It’s a Brat Summer, and the vice president’s newly launched presidential campaign is the latest to join the fun. “Kamala IS brat,” the singer - born Charlotte Aitchison - shared with her 3.6 million followers on X , referencing her blockbuster sixth studio album, Brat .
With the album sparking the “Brat summer” trend on social media, it is no surprise that the 21 July post went viral among Gen Z, garnering over 18 million views and 244,000 likes. But what does a Brat summer mean? When Charli XCX’s sixth studio album Brat was released on 7 June, it went viral across social media platforms for its catchy, future club classics. A slight departure from the artist’s hyper-pop era, this album embraced grungy house beats beloved in the late 2000s and early 2010s, arguably creating this generation’s party anthems.
Charli XCX has been around since the 2010s, hopping on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” to singing the effervescent “Boom Clap” from the Fault in Our Stars soundtrack, but she hasn’t enjoyed as much mainstream success as she has since Brat’s release this summer. From getting the reclusive Lorde to hop on a remix of the song Charli wrote about their friendship “Girl, so confusing” to a TikTok dance to “Apple” going viral, Brat has become a pop cultural phenomenon among Gen-Zers and millennials. As for “Brat summer,” the movement bucks convention and social constructs and rejects the strait-laced “clean girl” aesthetic, and instead celebra.