The ‘brat’ British pop star who could decide the US election
This week Barack and Michelle Obama became the latest high profile figures to officially endorse Kamala Harris’ campaign. But the endorsement Harris received from a 31-year-old pop star from Essex is the one everyone is talking about – and might actually win her the election.
When Charli XCX tweeted “Kamala IS Brat” a few hours after Harris announced she was running for President, that three-word missive instantly upped the politician’s credibility among the pop star’s fan base – notably Gen Z and the LGBTQ community. It soon became a mutual love affair when the Harris campaign’s official Twitter page changed its backdrop to the same shade of lime green that features on Charli’s album Brat. Charli’s song “365” even soundtracks one of Harris’ TikTok videos.
kamala IS brat
— Charli (@charli_xcx) July 22, 2024
Harris now has a two per cent lead over Donald Trump in the pools. Could this be down to the XCX factor? And how did this British pop star who describes herself as “famous but not quite” become such an unlikely but influential figure in the US election?
“Charli XCX is the hottest pop star in the world right now,” says Rachel Richardson, pop culture commentator and author of the newsletter Highly Flammable. “She’s been around for over a decade since her hit song “I Love It’, but her new album Brat has gone stratospheric thanks to very clever marketing. The promo for Brat featured a meme generator, there was a surprise remix, a green wall was erected in Brooklyn and The London Eye was lit up lime green on the day of the album’s release.”
This album and Charli’s lo-fi style have become so popular that they have spawned an entire cultural movement known as “Brat Summer”. The archetypical brat, Charli explained on TikTok, is “just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it”. Brat Summer essentials, according to Charli, are “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter, a strappy white top with no bra”.
It doesn’t sound like a look the 59-year-old VP might adopt any time soon, but plenty of celebrities have self-identified as Brat. The actor and model Julia Fox appeared in the music video for Charli’s song “360” alongside Chlo? Sevigny, Hari Nef and Emma Chamberlain. The singer Lorde also appears on a track on Brat, while every in-the-know A-lister seems to be doing the dance to XCX’s song “Apple” on social media. But what made Charli suddenly decide to endorse Harris for President?
“Harris and Charli XCX were actually linked earlier this month, when Ryan Long, a 22-year-old college student, created an edit of Harris clips remixed with the track ‘Von Dutch’ from the Brat album and it went viral,” explains Richardson. “My guess is that Charli XCX saw that and when Harris announced that she was running, Charli thought it would be funny to send a message of support.”
So just who is Charli XCX?
Charlotte Emma Aitchison was born in Cambridge, but raised in Essex. Her mother Shameera was a former nurse and flight attendant who came from a Gujarati family in Uganda, forced to flee Idi Amin in the 1970s. Her father is a Scottish entrepreneur and former show-booker. Charli attended Bishop’s Stortford College – an independent, co-educational day and boarding school situated on the edge of the Hertfordshire market town. The “XCX” comes from the handle Charli used on Messenger, an online chat service, when she was at school.
When she was just 14, Charli’s parents gave her a loan to record her debut album and she posted the songs on MySpace. Reviews were positive and her sound drew comparisons to Kate Nash but, in her own words, the project “sold around 12 copies”. At 15, she was playing at illegal raves in east London accompanied by her parents.
The young aritst was accepted to the prestigious Slade College of Art, where she once did a piece of performance art dressed as Britney Spears, but dropped out after a year to focus on music. She scored her first number one, “I Love It”, in 2012 when she was just 20.
Yet it wasn’t a direct ticket to superstardom. Living between London and Los Angeles, XCX then wrote hit songs for other artists, while her own albums remained fairly underground. Her fanbase call themselves “Angels” and her albums are created with interaction from them. XCX has been known to host Zoom meetings with fans, post updates from her bathroom, and focus group her songs via social media. Her strange lockdown album, How I’m Feeling Now, was nominated for a Mercury prize and she had a song on the Barbie film soundtrack, but most people over 30 hadn’t heard of her – until now.
“I’ve been told for so long that I’m an outsider and I never really felt accepted into the British music scene,” says Charli, who currently lives in the Hollywood Hills, in a house formerly owned by Scottish DJ-producer Calvin Harris. She is engaged to George Daniel, the drummer for the band 1975. “I’m this girl who straddles the underground and pop music, and that, for some reason, is really difficult for some people to wrap their heads around.”
Brat is by far her most commercially and critically successful album to date. It has been streamed more than 46.72 million times and is nominated for this year’s Mercury Prize. Many music journalists have pointed out that fellow pop artists such as Camila Cabello and Katy Perry are imitating Charli’s sound and brash style, what Vox’s Rebecca Jennings has deemed the “broader XCX-ification of culture”.
Charli may have made Kamala Harris part of the cultural zeitgeist, but Harris has arguably turbo-charged Charli’s fame, too. Last week, CNN’s Jake Tapper dedicated a roundtable to Brat Summer, concluding that he “will aspire to be brat”. Stephen Colbert took up a Brat-themed TikTok dance during The Late Show. David Hogg, the gun control activist, wrote on X that “The amount [Charli’s] single tweet may have just done for the youth vote is not insignificant.” He later confirmed that “Nancy Pelosi has been informed of the meaning of Brat”.
“Before Joe Biden stepped aside, the Democrats were really struggling with younger voters, and I think the President’s age had a lot to do with that,” says Gevin Reynolds, a former speechwriter for Harris. “I think Harris is really smart to be leaning into this social media craze because where are young people these days? They’re online, they’re on social media. They don’t get their news from the same place that older voters do.”
“Kamala and Charli is one of those perfect partnerships where everyone wins,” says Richardson. “Charli is elevated to the proper mainstream and Kamala gets to borrow her cool.”
Will Harris be able harness the power of Brat Summer for political gain? As Kelley Heyer, the TikTok creator who choreographed a dance to one of Charli’s songs, puts it: “If Kamala wants to be Brat, then she needs to promise to legalise and protect abortion at a federal level. And also wear apple green.” No doubt Team Harris are taking notes.
