Kamala Harris is ‘brat’: My mission to discover what the Charli XCX meme means

British singer Charli XCX has ignited an explosion of memes that have made Kamala Harris seem cool to the young generation

How’s your summer? I know, it’s been drearily wet and the barbecue’s stayed firmly under wraps. The Euros were terrible and Marvel’s all but killed cinema. And before long we’ll be arguing with the kids in shopping malls over skirt lengths and trainer branding as the new school year looms.

Oh for the carefree joys – and the career turbo-boosts – of a “brat summer”. What’s one of them? Ask Charli XCX, the pop star, and – surprisingly… no, what-the-actual – ask Kamala Harris, the woman bidding to become leader of the free world.

Confused? But also intrigued? Me too. For how can a British singer of musical genres variously described as “dark wave”, “witch house” and “avantpop” – a 31-year-old who I’m guessing in her teens had lots of arguments over skirt lengths and probably won the lot – be influencing style, strategy and possibly even the outcome of the US presidential race?

The easily assimilated facts for anyone like me – who remembers that Phil Collins moonlighted with a jazz-rock band called Brand X and bought a few records by XTC but was irritated by The xx’s moniker being lowercase before David Cameron declaring himself a fan ruined their cred – are these…

‘kamala IS brat’

At the beginning of June, Charli – real name Charlotte Aitchison, Cambridge-born and Essex-raised, the only child of a flight attendant and a show booker – released her sixth album, Brat. As usual, the reviews were great. From the start she’s been a culty name to drop and I’ve always suspected that older, male critics fancied her while simultaneously being quite scared of her. Me, I’m rigorously objective and completely dispassionate about attractive young women in pop (Liar – Ed.) but bursts of her clubbing cacophony leaking from my teenage daughters’ bedrooms suggested it wasn’t really for me.

I didn’t think Charli XCX was really for Harris either, going by those social media clips of her record-shopping for Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Charlie Mingus. But then Joe Biden bowed out and Charli posted “kamala IS brat” and her interesting but small pop world, and Harris’s near-invisible veep world, collided spectacularly.

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Publicising the album, Charli, as she invariably does, gave good quote. Brat, she explained, is an aesthetic and a lifestyle. “You are just that girl who is a bit messy and maybe says dumb things sometimes, who feels herself then maybe has a breakdown but just parties through it,” she said. “The girl who goes to a rave and she’s wearing a white strappy vest-top and you can kind of see her nipples through it and she’s sweaty but she’s hot and she’s dancing with her friends. Just, like, a pack of cigs and, like, a Bic lighter and, like, the top with no bra – that’s, like, kind of all you need.”

Pink and green

But it would have been a stretch to classify “brat” as a movement or “brat summer” as a phenomenon. It was all fairly underground, along with everything else in popular culture understandably, while Taylor Swift bestrode the world in those June weeks of the all-devouring Eras tour.

That all changed with Charli’s endorsement of Harris who promptly loved her right back, changing the font of her campaign header to match Brat’s sleeve and adopting its shading, the puke green which makes for such shocking contrast with Barbie pink. Or at least someone in her team did this.

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You wonder if while travelling the campaign trail, Harris has turned off Ella and Louis singing Porgy and Bess to listen to the Mercury Music Prize-nominated album. I have, right through, and the lyrics back up Charli’s manifesto: “Sewer slut’s the vibe… 4am out there, razor-sharp tongue stuck to skinny cigarettes… you’re all about writing poems but I’m about throwing parties…”

Perhaps Harris won’t listen and maybe she shouldn’t. If she were to cast off those power suits for a vest-top and not much else, embracing everything about brathood, Donald Trump would definitely win. But Harris doesn’t have to do anything more than she’s done. The brat constituency, which she is now helping grow, is taking care of the rest with an explosion of memes, conferring a cool quotient on the Democrat among the young – in this case Gen Z – that Republicans have often sought from the music world but rarely enjoyed.

Ronald Reagan used to shuffle on stage to Bruce Springsteen’s anthem “Born in the USA” while claiming to share a vision of the American Dream with The Boss. Springsteen profoundly disagreed. Trump briefly adopted “Macho Man” until the Village People hit him with a cease-and-desist notice.

Sexy It-girl backing

Harris, though, has had political commentators and academics scanning Charli’s songs for relevance to the former’s persona and career thus far. Some of this seems fairly tenuous, but Harris is being reappraised as “a woman of contradictions who can choose her own path and set her own agenda” and, similar to the brat, becomes “the unexpected leader, the unexpected winner”. Harris bloopers previously exploited by Republicans are now being turned by supporters to her hoped-for advantage as evidence of authenticity. It remains to be seen whether the brat-memes will translate into brat-votes but Trump must be worried.

What about here? Are British politicians wishing they had a sexy It-girl backing them? It’s a long, long time since the Conservatives could count on the support of any female pop star – not since Lynsey de Paul coo-ed “Vote Tory, Tory, Tory for election glory” way back in 1983. But maybe the two women in contention for the party leadership will emerge with edgy makeovers – as Priti Brat-el and Kemi Brat-enoch.

Meanwhile, because I’ve been immersing myself in Charli’s album, there are two teen girls who’re hopeful that parental attitudes to partying are about to be relaxed. Sorry, but you’re not going out dressed like brat.