I Only Threw This Party For You
on charli xcx's BRAT, partying, and partying 🫨
Last year, my body became my biggest opp. I had an accident in the summer that led to a couple of invasive surgeries this year and a slow recovery over the past few months. Eight months of blood and pus resulted in the worst pain of my life. The whole ordeal, which I told only a few friends and my parents, forced me to rest, go on painkillers, and stop drinking. Because of this, the partying stopped.
For someone who was ‘outside’ constantly, this was a stiff adjustment. I had taken my body for granted and struggled to merge its new limits with the social life I designed for myself. A healthy body and access to social lubricants – be it booze or something else – have always been two tenets of a ‘party girl’ lifestyle and so, each night, I was forced to barter with how much pain I could tolerate to engage with the world I loved. With every step towards pleasure, a sharp kick of pain waited patiently for me. I soon learned that this juxtaposition is what makes a good party.
No one wants to be the first to leave the party especially when the party, for you, is getting good. Charli xcx, for better or worse, has been the first to the party for quite some time now. The pop music visionary has been at the frontier of sonic innovation for the past decade and a half, pioneering an evolution of a genre that the masses are only now catching on to. Publications have updated their old reviews of her albums, finally understanding her vision and, today, the most well-funded pop giants copy her sound and creative direction. Charli was early to the party. Or in her words, she was ‘ahead.’
Charli contemplates her role at the party on her sixth album BRAT, an anthemic collection of vulnerability and gall, leaping from outlandish self-mythologization to earnest confessions of introspection. On BRAT, ‘the party’ moves through many stages. The party is Charli’s contemplation of her career, her competitiveness and confusion with other pop stars, her belated fascination with Dimes Square ‘mean girls,’ her desire to start a family, and her constant contention with being a cult icon on the precipice of a commercial breakthrough. As of publication, BRAT is the highest-ranking album of the year on Metacritic, outscoring an already crowded year with projects from mainstream juggernauts like Beyoncé, Taylor, Ariana, Dua and Billie.
A good party has levels to it and BRAT is a StairMaster 7000PT. The promotional singles of Von dutch and 360 led us to believe that we were going to have an album of towering bad bitch bops… which we do. But it’s the drops of vulnerability where the party girl sheds her skin that are the most piercing. We witness the torment layered beneath the strobe lights of her party and are blindsighted by her winces and hesitations. It’s what Gerwig strives to achieve in Barbie when the doll contemplates death in the midst of the dance floor. When you’re sick and doing your best to cover it up.
The devastating pits of I think about it all the time and I might say something stupid makes the highs of the party higher. And then there are songs like Everything is romantic (my fave) and Sympathy is a knife (another fave) that do both, that are simultaneously downers and uppers. The placement of damning down bad truths (I don’t feel like nothing special… guess I’m a mess and play the role) against club beats is a mindfuck, reminiscent of Robyn’s mastery of linking sad girl lyrics to propulsive, dance chords. It’s undeniably Charli’s best work.
Is it odd that the magic comes when she smashes her sadness against her brightest moments? It’s where I’ve felt it too. As I limped through a painful recovery, the electricity of life’s joys pulsed through me more violently than ever. The glint of happiness in an era of pain felt illuminating, like a good trip.
I remember it all.
I remember going to Mexico City for American Thanksgiving and something rupturing, causing me to spend ten hours in the emergency room as Nic translated through the phone to the doctor and I uselessly laid in the hospital bed. The next morning, I was released and Kurt met me back at the hotel. We spent the remainder of the trip talking about everything and nothing and eating the best food on the planet. With some help, I returned to the party like nothing happened.
I remember the currents of pain as I white-knuckled (brown-knuckled for me? idk) through a
x Limousine reading, making a crowd laugh with fiction about a golden retriever boyfriend. I did my best to obscure my limp. I wore an oversized suit and a cropped leather vest, tossing it off as a fashion moment when I really wished to layer the blood that might seep through or “wear these clothes as disguise,” as Charli admits on the album. In the end, my party dance paid off. The masquerade led to an introduction to a literary agent and the publication of a story. Beneath the pain, I vibrated.I remember straining to go to the LUAR fashion event, invited after the brand dressed me for a different reading and hearing that Beyoncé and Solange would be in attendance. I just had surgery a few days prior but I had to go. Once back home, as I replaced my bloody bandages in my bathroom, I delusionally looped 16 CARRIAGES, somewhat symbolic of my bittersweet sacrifice. It was month six or seven of the recovery and I needed something to cling to. I hummed along as I wiped at the pus and blood pouring out of me before noticing that I was crying. I was too much of a mess to know if I was reacting to the pain or if I was proud of myself for not letting it stop me.
Would these moments be so significant if I wasn’t in the worst pain of my life? Or do I only romanticize them now to obliterate the agony I felt? Psychology writer Hardik Mangukiya says “We value love, happiness, and joy because of fear, sadness and anger,” and I think that relates to BRAT. It smatters opposite emotions into one listening experience and is emblematic of how a party can both revive you and make you sick. For me, for life, this rings true.
And yet, the party goes on. Decaying ice cubes and wedges of lime flesh pepper a lukewarm cocktail. Firm fists yank each other through a sea of slick torsos at a warehouse. A chalky tab for the tongue, a key for the nostril. Thighs press against the sink, trousers lace around ankles, knees dig into the tile blades. An on demand black chariot takes you to the next location. A text message blinks your dry eyes open, “Where to next?” It’s only 4:23 AM.
“No, I never go home, don’t sleep, don’t eat, just do it on repeat. Keep bumpin’ that.”
BRAT captures the collective anxieties and triumphs of someone who is restrained yet still yearning. It's insistent rub sounds like a tantrum but the perspective is always clear. There’s so much contrast on this album, songs that mourn those we have lost against tracks that celebrate cocaine. Charli is a master at conflating but it never feels contradicting. Instead, it’s magnifying.
Meaghan Garvey of Pitchfork writes:
“For years, both Charli and her critics seemed distractingly obsessed with her position—the darling of the underground who either would or could not graduate to Main Pop Girl. Then something shifted, and it hardly seemed to matter. She had something they didn’t. She was cool.”
But this coolness isn’t vapidly constructed by the ice queen character she performs in Von dutch, but also through the voicing of uncomfortable thoughts: her preoccupation with the Billboard charts, her face shape, and how being in the same room with Taylor Swift makes her feel like shooting herself. All things that are taboo to say for the cool party girl. All things the reigning class of pop stars have institutionalized themselves out of the ability to say. But Charli straddles this duality. In some way, she’s freer than them.
After a strenuous healing journey, I haven’t gone back to drinking just yet. I don’t really know why. I feel stupid when someone asks me when I will have my “first drink" again or what my “rules” are and I don’t have an answer. I usually have an answer for everything.
Sobriety without reason isn’t to be applauded. My Catholic high school campaigned abstinence but I don’t feel any more virtuous. I don’t even have the benefits everyone told me I’d get from not drinking. My shits aren’t cleaner. My skin still gets oily. My sleep is still spotty.
Before, it was the pain killers that kept the booze away, but now, with the meds gone and the drinks still absent, I sometimes find myself searching for my pain’s numb pulse. I don’t miss it and am glad it is behind me but its knifey presence was a reminder that I’m alive.
But, sober or not, my party rages onward.
At the end of BRAT, Charli returns to the party with 365, the victory lap of the album that interpolates the first song, 360. After all the pain, she revisits the rave, emboldened by her confessions and stronger knowing that she has survived. “Should we have another key? Should we do another line?” she asks as if ushering you to the bathroom. “Keep bumpin’ that,” she commands and, under her influence, I do as I’m told.
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Beautiful as always
Okay I’m obessed with a few things here. 1) my fav Charli line as the subject line 2) this beautifully written exploration on partying and Charli (thank you for so much honesty about your physical recovery - I’ve hid a lot of pain for the sake of the party before too) 3) this line: I usually have an answer for everything and, 4) You got to work on the music video. Absolutely loved this piece!