Here’s what went down at Charli XCX’s intimate ‘Brat’ remix album listening party in Upstate New York

11 October, 2024

Charli XCX visits SiriusXM's 'The Howard Stern Show' at SiriusXM Studios on October 02, 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images for SiriusXM)

Charli XCX threw an intimate listening party in celebration of her new remix album ‘Brat And it’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat’ yesterday (Thursday October 10). Check out footage, photos and more from what went down at the show below.

The ‘365’ party girl teamed up with Twitch to play a selection of songs from her remix album of 2024’s acclaimed ‘Brat‘ at the iconic Storm King Arts Center – an open-air museum located in Hudson Valley, New York. The event was live-streamed a day prior to the LP’s release today.

Upon arrival, fans were met with free black t-shirts with the word ‘art’ printed on them in the iconic brat font. A 30×30 foot ‘Brat’ art installation – in the shape of the LP’s accompanying vinyl that was halfway open – was created as XCX’s stage for the gig.

“Thank you guys so much for coming. I was worried that no one would,” she told the crowd upon arrival. “How motherfucking sick is this? We’re fine art bitches now, you know what I’m saying?”

Joking about the party being roughly an hour and a half away from New York City and in the middle of rural New York, she said: “I basically just wanted to get you in this really convenient location to play you some songs from the album.”

The first track played was ‘Von Dutch’ featuring Addison Rae and A.G. Cook before going into ‘Everything Is Romantic’ featuring Caroline Polachek. “Catch a face in the window payne / what’s up it’s me that’s mine / Sleepyhead cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake at night,” sings Polachek on the track which is a slower, subdued version of the original.

“This one is ‘Club Classics [feat. BB Trickz]. George [Daniel] produced this,” XCX told the crowd, smiling while mentioning her fiancé and drummer of The 1975. Once the track was over, she introduced ‘b2b’ feat. Tinashe and said: “This is, maybe one of my, ugh, they’re all my favourite but this one does do something to me.”

The ‘360’ singer also played ‘Sympathy Is A Knife’ featuring Ariana Grande. “It’s a knife when you’re finally on top / cause logically the next step is they want to see you fall,” sings Grande during her verse.

Reflecting on the creation of ‘Brat And it’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat’, XCX explained: “One of the reasons I wanted to do this project was because I feel like it is really cool to show the infinite possibilities of dance music and music in general.

“It’s like to me, when a song comes out when you make a song, there’s still so many different versions of that song that could be made using just a tiny element of production from the original or a tiny reference to a lyrical concept or a literal lyric. I just feel it could all be completely deconstructed and then put back together again you know? like why not?”

 

The final two songs of the set saw XCX play ‘Mean Girls’ featuring The Strokes‘ Julian Casablancas. “This one really pops the fuck out, seriously, it’s cool,” she said, playing the anticipated collab. Previously speaking to Zane Lowe about Casablancas’ influence on her, the ‘Vroom Vroom’ singer said: “When I think about Julian, it’s like, ‘OK, has this sort of history with Daft Punk and also-‘,” with Lowe adding: “And The Strokes are a dance [band].”

She continued: “Yeah, exactly. It’s like you talk about New York downtown, it’s like people were partying then and really in a hardcore way, and so I think he of all people understands how to capture that kind of an energy in a room and on the songs. It was definitely crazy pulling that all together.”

XCX closed out the listening party with the viral ‘Girl, so confusing’ feat. Lorde. “She ate me up. She ate me up,” she told the crowd while dancing to the track, referring to how she had previously revealed that Lorde served as partial inspiration for the song, including feeling jealous over her ‘Royals’ success.

The setlist for Charli XCX’s listening party at Storm King Arts Center was:

‘Von Dutch’ feat. Addison Rae
‘Club Classics’ feat. BB Trickz
‘Everything Is Romantic’ feat. Caroline Polachek
‘So I’ feat. A.G. Cook
‘365’ feat. Shygirl
‘Rewind’ feat. Bladee
‘Sympathy Is A Knife’ feat. Ariana Grande
‘Mean Girls’ feat. Julian Casablancas
‘Girl, So Confusing’ feat. Lorde

Since the release of the original album in June, Charli’s sixth studio record has gone on to make some huge waves across the music industry and become a pop culture phenomenon – gaining fans in Vice President Kamala Harris, former POTUS Barack Obama, NATO and more.

It was also given a four-star review from NME, which read: “On the self-described “club record”, XCX offers pure party girl hedonism. Percolating beats, brash synths, left-field production and vocal lines that flit between bratty quips or honest one-liners. With ‘Brat’, XCX demonstrates that going her own way will always sound pretty good.”

The live shows with Troye Sivan were also given a five-star review by NME, which labelled the two as “former pop underdogs cement[ing] their status as arena-slaying icons”.

In other news, XCX recently revealed that the now iconic ‘Brat’ artwork was created as a blurry text cover in order to save money.

Elsewhere, the singer opened up about her friendship with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy and the pair’s new collaboration, noting that “he’s like my brother now – but I sometimes want to strangle him”.

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