what charli xcx's remixed brat album can teach us about writing

let's work it out on the remix...

Charli xcx brought artists across genres, from Bladee to Bon Iver, together to rework her ultra-iconic Brat album, pushing the boundaries of artistic reinvention. While she’s certainly not inventing the idea of a remix album (see: Radiohead’s The King of Limbs remix album TKOL RMX 1234567, or Björk’s Bastards, a remix album with songs from Biophilia, for example), Charli’s brat and it's completely different but also still brat feels… different.

I redownloaded Instagram this week, and despite being immediately reminded of all of the reasons I deleted it in the first place, I also felt grateful to witness the initial reactions of friends, artists, and other people I admire to “baicdbasb” (brat and it's completely different but also still brat, obviously). I was excited to see one of my oomfs’ excitement over the remix of Apple feat. the japanese house, one of my favorite artists. I loved seeing Instagram stories from friends who listen to various genres and artists sharing their favorite artists’ features. I was also pleasantly reminded of why social media apps like Instagram, despite their many issues, can be valuable.

Charli posted the following post on Instagram this weekend, and it got me thinking about writing. I’ve been stuck in a bit of writing paralysis lately, unsure of what is good enough to post, writing out half-baked ideas, continuously editing, and eventually abandoning dozens of drafts because they aren’t perfect. Something about this album, though, stirred something up in me. It’s not necessarily the evocative lyrics or emotional melodies as much as it’s the iterative elasticity of creating a piece of art, only to then completely rework it into an entirely new (but also still brat) product.

charli_xcx

A post shared by @charli_xcx

Of course writers write and draft and rewrite, especially for printed works like books or magazine/newspaper articles. But there is a freedom to platforms like Substack that I find underutilized and honestly, intimidating. Who’s to say that I make a post, go back and rewrite or rework it, and don’t end up hating the follow-up more than the original? Or that all of my many adoring readers don’t light their pitchforks and turn on me because they went back to reread a piece of mine, only to find it has been changed into something they only recognize as an echo of its original form? Luckily for me, and a lot of other small writers on this platform, I don’t see that being much of an issue. We have the freedom to regurgitate our work in a completely new way, or even go back and change original posts. We aren’t bound by publishers or the limitations of printing a novel whose words are unchangeable and final. Not only can we create prequels and sequels and follow-ups, but we can literally remix the ideas we’ve written as we learn more information and our perspectives evolve, into wholly new pieces of writing.

I fondly recall a small handful of high school and college English teachers assigning not only edits, but complete rewrites on projects that were lacking in some way, or even had merit but could have used a fresh perspective. I’m interested in trying that type of project again, especially with fiction.
I’ve been writing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for the past several months, and I’ve had so many ideas that I wrote out, only to scrap the entire thing just to come up with a new way to work the base idea into a completely different quest or character arc, leaving the skeleton of the first iteration. I love the idea of revisiting old journals or old posts, drinking in the perspectives we may be less familiar with now, and creating new works with a fresh lens.

While some of the songs on Brat and baicdbasb are admittedly very fun, lighthearted dance songs, Charli xcx has managed to capture millions of people with her art. What this album really showed me, though, is that art doesn’t have to be static. The ability to revisit, reshape, and reimagine our work is something that platforms like Substack, like Charli's remixes, give us. Creativity is not about perfection or finality— the process is half the fun, so why let it end when you click “post?”