Thanks to Charli XCX, the Messy Celebrity Revival is long overdue

Look everywhere you can, and you will see signs. There are many photos and videos, lenses that take what may be more than others. There are songs, entire albums, that lend vocals to the revival song. And there are celebrities, those idols of culture who end up falling short of the level of perfection we’ve set them up for, tripping up the ranks. Welcome to ‘Brat summer’ and the return of celebrity trash. This is the mess, the real mess is unfolding before our eyes. And it’s perfect. Not at all perfect.

Nothing – no, really, nothing – can be credited with bringing back the celebrity mess more than Charli XCX’s recently released record Brat. Of course, the Hertfordshire-born star had no idea that the release of her album in June and the international cultural tsunami it would unleash would be accompanied by an endless media cycle and a year without spirit for the politics that we, the people, have been in. unconsciously aching for release.

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Two months after the album’s release and here we are, grooving our hips to the lyrics of ‘Apple’ and awkwardly mouthing the words ‘Brat girl summer’ to whoever we who knows he does anything remotely outside the bounds of public acceptance. He has done what few artists have been able to do; he has captured lightning in a bottle, and with it he has inspired a real mess again in the first league of desire.

Case in point: the star’s 32-year-old birthday party, which she hosted this week at Los Angeles hotspot Tenants. For this event, it is true Brat girl’s birthday, Charli wore a pair of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pants, her now-signature black sunglasses, and was on stage with her bandmates, Billie Eilish and Lorde. Among the brats who joined their saint on his birthday were Shiva childby Rachel Sennott, Euphoria‘s Alexa Demie, Sabrina Carpenter and Rosalía, who arrived at the event with a suitable gift for the host: a bouquet decorated with Parliament Blues. Finally, celebrities are back (sort of) to being real(ish) with us.

Charli has done what few artists have been able to do; you have caught lightning in a bottle

Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us too much. After all, celebrities are just like us, and it seems that each and every one of us is fueling cultural change. We probably didn’t realize it would come wrapped in sour apple packaging, punctuated by a song that asks the audience to guess the color of the singer’s underwear. Gone are the days of hot yoga classes, celery juice and nicotine-free vapes; in their place are all-night dance shows, champagne (which Charli, of course, drank with a flute while performing her Boiler Room set in Ibiza) and Camel Blues. We want to give honor and praise to those who reflect our values. Studies have shown that we are swearing at each other more than ever before; and we’re all lit up because smoking is back and over 200,000 people descended on Worthy Farm this year for Glastonbury, its busiest year on record, with queues to see Queen Charli DJ on Friday night more than three hours of waiting. time. Let it sink in: it took longer to line up to watch Charli DJ than it did to get into the festival itself.

There was a time in the past when people in Hollywood were shamed instead of celebrated for the same things that will be explained this summer. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are just a few of the cultural victims whose names were punished for their parties throughout the 2000s. But today, Young Hollywood is breaking free from the refined shadows in which it was organized while its stars are, in fact, shining around us.

Young Hollywood is freeing itself from the refined shadows in which it was refined

The issue of celebrity messiness involves people too, a penchant for party animals and pure messiness. Since the album’s release in June, Brat has generated $22.5 million in media influence value, according to Launchmetrics, while searches on Brat-style ‘slime green’ has grown by 17% in the past two weeks, according to global shopping platform Lyst. On TikTok, where Gen Z welcomed its newly elected main party girl, there are more than one million videos with #Brat. When asked to describe what exactly ‘Brat Summer’ is, Charli herself said it right. “It would be, like, rubbish,” he told Nick Grimshaw in a BBC interview. Like a pack of cigs and, like, a Bic lighter and, like, a white and yellow top.’ The audio of his conversation has gone viral on TikTok.

What Charli plans is a movement that goes beyond music. ‘Brat summer‘ it reminded people that, despite the intense friendships and struggles of birth that many of us face with Charli’s songs, there is nothing more liberating than accepting the messiness that affects us all. The omnipresence of Charli et al has given us the knowledge that we are not alone in searching for life’s future answers, nor are we the only ones who want to drink for a while and dance to suppress the truth, if just for one night. After years of perceived perfection, it feels good to turn on social media and see those in the public eye, those we follow, in all their dirty glory; unedited, unfiltered and unhindered by what they’ve tied up for so long.

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