It was surprising enough when Rick Astley teamed up with Manchester indie rockers Blossoms for a run of Smiths cover shows a few years ago. Now, as the leaves of Brat summer begin to turn gold, they’ve really outdone themselves by putting their own creative spin on Charli XCX’s “360” for BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge covers series.

You didn’t think the Brat rollout was over, did you? Charli XCX has been dominating the headlines all year, and she’s going to keep this thing going for as long as she possibly can. Just last week, Charli released her massive all-star remix album Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. And she still has more all-star remixes left to go! Today, Charli has gotten together with fellow party-girl god Kesha on a new version of “Spring breakers,” one of the bonus tracks that Charli originally released on the deluxe edition Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not.

Charli XCX has been building up the hype for the Brat remix album with a version of “Talk talk” with Troye Sivan and billboards across the globe teasing features like Bon Iver, Tinashe, the 1975, and more.

Next Friday, Charli XCX will unveil the highly anticipated Brat remix album, Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. There have been billboards teasing guests, and on Friday the pop star confirmed the features on the LP.

We have now entered Brat Fall. Earlier this month, Charli XCX announced the remix album and released a “Talk talk” version with Troye Sivan. Now, the busy pop star is teasing remixes with Bon Iver and Tinashe.

A lot has happened in the past week: Charli XCX and Troye Sivan brought their Sweat Tour to New York, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s campaigns marched along, and the entire world fell in love with a pygmy hippopotamus. Plenty of material for SNL to work with during its 50th season premiere. Notably, Bowen Yang put on his best Essex drawl to portray Charli XCX, and put on a hippo costume to share some familiar-sounding insight into Moo Deng’s viral fame.

Brat summer might be over, but Charli XCX is still dominating music this autumn. The pop star releases the remix album soon, and she’s currently on her massive Sweat tour with Troye Sivan. Tonight the pair played Madison Square Garden and were joined by special guests Lorde and Addison Rae.

The avalanche of Charli XCX remixes continues! For months now, Charli has been dropping new versions of her Brat tracks with various guest-stars: Addison Rae, Robyn and Yung Lean, Lorde, Billie Eilish. Now, two days before Charli and Troye Sivan’s Sweat Tour is scheduled to kick off in Detroit, Charli and Sivan have shared the “Talk Talk” remix that Charli previewed a few days ago, and she’s also announced that her Brat remix album is coming out next month.

Last month, Chappell Roan posted two TikToks rebuking her fans’ invasive behavior and attempting to set boundaries. Today, the pop phenomenon was on the cover of Rolling Stone and told the magazine about her turbulent experience with becoming famous meteorically and shared details about her next album.

Brat summer isn’t over until Charli XCX says it is. Following team-ups with Addison Rae, Lorde, Yung Lean, Robyn, and Billie Eilish — am I missing anyone? — Troye Sivan is up next in her series of Brat remixes. He’s gonna be on a new version of “Talk Talk,” according to a snippet the pair shared to TikTok.

St. Vincent has the late-night performance down to a science. Whenever TV cameras are pointed in her direction, Annie Clark brings it. When she played Kimmel in May, that meant charging through the crowd and singing right into the camera. On last night’s edition of The Tonight Show, we didn’t get any breaking of the fourth wall, but we did get a beast-ass performance — two of them, in fact.

A few weeks ago, Barack Obama shared his highly-anticipated summer 2024 playlist. To our surprise, it included Charli XCX’s “365,” a song about doing coke in the club and aspiring to a year-long bender. The former president was a recent guest on an episode of the I’ve Had It Podcast, during which he was asked the hard-hitting questions: Did he have a Brat summer?

Fresh off the brattiest summer known to humankind, Charli XCX has been cast to appear in Gregg Araki’s forthcoming feature I Want Your Sex, which also stars Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), confirmed via Variety. No word on what Charli’s role will be yet, but we do know that production is set to begin in October in Los Angeles.

Sabrina Carpenter is funny – funny on purpose. A lot of people have suddenly realized this at the same time. This isn’t news, though, to people who saw her steal scenes as a snarky tween in Disney’s sitcom Girl Meets World. (The character-actor-to-pop-girlie pipeline is real!) Nor is it news to people who’ve attended Carpenter’s shows recently, where she’s been cranking out raunchy city-themed outros to her single “Nonsense” for almost two years. My sense of humor is juvenile enough to appreciate bars like “Only use my mouth, that’s a cappella” or “Then he made me come to Brazil,” but my favorite of the lot isn’t sexual at all: “Calgary, you do not rhyme with jack shit!”

Charli XCX has been around well over a decade, and her career has gone though tons of different twists and turns, but she’s currently riding higher than ever. Brat was the year’s most critically acclaimed album even before the superstar remixes with Lorde and Billie Eilish — the latter of which is now a #1 UK hit — drove her even deeper into the zeitgeist. Despite not being American, Charli is now having weird intersections with politicians like Kamala Harris and Barack Obama. The Brat Summer memes keep coming. And now Charli is implying that there’s a new album-length project on the way.

Last month, Charli XCX proclaimed that presidential candidate Kamala Harris is brat. Now, former president Barack Obama is reportedly bumpin’ that, according to his newly shared summer playlist.

Brat summer is for everyone. Kyle MacLachlan, Kim Gordon, Wet Leg. The latest unexpected addition to the Charli XCX-inspired trend is Low’s Alan Sparhawk.

There was “Girl, so confusing” with Lorde, “360” with Yung Lean and Robyn, “Von dutch” with Addison Rae, and now, there’s “Guess” with Billie Eilish. After teasing a “Guess” rework with a surprise collaborator the other day, Charli XCX has unveiled the latest remix from the Bratosphere.

You, the people, have done your civic duty. The votes are in, and we can now announce the results of our annual Song Of The Summer poll.

Summer is the most pop of seasons, yet as far as pop albums in July go… there isn’t much! There are albums by pop-adjacent artists, like Porter Robinson or Clairo or Childish Gambino. There are albums that would have been big pop records a decade ago, like OneRepublic or Eminem (boy, has he tried). Culture-capturing event albums, though? Basically nil.

Over the past week or two, there’s been a lot of online conversation about whether Charli XCX’s much-vaunted Brat summer is over — an inevitable byproduct of a moment when cable news anchors are trying to figure out what the album’s title means. Out in the real world, however, the actual songs on Brat continue to mutate into new things. Case in point: Wet Leg’s “360” cover.

Brat summer continues. Charli XCX’s much-discussed pop masterpiece is one of the 12 albums that’s made the shortlist for the Mercury Prize, the annual award that the British Phonographic Industry and British Association of Record Dealers hands out to one album from the UK and Ireland. It’s the second time that Charli XCX has been nominated; How I’m Feeling Now previously made the shortlist in 2020.

It could be a couple of weeks before the Democratic Party formally announces its nominee for the 2024 presidential election, but all signs are pointing to Kamala Harris right now. Following an endorsement (?) from Charli XCX, CNN tried to comprehend the Vice President’s campaign’s embrace of Brat-themed memes, and other major broadcast news outlets also have some thoughts.

On Sunday, hours after President Joe Biden dropped out of this year’s presidential race, Charli XCX endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris with the earth-shattering tweet, “kamala IS brat.” The Kamala HQ account on X then got a Brat-themed header. This all came weeks after a viral video mashed up Charli’s “360” with the Vice President’s coconut tree meme. Now CNN is learning what Brat Summer is.

Brat is powerful. Charli XCX’s new album made TikTok dances fashionable again, inspired a dive bar in my neighborhood to serve a neon green shot special, and put to rest any animosity between her and Lorde. In a new interview with Billboard, Charli revealed it was actually Lorde’s idea to work it out on the remix of “Girl, so confusing.”

Kyle MacLachlan is bumpin’ that. The actor best known for his role in Twin Peaks has been showing his love for Charli XCX’s monumental new album Brat. He told Yahoo! that “Von Dutch” is the song of the summer, his TikTok is full of videos set to the album’s songs, and at one point his Instagram avatar mimicked the LP artwork. On Friday, he finally met the pop star in Ibiza.

Brat summer continues: Roskilde is going down in Denmark, and both Charli XCX and Caroline Polachek are on the lineup. Naturally, the “Von Dutch” singer invited the other pop star to her set, and the pair performed their and George Daniel’s remix of “Welcome To My Island” and danced the Macarena.

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week. The eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight. You can hear this week’s picks below and on Stereogum’s Favorite New Music Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. (An expanded playlist of our new music picks is available to members on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)

It’s happening. A highlight of Charli XCX’s new album Brat is the conflicted banger “Girl, so confusing,” which seems to be about Lorde. Now, she’s unveiling a remix featuring the New Zealand pop star herself.

Over the past couple of years, TikTok personality Addison Rae has steadily been making a promising pivot to pop star, thanks in part to a co-sign from Charli XCX. In 2023, Rae shared a song called “2 die 4” that featured Charli; then, Rae went to the studio with A. G. Cook to add some vocals and an ear-splitting scream to a remix of Charli’s “Von dutch.” Saturday night, Rae got on stage during Charli’s Los Angeles show to sing their “Von dutch” remix together live for the first time.

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week. The eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight. You can hear this week’s picks below and on Stereogum’s Favorite New Music Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. (An expanded playlist of our new music picks is available to members on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)

The excitement surrounding Charli XCX’s amazing new LP Brat is real, but it’s apparently not enough to give Charli a #1 album, either in the US or the UK. In the US, where Charli has always been more of a cult figure than a proper mainstream pop star, Brat is currently projected to debut at #4. If that happens, it’ll be Charli’s best showing over here. (Previously, her highest-charting album was her last one, 2022’s Crash, which debuted at #7.) The UK chart race was much closer, and it did not break Charli’s way.

On Friday, Charli XCX released Brat, and it’s immediately emerged as a consensus critical pick for album of the year. Right now, Brat is projected to debut at #4 on the American album chart, which is higher than Charli’s ever been over here. (The UK chart-topper Crash, her last album, debuted at #7 over here, and that was her first time in the American top 10.) If Brat somehow goes go all the way to #1, it’ll break the seven-week chart-topping streak from former Charli tourmate and possible Brat side character Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department — though another bonus-track rerelease of Tortured Poets could complicate that story.

Josh Anderson has been a Black Keys fan for over a decade. He fell in love with the band as a high schooler in 2007. But in April, when tickets for the blues-rock revivalists’ North American arena tour went on sale, Anderson realized he wouldn’t be attending. The prices were simply too high.

On Friday, Charli XCX cannonballed into the album-of-the-year conversation with the release of her glitchy, adventurous, extremely fun, messily emotional new album Brat. Today, Charli has expanded on Brat with a new deluxe edition, which has the great and accurate title Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not.

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week. The eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight. You can hear this week’s picks below and on Stereogum’s Favorite New Music Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. (An expanded playlist of our new music picks is available to members on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)

Charli XCX’s feverishly anticipated new album Brat doesn’t even come out until tomorrow, at least in the US, but certain narratives are already emerging. On a couple of Brat tracks, Charli makes oblique references to some of her peers, and plenty of people are already speculating about her possible targets. One is Taylor Swift. Another is Lorde.