Charli XCX didn’t just release Brat on a whim — she always had a vision for the album’s global impact.
In a new Instagram post to her private account, the British pop sensation unveiled the first manifesto she had for her now-Grammy nominated project, sharing a document of notes written in the summer of 2023 that detailed exactly how she planned to turn pop culture on its head.
Writing in all caps, Charli spoke about her vision for everything from the artwork to the marketing rollout. “The artwork for Brat will be obnoxious, arrogant and bold,” she wrote. “It will be heavily text-based, either font on a plain background or some kind of painting on a wall or disregarded object.”
She then said the marketing campaign would focus on a coupling of “high art” and “low art” as well as capitalizing on the currency of celebrity, intending to “cultivate desire, chaos and destruction” with mainstream pop culture and underground hedonism.
“There is no explanation for what I do. The answer is always ‘no comment,’” she wrote.
Charli even got specific about how she wanted the rollout to happen, using the footprints of the internet to hide Easter eggs during the campaign. “I will throw a rave probably long before the album is out to tease new music,” she said. “We will make edits. Many edits. It will be the first time anyone hears snippets of music from Brat but no one will know what they are hearing. Eventually these DJ sets will be referenced and looked back upon.”
“This is global,” she concluded. “We must execute everything with power and confidence. The Angels are ready and waiting.”
The singer previously spoke about how she first planned the marketing concept for Brat even before she made the music.
“Usually when I’ve made a record, there is this transitional phase [after it’s recorded], where I’m thinking about how to present the music,” she said in an interview with Variety. “But with this one, I actually did that first.”
When a fan questioned the validity of the manifesto, Charli responded on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “female artists being underestimated… a tale as old as time.”
Brat, which was released on June 7, immediately took the world by storm. The album debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, becoming the artist’s highest-charting album to date, and has since continued to pick up accolade after accolade. Brat is nominated for three awards at the 2025 Grammys, was named the best album of the year by Rolling Stone, and even became a part of the 2024 presidential election after Charli tweeted that Vice President Kamal Harris “IS brat.”
The post Charli XCX Shared Her ‘Brat’ Manifesto appeared first on Bustle.
