The declaration of a successor to ‘brat summer’

Prediction, manifestation or performative speech act.

Charli XCX’s ‘brat’ (2024) was undeniably a cultural milestone, a triumph of queer-adjacent pop breaking through and potentially changing the landscape of music to come in the rest of the 20s. Part of this is to do with the music, part of it is to do with Charli herself being the embodiment of the ‘It girl’ with an undeniable cache of cool, and part of it is the marketing, but a major part of the success of brat was the declaration of a ‘brat summer’. Since Megan thee Stallion made ‘hot girl summer’ real in 2019, the way a season was declared changed forever, most famously giving us ‘brat summer’, but also the deeply insidious Instagram caption for many an Oxford student: ‘Hot Girl Hilary’, much to everyone’s chagrin. In her biggest Coachella set to date, Charli has seemingly put an end to ‘brat summer’ and chosen a number of successors to now hold the weight of a season. From her friends with ‘Lorde summer’, ‘Caroline summer’ and ‘Addison summer’, to a range of directors including Paul Thomas Anderson and Celine Song, to some more niche music acts such as Turnstile of all groups, these declarations are supremely interesting and raise a number of questions about influence and pop culture at large.

Charli’s ‘It girl’ status, as exemplified and mocked by the music video to ‘360’, suggests that Charli has her finger on the proverbial cultural pulse. She is ‘locked-in’ and has a great understanding of what’s hot, so much so that she could easily be 2025’s Paris Hilton if she so desires. This has come from years of working in the pop field, collaborating with countless artists from both the underground and mainstream pop worlds, famously writing for the likes of Selena Gomez and Rihanna, whilst also working with artists such as Brooke Candy, Yaeji and the late SOPHIE. Hence, she is positioned as the future of pop culture, having done her extensive homework. Her proximity to queer culture should also not be understated, having devoted much of her career to cultivation of a gay fandom and surrounding herself with queer influences and influencers, giving her another avenue upon which to strut. So, when Charli declares that it’s ‘PTA summer’ or ‘Bon Iver summer’, we’re inclined to believe her.

However, is this accurate? Is Turnstile really about to release the album that everyone is going to be talking about with the same ferocity as brat? Will Ethel Cain top the charts and have a million think pieces about the colours chosen on her album cover? Will someone declare that the new pope IS Pulp, in the same way that “Kamala IS brat”? This could simply be an attempt for Charli to raise the profiles of the artists whom she loves, using her cultural cache to invest in her friends or people she finds interesting. Are these more manifestations than predictions? That being said, there is another option. Rather than being manifestations into a void, these could be self-fulfilling prophesies. If Charli says it’s ‘Blood Orange summer’, then so it shall be. Essentially, this is Charli performatively declaring these summers. The speech act of declaring makes it so.

The past year has been an imperial one for Charli, the culmination of years of work to establish both herself and her sound in the lexicon of popular music. Many are now moving on from Charli as her newfound success and effervescent status have overtaken what once made her authentic, but I would argue that this is the logical endpoint of the Charli XCX experience, with her achieving what she has always set out to whilst still remaining as authentic as when she was playing in basements in London, or DJing at 14. Personally, I can’t wait to see what she does next, though I’m personally holding my breath for ‘Adrianne Lenker summer’.