Brat Summer, the unlikely online phenomenon named after Charli XCX’s sixth album that briefly refracted pop culture—from motherhood to analog cigarettes to nose drugs—through its chartreuse prism, died Sunday, July 21, on X, formerly known as Twitter. It was just over 80 days old.
Brat Summer began in early May of this year when Charli XCX, born Charlotte Emma Aitchison, dropped by for a surprise set at Brooklyn’s Lot Radio. Her performance drew throngs of fans to a small shipping container on Nassau Avenue while an army of popper-carrying Brooklynites impeded the already problematic traffic pattern at the Williamsburg-Greenpoint border.
As Charli perched in front of a large wall painted in the album’s now iconic shade of messy green (Pantone 3507C) lip-syncing to “360,” BRAT’s spring-loaded second single, the viral potential of her album rollout heaved into view. When four words—“i’m your fav reference”—stylized in the album’s lowercase sans-serif typeface, appeared on the Brooklyn wall seemingly overnight a few weeks later, the online community seemed to unanimously rally around its mandate: to have a Brat Summer.
The possibilities of Brat Summer were manifold, from annoying your boyfriend on vacation to making chilled zucchini soup to waving to the “original 365 party girl,” the Statue of Liberty. Each time the Brooklyn “Brat Wall” got a fresh coat of paint, legions of Brat Summer adherents eagerly parsed its message like some ancient cuneiform. It’s hard to forget where you were the day the billboard suddenly read “L o r d e,” a preview of the collaborative remix of BRAT’s “Girl, So confusing.” Brat Summer, it turned out, was also about making amends.
During its short but intense existence, Brat Summer captured the hearts of not just Charli XCX fans (known as “Angels”) but a broad coalition of followers old and new: Millennials clinging to false memories of early-noughties dirtbag dance music, zoomers who lost many of their precious hedonistic years to the pandemic lockdown, and even toddlers, whose adorable misreadings of the album’s more lurid lyrics would become prescient after its demise. Its slippery definition—Was Tony Soprano having a Brat Summer on his green pool floatie? Could you still have a Brat Summer if you had a stretching routine?—only amplified the impact of Brat Summer. Even the G train was having a Brat Summer —working some of the time, mostly hanging out in Brooklyn.
Social media managers took note of the album art’s low-effort, counterintuitive chicness, and soon, X and Instagram were flooded with mimetic interpretations. By the end of June, the month of the album’s release, some were beginning to grow wary of how long Brat Summer could last. Could it survive being co-opted by brand executives who would keel over from one whiff of Rush? Or would it, like so many other online phenomena that broke free of the cloisters of the internet, shrivel and die in the real world, like a string of hosta flowers wilting in a heatwave?
Brat Summer was not without its controversies: It was unclear whether it was safe for straight men or infants to partake. But against all odds, Brat Summer persevered: In early July, a dance made by TikTok creator Kelley Heyer to the album track “Apple” began to circulate across social media. Short, slightly flirtatious, and easy to memorize, the “Apple” routine captured Fourth of July posts, eventually leaping across species— house cats could have a Brat Summer, even if they appeared to be doing so against their will. At the time, it felt like Brat Summer might continue well into the crisp days of early autumn.
However, Brat Summer’s condition took a turn for the worse at the beginning of the week. On July 21, President Joseph Biden announced he would be ending his re-election campaign and nominated Vice President Kamala Harris to run in his stead. Harris, certainly more than Biden, seemed primed for a Brat Summer—she did spend June in Las Vegas, after all, albeit apologizing for Biden’s verbal miscues at the first Presidential debate. Charli XCX, perhaps sensing the twin swells of support for two powerful women, wrote the post that would, in three words, signal the end of Brat Summer: “kamala IS brat.”
In the hours following, Harris’ social media team leaned into her support, updating their social headers to BRAT’s green hue. Soon, people who were absolutely not having a Brat Summer—CNN reporter Jake Tapper, Minnesota governor Tim Walz—began to pile atop an already fragile meme. There were mixes made that interpolated Harris’ own speeches where lyrics about doing key bumps used to be. By the end of the day, Brat Summer had been pronounced dead.
According to New York mayor Eric Adams, in lieu of Brat Summer, supporters can instead try to have an “S.O.P.: Summer of Possibility.” But that is simply not fun to say, nor does it seem to include wearing white tank tops without a bra. While we mourn its loss, Brat Summer’s legacy will live on in white powders on dirty toilet seats, weekend hangovers that last until the following Friday, and of course, being So Julia, a sibling of Brat Summer that survived the worst of its online devastation. “Is the idea that we’re all kind of Brat?” Jake Tapper asked on CNN following the death of Brat Summer. Not anymore, Jake; but for a brief moment, it seemed like we all could be.