Hey y'all, DJ Louis here just dropping a preview of this week's Pop Pantheon All Access episode

in which Russ and I are digging in to Charlie XX's surprising sixth studio album,

Brat.

If you enjoy this snippet and you want to hear the rest of this episode plus weekly bonus episodes

of this show, you can subscribe at patreon.com slash pop pantheon, click the link in the show notes of this

episode, or subscribe for the audio only directly in the Apple Podcast app. So here's that clip.

Given what we had heard prior to Brat, heading into your first listen, how are you feeling about it?

Well, I would say that these songs felt a bit like a head fake now having

heard the rest of the record. And also, again, I mean, I think a problem we seem to be

bumping up against a lot in talking about Charlie albums is like the very explicit way in which

she attempts to frame these albums. Like, she has a very clear sense of how she wants you to think about them.

I mean, that was what we were just talking about in terms of the kind of incessant and borderline

annoying campaign around Crash being this mainstream pop pivot.

Annoying to some, I loved.

But it was incestined.

Yeah.

Like, it was definitely, like, she was making a really big point about it in a way that again,

I think like has been bought into narratively more so than like if we put some of these songs actually

directly next to each other. Again, she kept positing this as a dance record, which also again,

I feel like maybe something I'm unpacking as we're talking is that like I find Charlie's like framing of albums like a little bit annoying because I'm kind of like either she's bad at it or she enjoys confusing people because I mean with this one I'm more in the latter camp.

Like I think she meant to confuse us somehow because she kept saying this was a dance record and she knows how her audience is going

to receive that. Like Charlie knows her audience is gay men. And if gay men here, you're making a

...