Lorde Is ‘Gagged’ by Charli XCX’s ‘Brat’ Album: ‘There Is No One Like This B—-‘

Lorde is shouting out her pal Charli XCX leading up to the release of the latter’s highly anticipated new album, Brat.

”Charli just cooked this one different,” Lorde wrote on her Instagram Stories on Thursday (June 6). “So much grit, grace and skin in the game. I speak for all of us when I say it’s an honour to be moved, changed and gagged by her work. There is NO ONE like this b——. Brava and welcome Brat.”

Charli XCX’s sixth studio album arrives on Friday (June 7), led by the rambunctious single “Von Dutch” and followed by “360.”

Speaking to Billboard at this year’s 2024 Women in Music event, Charli said that BRAT is a club record meant to evoke the illegal London rave scene of the early 2000s where she started performing as a 14 and 15-year-old, produced from a tight collection of sounds to create “this unique minimalism that is very loud and bold.” 

She also said that the album is “very direct” eschewing “metaphor and flowery lyricism” for language that is closer to the way she talks to her friends in text messages. “This record is all the things I would talk about with my friends, said exactly how I would say them. It’s in ways very aggressive and confrontational, but also very conversational and personal,” she said. “And not in that boring way where artists are like, ‘This is my most personal record.’ To me, it feels like listening to a conversation with a friend.