Charli XCX: The British star who created a Brat cultural phenomenon
The singer has added five Brit Award nods to her list of accolades.
Charli XCX has rounded off a standout past year by securing the most Brit Award nominations for 2025, but the British artist has been filling dancefloors for many years.
After securing eight Grammy nominations for her culture-shaping sixth studio album Brat in November, the singer has now added five Brit Award nods to her list of accolades.
The 32-year-old is up for artist of the year, best pop act, best dance act, the coveted album of the award for Brat and song of the year for her collaboration with US star Billie Eilish on Guess.
Born Charlotte Emma Aitchison in 1992 in Cambridge, the singer was the only child of a mother of Indian descent and a Scottish father.
In 2013, she released her debut album True Romance after releasing several singles which did not chart.
She broke through into the mainstream after featuring on Icona Pop’s 2013 hit I Love It, which went to number one in the UK.
She gained further attention following her 2014 collaboration with Australian singer Iggy Azalea on Fancy, which was nominated for two Grammy awards – record of the year and best pop duo/group performance.
Her second album, 2014’s Sucker, featured the top 10 hit Boom Clap and reached number 15 in the UK album charts.
She followed it up with 2019’s Charli and 2020’s How I’m Feeling Now, but her fifth album Crash landed her her first number one album in 2022.
Charli XCX was also among the artists to feature on the Barbie movie soundtrack, with her song Speed Drive reaching number nine in the charts.
However, the latest addition to her catalogue propelled the singer to new stratospheric heights.
The word Brat became nearly inescapable after she released the album by the same name last June.
The infectious electronic-pop tracks soared up the charts and it inspired a trend which became a lifestyle, rather than just an aesthetic.
People across the world embraced the “brat summer” cultural movement, which promoted self-love, positive body image and sultry style choices – including a lot of neon green in honour of the album’s cover.
“Brat” was also named the 2024 Collins Word Of The Year, redefined as being “characterised by a confident, independent and hedonistic attitude”.
In an interview for Variety’s Hitmakers issue, the singer revealed the marketing concept for the album came before the music.
“Usually when I’ve made a record, there is this transitional phase (after it’s recorded) where I’m thinking about how to present the music,” she told the US outlet.
“But with this one, I actually did that first — I was thinking about marketing before I was making the music.
“I had the title first, which was such a brief and a super-useful writing tool. It put boundaries on the songwriting, because immediately if I was writing a song with (collaborators) AG Cook or Cirkut, it would just immediately be like, ‘That’s not brat,’ and we would move on and do something that was brat.”
The album also entered the world of politics during the US presidential election after Charli XCX wrote “Kamala IS brat” on social media following the announcement Kamala Harris would replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee.
The Biden-Harris campaign account later changed its banner to Kamala HQ, using the same font and neon green background as the Brat cover.
The singer released a remix of the album in October, named Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat, which brought the music back to the forefront after “brat summer” drew to a close.
She has been touring the album across the world over the last few months and is set to return to the UK in the summer to play a string of shows in cities across the country.
