Step 3: Do Life With Your Ride Or Dies

Note well that having a Brattitude does not mean strutting in solitary, but instead, steering through life’s winding roads with your chosen family.

Driving has long been a central motif in Charli’s eclectic discography, and this fondness for automotive-inspired themes continues in BRAT. Hence the Brat Summer entails adrenaline rushes and sometimes, escapism. Cue: the track “Apple”, which references driving to the airport often as a nod to Charli’s upbringing near Stansted Airport in the UK. While it’s clear that while a Brat seeks the pulsing exhilaration of hitting the pedal, she never forgets that her journey is shared, and she doesn’t ride alone. 

On Charli’s “Girl, so confusing” remix with Lorde, Lorde sings the fan-favourite lyric, “I ride for you Charli”, affirming that she will always stand up for Charli, against the industry’s perilous efforts to pin them against each other via decades of petty headlines and cosmetic comparisons. Ultimately, the Brat Summer is about forming unbreakable bonds with friends through living recklessly together, but also riding out challenges with one another.

Step 4: Bratpost!

As the phrase suggests, Bratposting is the act of sharing content that encapsulates the Brat aesthetic. On one end of the Brat spectrum, there are low-res witty memes that directly reference the album’s themes or the album cover itself by incorporating the colour green.

On the other end are dolls posing in their “Bratty” outfit, captured with the crucial nighttime flash for maximum impact. Then somewhere in between lies the blurry and chaotic Instagram dumps that mix everything together. At the end of the day, Bratposting is finding the balance between serious and unserious, because a Brat can celebrate who they are while wearing their flaws on their sleeve.

Step 5: Put Your Hands Up Like A Party Girl

When the sun goes down and the music starts bumping, the “BRAT” becomes the “PARTYGIRL” — the namesake of Charli’s rapturous Boiler Room set in Bushwick featuring hits from the album. To fully engage in a Brat Summer, one must manifest the frenetic and hedonistic behaviour of the “partygirl”, a persona inspired by Charli’s love for the rave scene. After posting her homemade, French-Electra-inspired tracks on Myspace at 14 years old, Charli was invited to perform at an illegal warehouse rave in East London. From there, the next two years of her life involved being driven by her supportive parents (adorned in tutus) to go “mental” for hundreds of people at 3 am, standing on a crate covered in glitter.

Brat-Partygirl activities involve indulging at “the good restaurants” with friends, and dancing feverishly at raves and nightclubs to songs “back to back” until dawn – all while navigating the underlying uncertainty of fitting in and worrying “I might say something stupid”, only to dive headfirst back into the whirlpool of hedonism, surrendering to the pure, unbridled joy of it all.

As such, the Brat Summer demands a lot of dancing, particularly the signature move to “put your hands up” – a lyric that recurs throughout the album. Charli has even shared a video of herself doing a playful dance to the song “Apple” alongside collaborators Troye Sivan and Terrence O’Connor, embracing the communal spirit at the heart of BRAT.

Step 6: Explore What It Truly Means To Be A Girl

After the party (and “after the afterparty”), the Brat winds down and looks within. In the end, a Brat Summer represents the willingness to confront one’s vulnerabilities and embrace the contradictions that exist within each of us. The album itself presents a compelling exploration of duality, self-awareness, and the complexities of “being a girl”. In BRAT, Charli grapples with topics like grief, motherhood, jealousy, and narcissism with unflinching honesty, which is a refreshing departure from the performative positivity often expected of female artists. As Charli sings, “It’s so confusing sometimes to be a girl, (…) how do you feel being a girl?” Despite BRAT fundamentally being a club-hits album, Charli invites us into a raw, introspective through tracks like “Sympathy is Just a Knife,” “I Might Say Something Stupid,” and “Rewind”. Therefore, those partaking in the Brat Summer will fearlessly explore the deepest questions about our existence and in the process, experience transformative growth — together.