In a surprising trend, a viral pop music meme featuring Charli XCX’s immensely popular album “Brat” may bolster Kamala Harris’ election campaign.
Politicians have long used pop culture and celebrities to gain relevance among voters, especially those of a younger generation. With Kamala Harris entering the U.S. presidential race, her cultural power has come in the form of an unexpected yet welcome trend: Brat summer. Arising from British pop singer Charli XCX’s latest and hottest summer album, Brat, the trend has given rise to a number of remixes and memes, which have recently featured none other than the U.S. Vice President and new presidential candidate, front and center. But what is Brat summer (a concept that might elude older audiences) and how is it bringing Kamala Harris’ election campaign closer to young voters?
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The Start of Brat Summer
To put it simply, “Brat Summer” or “Brat Girl Summer” is a trend that came with the release (and popularity) of Charli XCX’s chart-topping summer album, Brat. With its incredibly simple, neon green cover and nothing but black text, the album took the world by storm with its catchy, fun, hedonistic electro-pop beats. Beyond that, its central themes and lyrics, which focus on the challenges, joys, and pains of womanhood and being an artist in the music industry also deeply resonated with many listeners.
The album transformed into a lifestyle almost overnight, giving way to the idea of a “brat girl,” someone who embodied its overall vibes and messages. In a TikTok video, Charli XCX herself described a brat girl as “just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it.”
Over the past few months, more than 40,000 videos on TikTok and 12,000 posts on Instagram have used the hashtag #Bratsummer, as Leah Dolan of CNN reports. Netizens have taken to posting videos of themselves dancing to the album’s songs, or using the tunes in remixes or memes.
Kamala Harris has become the center of such memes since her entry into the U.S. presidential election. When President Biden endorsed her, Charlie XCX took to X to write: “kamala IS brat.” This sparked a new torrent of video edits featuring clips of Harris’ memorable speeches and phrases alongside songs and visuals from the Brat album.
Embracing The Trend
The memes featuring Harris have gained millions of views, bolstering her election campaign in new and exciting ways. One edit with the song “Von Dutch” and Harris’ “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” line—taken from one of her viral speeches—garnered 4.2 million views and 4.1K likes on X alone.
The U.S. vice president has not only taken notice of the trend, but fully embraced it as a part of her cultural movement. According to Rebecca Jennings of Vox, Harris followed Charli XCX on Instagram and X soon after she made her viral tweet. The official rapid response X account of the vice president, Kamala HQ, currently has a neon green banner in the style of Brat with the words “kamala hq” on it as well.
Even The Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association jumped in on the trend, selling “demo(brat)” merchandise with the caption: “All the 365 party girls will be riding to the polls in their demo(b)rat shirts to elect Kamala Harris and Democrats up and down the ballot this November.”
A Promising Campaign
Though it’s uncertain how long this trend will keep up the momentum, and whether it will drastically change the elections, there’s no denying that it’s making its mark. As David Hogg, an influential school shooting survivor and gun control activist, expresses in an X post quoting Charli XCX’s viral statement on Harris: “The amount this single tweet may have just done for the youth vote is not insignificant.”
Being a woman of color, Harris has also come to embody the album in the way it explores the many facets of womanhood. “She’s the perfect candidate for the TikTok generation. I’ve gone so deep into the Kamala Harris YouTube archives, and there are just so many moments of her laughing and dancing,” explains Ryan Long, a 22-year-old behind many of the viral Kamala Harris Brat memes, to Jennings of Vox. “Kamala just brings new energy and the possibility of change. She does such a good job of embodying ‘Brat’ summer.”
Photo via Instagram @kamalaharris.
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