"kamala IS brat"

brat

“Kamala IS Brat”. What is this about?

Well, first, it's important that you make a distinction. Kamala Harris is not “a brat”. She is just “brat”. Let me explain, because I saw this as a whole segment on Jake Tapper the other day and everyone on CNN was over the age of 40 and looked very confused. This is where I come in. I can explain what brat is. I lived brat long before brat became brat.

Brat. The name of the latest album by British LA-based popstar Charli XCX, released this summer with a very specific “aesthetic” (Gen Z language, but also literally applying to a particular font and color scheme – lime green). Brat isn't just songs and an album title. It's an aspirational lifestyle. Charli XCX has always been more like a generational muse than a headlining popstar, which is how she manages to oscillate between the mainstream and the underground. Charli is a genius, by the way. Anyway the lifestyle that Charli is speaking to on Brat is a revamp of the '90s ladette culture that spawned girl power and the Spice Girls, Denise Van Outen and Absolutely Fabulous. It's a revolution against health and wellness. It's lipgloss and Grey Goose and Redbull and memory loss. And it's very fun.

Charli XCX is fun. She says it all without saying anything really. Which is perfect bait for feelgood virality. And I mean that in the kindest way. Charli’s medium is music, and she’s not pretentious about anything beyond that. When Kamala HQ (an official Twitter account for the election) was launched after Biden’s bow out with the same font and lime green aesthetic as XCX's album, Charli tweeted “Kamala IS brat”, and subsequently Kamala Harris's official Instagram and X accounts followed Charli back. A phenomenon began that is quite hard to explain. Suffice to say, young people are going to vote in this election now and they're going to vote for Harris.

The days of Charli and I following each other online only ended in the aftermath of October 7, but it's fine. Weirdly I get it. I'm proud of Charli from a distance and will always admire her mind-blowing talents.

We met in 2013 on a photo shoot that I was commissioning at the NME. I wanted to do a gatefold cover (meaning a cover that folds out in two) called “Young Britannia” featuring all the exciting new acts in the UK, and I'd booked a studio out for the cover shoot over the course of two days, and invited all the bands and artists down. The shoot was simple. Blue background/jeans, white t-shirts, and the red of the Union Jack would be provided by a prop: fire extinguishers. Usually I was quite precious about which popstars were able to traverse the traditional rules of indie-only NME, but the ones that had some spunk about them were always worth testing out on the readers. This short kid from Essex with wild curls and big Spice Girls style PVC platform boots came in, picked the fire extinguisher up and sprayed it all over the place without hesitation, putting every one of the traditional indie blokes standing about not knowing where to place their hands to shame. It was punk. Her energy screamed anarchy for girls, instantly.

I listened to her songs after that, heard one called “Stay Away” that sounded like a digital gothic 2000s take on Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”, and I was in. Charli’s first manager also handled The Libertines, so it was part of NME’s family by association. It all made sense. I don’t remember a lot else from London apart from a few gigs, maybe an XCX headliner at Heaven, and the sparks of some cameraderie backstage. By chance, we ran into each other outside Shoreditch House just before I moved to LA, and by coincidence Charli was making the move too, and joked about me helping her shop for a mansion. She also may have been half serious, because soon the mansion had an inflatable palm tree in the living room, and half of LA was invited round to play.

Charli built a crew in LA by having these legendary house parties in Beechwood Canyon. There were regular attendees like Tove Lo and various other Swedish popstars, Troye Sivan, Carly Rae Jepsen, Rita Ora, Vampire Weekend, Diplo who was a neighbor, Haim, etc. And sometimes you’d see Sky Ferreira lurking in a corner, or I remember meeting Dua Lipa early on there, maybe even just as “Hotter Than Hell” came out. It was as I imagined Warhol’s loft parties must have been like, but even more off the wall. Charli breathed a lifeblood of possibility into the city, by bringing together all different sorts of producers, and muses, and writers. A scene that was genuinely exciting, but also neverending fun. The neighbors hated them. They went till 7am. It was amazing.

That first year in LA, I loved Charli’s then current album “Sucker” — even though she was never very satisifed with it. In 2014, she performed its best song “Need Ur Luv” on Letterman with Rostam, her regular collaborator and back then still in Vampire Weekend, on piano. The performance was a lightning bolt.

The album was performing well, so when she began touring it with Jack Antonoff from Bleachers, I went to meet her in Vegas at a Billboard Awards weekend to do our first big interview together for Vice’s music channel Noisey. I think the profile we did that day (excerpt and link below) remains one of the most effortless profiles I did on a popstar, simply because I wrote it after a 72-hour bender, before going to bed, and it flew out of me and was injected with as much bizarro humor as tender awkward moments, and because Charli and I got on like a house on fire.

As usual, the clock is racing. Tick-tock.

“OK, what am I saying on the red carpet? What am I wearing? This jewelry is Vivienne Westwood, right? Can someone order some Vodka Redbulls?” She slips into a 1930s vintage black gown. “You need a Vodka Redbull, too.”

In the background her team count down the minutes till the car arrives—each member racing to beat the other at their respective jobs. They include her NYC-based makeup artist whose dog has just got his own talent agent. “How does that work?” asks Charli. “Do get to keep all your dog's commission?”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/rkqbyn/pop-never-sleeps-48-hours-in-las-vegas-with-charli-xcx

For years after that piece ran, Charli and I hung out. She took me to my first SoulCycle class. I did a backstage diary for one of her videos that involved two back-to-back night shoots and a lot of zombie makeup. I’m in the background of an episode of a reality TV show she made for Netflix called I’m With The Band: Nasty Cherry, in which she helps build a girlband. We were part of a scene. She was as much a tastemaker as I was, and when I was trying to help promote and connect a breaking act like King Princess or MUNA, I’d send early links to Charli and bring them to the next house party. Things got a bit stale a few years ago. I was never very sure why. It was probably something I wrote… I don’t know that I was ever quite sure. But this type of thing tended to happen. People forget you’re still a music journalist. I’d never write anything bad about Charli. Charli’s music only got better, and her live shows should be on anyone’s bucketlist. When I look thru our old text threads, I don’t have any hard feelings, only evidence of great nights I don’t remember but feel in my heart.

Suffice to say, brat summer’s been brat summer for a long time. It’s just that the world’s caught up now.

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Something I used to hear a lot was: "You're the best."

"You're the literal best."

"You're literally the best."

"OMG you're the best."

I put myself on the line for people in a way that others in the industry simply didn’t. But the second I got cancelled, people didn’t know me. I never existed. The phone went dead. I’d text my friends and get nothing back — for months. Just ghosted. Or I’d see people on the internet calling me a genocidal freak and saying: she's the worst!

Liars.

Cowardice is collective. Let me tell you. People have not unfollowed you because they don't love/remember/know you. They've done it because they've been pressurized by the collective. A Jew represents bad ideas unless they are publicly denying their own peoplehood and supporting the destruction of Israel. That is the only way to be "safe" following or supporting a Jew in 2024. To know that they will sell out their own. Otherwise a Jewish person is a "bad look".

Between the years 2008 and 2020, I was very good for anyone's PR. I was the ticket. That's why I wrote dozens of covers and main features of magazines, websites and newspapers. NME. GQ. The Guardian. VICE. New York Magazine. Billboard. Pitchfork. ELLE. Wonderland. The Sunday Times. NYLON. Dazed & Confused. Not only am I a great interviewer and a solid journalist, I was also a tastemaker and it mattered to record labels if I liked their artist. I could move the needle.

Pop stars and indie bands sometimes met their producers and collaborators and support acts through me. I was a glue and a connector, and well regarded. Trusted. Liked. I was at parties because people loved being around me. I wrote so many cover stories for Time Out New York over the course of 2-3 years, it was embarrassing. I was like the Novak Djokovic of music and film profiles. Whether it was Andy Samberg or Maggie Gyllenhaal, or A$AP Rocky or Kirsten Dunst, or Alicia Keys or Future, I did the thing. My business on the side was crisis PR. That’s right. If someone was in a crisis, a crisis team hired me to come in and clean it up. My name on a well-placed puff piece could clear someone who had broken up a marriage or been exposed as a junkie. Can you believe it? Hard to conceive of now. When it came to doing major cover stories on new artists, those were often end goals after years of being trusted and on-board with the strategy of an entire team. I met Billie Eilish when she was 14. Three years later:

When I started to fight back against antisemitic rhetoric in the media, everything changed. My inbox shrunk. The artists in my contacts book started to unfollow my public pages. It had nothing to do with my character, my likeability, my talent, my track record. It was a result of THEIR character. THEIR cowardice. Cowardice is collective. If one of you is too scared to be openly supportive of a person's true character. Then all of you will. Until eventually, there'll be no conclusion to be reached other than that you too have a problem with Jewish people having diversity of opinion. You too have a problem with Jewish people standing up for ourselves.

Antisemitism is the tool of the envious, aggrieved and unoriginal. For those who see green because of our commitment, our artistry, our relationships and connections, our talents, our successes, our brains, our beauty, our contributions, our hearts… the easiest thing is to reach to antisemitic tropes. And I don't mean overt hatred of Israel. I mean by dehumanizing us, by subverting our true nature, by spreading lies about our character, by pouring poison into the ears of our beloveds and would-be friends and allies. Without antisemitism, they have nothing but what they started with. Better to learn from and be inspired by the Jewish people. A Jewish person is the most steadfast and mighty rock you could ever have by your side. We got you like nobody else got you. I championed so many artists in their nascent years, and I put myself, my reputation and my name out there to do so. There are a very large number of people who bore witness to that and who know it to be true. But they're too cowardly to admit the truth. I see people accidentally liking posts of mine on Instagram and then removing their like because they’re worried someone will see it. That’s a fear-based action and it’s sad. It’s especially sad from people who play music.

People hide behind the psych-babble talk of “boundaries” and wellness to justify cutting people out whose opinions offend them, or “traumatize”. It’s weakness. Wellness is toxic. It’s killing relationships, industries and systems. If you want to be happy and successful then trust your gut and follow it to the end. You don’t need a boundary in a healthy relationship with someone who might engage you in a challenging conversation or a difference of opinion. People have such strong “boundaries” these days that soon they’re not going to have any real relationships or friendships left. I shouldn’t be bad for anyone’s PR just because I’m a Jew. The collective did that by being cowards. I didn’t do anything at all. That lack of control is quite scary. But it’s their loss. Wellness and wokeness is damaging; it’s destroying perceptions of reality, and empirical understanding of who and what someone is. I always kept it “off the record” if I was asked because I valued longevity of relationships and building trust. People know. People know I was / am good for the industry. But not one artist I ever helped has come out and stood with me, or spoken to my character, because they are shitting it. Anyone who uses smear against a good assett in your life to usurp that thing is not around for the right reasons, but I am. I always was.

Maybe Kamala IS brat. But you know what’s really brat? Being Jewish and speaking out right now, regardless of the severity of the consequences. Loudmouth Jews are brat. Everyone has always seen me for who I am, until they're bullied by antisemites into believing that I'm someone I'm not. I’m brat. More brat than you. OG brat. So get in losers, because the Jews always win in the end. We’re gonna have a brat mitzvah.