp is modeled after Bandcamp, the beloved music streaming site that centers artists by allowing fans to easily contribute directly to them. What makes Wandcamp so remarkable is that its music was contributed by artists in Cook’s circle as well as smaller artists who submitted their work to the site’s Discord channel, which encouraged anyone to submit their work for consideration to be placed on the site. Those that were selected had their music displayed next to established artists like umru, DJ_Dave, dear cupid, Mietze Conte, and A.G. Cook himself. Those that weren’t were still met with support from a lively community of fans and artists in the Discord. 

A.G. Cook and Charli xcx via Instagram.

All of the music on Wandcamp is exclusive to the site, and you can stream and download it just like you would on any other platform. But, be warned. Upon clicking download, you’re met with a lengthy and concerning set of terms and conditions. They outline how you, the Mortal, are essentially about to trade your soul — or part of it, rather — to the Otherworldly Entity in exchange for the download. The terms also outline a lot of other weird provisions like that you must gather 7 feathers from an owl and craft a divine quill of inspiration and provide a locket containing a strand of hair and the picture of a loved one. So, once you’ve downloaded and taken your obligatory moment of reflection, you are free to enjoy the music how you like. Except, of course, in ways that are nefarious (this was clearly forbidden in the contract).

By leveraging the like-minded creatives he’s surrounded by, A.G. Cook was able to create his own music industry microcosm with the rollout of Britpop. In this ecosystem, fans and artists collaborated to manifest sources of art and content that served the interests of their own community. That, I think, is the main throughline between Brat and Britpop and Charli and A.G. For an entire decade, they’ve slowly built a community of followers who share their farsighted vision of music. At the perfect time, they leaned inward and created something specifically for their community, marketed it flawlessly, and reached more people than they thought possible. Marketing music isn’t necessarily about how to adapt your work to appeal to the widest possible audience. Charli and A.G. simply centered the fans who already saw the vision, made some commotion, and everyone else wanted in once they noticed.