The first single of Charli XCX’s sixth album exemplifies the frantic vitality of club culture.
Released on Feb. 29 after being teased for a month on social media, the British artist Charli XCX delivered the anthemic “Von Dutch” with an accompanying music video. The single is in support of her upcoming studio album brat set to release in the summer of this year.
Both the single and further information about brat have been teased through cryptic social media posts and a Boiler Room set hosted on Feb. 22 in New York City titled “Party Girl.”
From what information has been provided through the cover artwork and Charli’s social media posts brat will be the antithesis to its predecessor Crash, which adopted a less experimental approach to pop music than other releases in her catalogue.
Crash was self-aware of how adaptive it was to the pop landscape. It flaunted sticky pop hooks and in-your-face synthesizers plucked straight from the ‘80s on tracks like “Lightning” and “New Shapes”. The album managed to check every box of pop-perfection criteria while still feeling left-field and subversive to the genuine mainstream.
The grandiosity of Crash is further displayed in its cover artwork, where Charli is bloody on the hood of a speeding car, cracking the windshield while also ensuring she looks good amidst the chaos of it all. In contrast, brat‘s cover could not be more hilariously divergent.
Whereas Crash depicted an encompassing scene representative of its title, Brat’s cover displays only its name on the backdrop of a striking chartreuse, but the real icing on the cake is the comically blurry font. Its casual messiness is borderline ridiculous, but interestingly conjures an evocative image of the album’s aesthetic.
The all-lowercase title is straight to the point, representing of a true veteran party girl who knows that time spent preparing a flashy presentation could be better spent under the flashing lights of a dancefloor. Through the night she crawls from the club to a rave and back to another club, claiming to know the DJ at every spot and miraculously being let in every time.
As Charli said on X (formerly Twitter) that “[Brat] is a club record,” and “the album she has always wanted to make.”
“Von Dutch” exemplifies the addictive, throbbing rhythms of classic club tracks. Its heavy drums are simple but persistent in their ability to move listeners’ feet. They’re understated, but imperative to completing a track with only a handful of sounds.
“Von Dutch” begins with a swift kick from Charli’s distorted, abrasive vocals. Only a few seconds in, she has made it clear her musical focus has shifted from the glittery synthpop of Crash to a more dissonant, underground sound. When the disjointed sounds begin to click together, a swelling synthesizer opens the pre-chorus like a trash compactor turning on, preparing to devour its next meal.
Charli doesn’t hold back from calling out gossip in the lyrics, delighting in the thought of being the number one topic of conversation through the repetition of the phrase, “I’m your number one.”
Accompanying the driving bass and bratty lyrics into the chorus are two revving synths, repeatedly rising and falling together to create an industrial sound that can be likened to placing one hundred forks in a giant microwave.
The repeated chorus and pre-chorus make for a noticeably repetitive structure, but that’s precisely the crux of what makes the single exciting. The few industrial sounds and shameless lyrical content make “Von Dutch” feel like a powder keg waiting to explode and inaugurating the Brat era.
For such a bombastic lead single, “Von Dutch” is minimalistic in the sounds it uses. Prior to teasing a new album, Charli voiced her opinions on the direction of pop music on X (formerly Twitter), predicting that songs will begin to incorporate only “3 or 4 sounds.”
The success formula to Charli’s long-lasting ability to transform pop music lies in her ability to always keep her fans – dubbed “the Angels” – and the public guessing.
In 2014, she skyrocketed into the mainstream with the pop punk album Sucker featuring her breakout single “Boom Clap.” After amassing widespread success on the charts but lukewarm success among fans and critics, Charli changed gears with her Vroom Vroom EP. This sudden artistic shift commenced her journey into hyperpop, a pop sub-genre identifiable by its maximalist, exaggerated approach to conventional pop sounds and sugary futuristic visuals.
With Crash, Charli began to lay her cards on the table, retreating from obscure sounds to demonstrate her knowledge of the accessible mainstream formula while still carving a lane that feels uniquely satirical at times.
The opposite has been done with “Von Dutch,” as Charli has begun to distance herself from mainstream trends once again. By doing this, she is flexing a gusto in her ability to move freely between musical styles and trends, keeping listeners on their toes and using her influence to further pioneer experimental pop. As she confirms on the single’s chorus, she can deliver a modern cult classic, but still keep things exceptionally pop.