It’s hard to overstate quite how massive a phenomenon Charli XCX’s Brat became this summer. People who had never listened to Charli’s music before revelled in her hedonistic attitude and clubs everywhere hosted Brat night after Brat night. Brat even infiltrated politics, with the Green Party using brat visuals to get people to “vote green” in the UK, and in the US, with Kamala HQ’s brat rebrand on social media. Last month, ‘brat’ was named the word of the year by the Collins English Dictionary and on Halloween, TikTok was filled with Charli costumes (my personal favourite was the Bratatouille costume).
I fell in love with Charli with the release of her fourth album, How I’m Feeling Now. It showed me just how inventive, reflective, sexy, and fun pop music could be; released during the pandemic, hyper-pop and dance music kept me going. So, when the marketing for Brat began, it quickly became my most eagerly anticipated album. On release day, I didn’t make it to any of the launch parties (ironically, I am not that into clubbing) but I queued up bright and early to meet Charli and get my record signed. I was ecstatic and I had no idea how huge Brat was about to become.
Even as a fan, Brat’s overwhelming success surprised me. The album’s celebration of the party-girl lifestyle doesn’t shy away from party-girl substances, and mainstream media lapped it up. Everyone and their mum was bumpin’ that. But was everybody *really* bumping that? In an article for the Guardian, Roisin Lanigan claimed that cocaine is becoming cringe, and Gen Z are often reported as more sensible than older generations when it comes to drug use. But even if Gen Z are using fewer drugs, does Brat’s cultural moment tell us anything about how normalised cocaine use is in UK culture?
Cocaine has been the second most used drug in England and Wales consistently over the past decade, and 1 in 40 British adults take cocaine. The only country consuming more coke than the UK is Australia. Unlike in previous decades when cocaine was associated with high-income brackets, the drug is now widely used regardless of class, due to its falling price and increased availability. When Dazed interviewed Professor Harry Sumnall, a professor in Substance Use at Liverpool John Moores University, he noted that cocaine use hasn’t increased but has become much more visible, saying, “there’s probably an issue about increased visibility, and then increased public discussion about the use of cocaine, which might also feed into this perception that everybody’s doing it.”
Coke permeates Brat and much of Charli’s discography. She’s a hot girl with snow up her nose, and Charli is openly very fond of cocaine. While Charli never claimed to be a role model to young people, Brat’s depictions of coke have led people to ask whether she is glamorising the drug. Telling listeners, “I look hot when I’m bumpin’ that,” she most certainly makes coke sound like a lot of fun on 365. Considering Harry Sumnall’s statement about the increased visibility of cocaine use, Brat’s mainstream success contributes to this normalisation, and with normalisation comes fewer concerns regarding risk. Drug use has always been a part of club and rave scenes, but with even presidential candidates jumping on the trend of Brat summer, Brat became more than just a celebration of club culture, Brat became a lifestyle.
However, Brat doesn’t just depict the highs of the party-girl life. With the highs come the lows, and songs like So I, I might say something stupid, and I think about it all the time show listeners Charli’s vulnerability, as she explores themes of grief, motherhood, and anxiety. Girl, so confusing became such a successful single because so many women felt understood by Charli’s depiction of complicated female friendships. People are multi-faceted, and Charli is, like everyone else, a complicated person containing multitudes; often in conversations surrounding drug use and addiction, people rely on generalisations that justify discrimination against drug users, rather than having nuanced conversations about the prevalence of drug use in our culture and how this can be managed.
There are so many cultural misconceptions when it comes to cocaine use, so increased public discussion could be a good thing; drug use will likely always remain a part of society, so discussing openly the importance of using drugs safely may help in harm reduction. Between 2022 and 2023, cocaine-related deaths in England and Wales rose by 30%, most likely due to the rise in purity and accessibility. While fear-mongering anti-drug campaigns have rarely had much impact, giving clear, data-driven education to young people on the risks of cocaine use could help in shifting this normalisation. This is not to say that I think Brat does this, but Brat does at least show us that drug use doesn’t take place in a binary world of drugs = bad, or drugs = good. Charli has fun when she’s bumpin’ that, but she also spends the album feeling anxious, jealous, and insecure.
I don’t think when Charli was creating Brat she was worrying too much about her role in normalising coke use. She, as an artist, was focusing on producing a sonically cohesive album that celebrates the club classics and embraces the complexities of being a young woman in modern Britain. Of course, she is bumpin’ that – she loves raves, and 2.7% of the British population are. As Sumnall told Dazed, “cocaine has never been more pure, affordable, or available,” and while there are serious dangers to the glamorisation of coke, Charli seems to have a relationship with her fans where her realness and vulnerability are of a higher priority than her position as a role model. You don’t need to do coke to enjoy Brat; all Charli asks of listeners is that you dance, cry, sing along, and embrace the pleasure of being a Brat and being a party girl.