Charli XCX reveals ‘Brat’ got its now-iconic blurry text cover to ‘save money’
“I was like, 'This album is not going to appeal to a lot of people,’” Charli says
By Tomás Mier
Charli XCX never thought Brat was going to have the cultural impact it has. In an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, the pop star revealed that she opted for the now-iconic chartreuse text cover to save money.
“Where the actual first idea of doing a text cover came from was to save money,” Charli said in the interview. “I was like, ‘This album is not going to appeal to a lot of people.’ I was like ‘I think I will do a press shoot and maybe save on the album cover,’” she added.
Charli reflected on how she’s appeared on every one of her project covers except for her Vroom Vroom EP. “Everyone was like, ‘Well, that’s the stupidest idea ever.’ And I was like, ‘No, hear me out,’” Charli said. “Everyone, Brandon, my manager, my creative director, Imogen, all my friends, everyone was like, ‘No, not the text cover.’ And I was like, ‘No guys, seriously.’”
“It actually feels like it very much embodies the word ‘brat’ to kind of not be there because that is sort of less of the norm, I suppose, for female artists,” she added. “So that sort of felt punchy and the kind of pixelation, it sort of makes it look like it’s kind of been done in this sort of rush, [that] we didn’t get the proper high-res file. We did, but it’s like that’s what people think.”
Charli said most people in her core group had the “most adverse reaction” to the cover, and she liked the idea that the cover art would end up generating a conversation.
“I knew that a lot of people would be sort of frustrated or disappointed by it. And I think for me it’s like I would rather have those conversations, which actually in some cases became quite explosive, than a picture where people are like, ‘She looks good,’” Charli said. “It’s like I enjoy the conversation because that’s what I enjoy about music myself.”
“I enjoy the conversations that I have with [producer] A.G. [Cook] about whatever it may be, the artwork or the font of some release that we’re into,” she added. “It’s really fun to dissect that, and it was so cool that I saw so many think pieces written by fans, essays about the cover, and then later about the marketing.”
The blurry text cover and its bright green background have now become an intrinsic part of what has made her most recent album so iconic.
The new interview comes just days before she’s supposed to release Brat‘s remix companion, Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat on Friday. The LP is set to include collaborations with BB Trickz, Ariana Grande, Tinashe, The 1975, and Bon Iver.
Speaking with Lowe, Charli revealed more details about what her Grande collaboration of ‘Sympathy Is a Knife’ will be about.
“It’s hard for your words to be taken out of context, and then really feel like you can’t defend yourself because that would open another can of worms. ‘Sympathy Is a Knife’ the remix version is about recognizing that and understanding that you’re only knowledgable about your own position,” Charli explained. “I had felt that I had gone through a few interviews where I felt perhaps manipulated, and I never felt that before…”
“When I heard Ari wants to do something, this is someone who definitely knows this feeling more than me,” Charli added.