‘Left me stunningly bored’: Brat, by Charli XCX, reviewed

I don’t doubt the ingenuity. The mastery of a technology which now exists as a substitute for melody, heart, soul, rhythm and meaning. I get the manifesto, too – a pop music that in a certain shallow sense reflects the modern predilection for meta-fiction: novels which mash up all the genres, so that your detective story suddenly becomes magic realism and a little later, sci-fi.

I understand, too, that this is probably the closest our Gen Zers have to a music which they can call their own, given that the technology required to produce it would cause an embolism in a Gen X listener or a Boomer. So I get all that. The trouble is, what if, when all is said and done, it’s basically rubbish? What if it’s essentially just run of the mill modern EDM with a wholly unwanted nod to that most awful (musically) of decades, the 1980s? Lots of autotune, a wash of synths, the usual synthetic beats, 12 producers and a reasonably agreeable ‘f-you’ attitude: hyperpop, then, with Charli XCX’s longtime muse, AG Cook, overseeing the whole thing.