As night fell on Saturday at Lido Festival, a crumpled lime-green curtain dropped behind Charli XCX, revealing one word in stark, identifiable Arial font: brat.
The crowd, 35,000 strong and dressed like a 2007 Tumblr page come to life, screamed with the abandon of people who had been drinking in the hot sun all day (they had).
A year after the release of her sixth and most critically celebrated album Brat, Charli returned to London’s Victoria Park for the PARTYGIRL edition of Lido Fest.
She curated the lineup herself: a mix of glitchy pop, downtown internet darlings, and off-kilter club icons including AG Cook, Magdalena Bay, The Dare, 070 Shake, The Japanese House, and Bladee.
The energy was messy, maximal, and the crowd was committed to micro shorts, Jaded London tops, and performatively smoking cigarettes.
Earlier in the day, The Dare nearly collapsed the festival’s infrastructure by pulling one of the rowdiest crowds of the day, with organizers having to close access to the tent, meaning the line outside stretched on like a Glastonbury mirage.
Food, bar, and toilet queues also became more than a little daunting as Charli’s set drew nearer, but the vibes never sagged.
And none of that mattered when Charli took the stage. Alone but never lonely, Charli delivered a set that was as minimal as a DJ gig but felt closer to a rave sermon.
Dressed in leather micro shorts emblazoned ‘XCX’ and a slime-green crop top, she writhed, twerked, and twitched through the entirety of Brat. It was minimalism by design – because any more spectacle would’ve been trying too hard for the queen of gritty nonchalance.
Charli isn’t pretending to be the cool girl; she effortlessly is. And even a single backup dancer or costume change would have diluted the DIY Dalston basement gig vibe.
If you’ve just come from Cowboy Carter or still have glitter in your hair from the Eras Tour, Charli XCX’s show might feel like a different species of pop altogether – raw, chaotic, and defiantly minimal. And if you’re not already fluent in the brat ethos, there’s a chance you’d walk away confused, maybe even a little underwhelmed.
But no matter what you expected, you surely enjoyed highlights like Amelia Dimoldenberg appearing onscreen to perform the viral apple dance. Bladee emerged for Rewind, and Everything is Romantic was performed under a perfectly bratty, bruised sky that felt like its own moment of set cosmic set design.
And when Charli inch-wormed her way across the stage during Sympathy is a Knife, a quick glance into the crowd revealed pairs of middle-manager types – weekend warriors in frayed denim and tiny sunglasses- making out like teens at an illegal warehouse rave. That’s the Charli effect.
She brings out the animal in the British public, and the repressed becomes reckless – it’s an effect worth more than any amount of backup dancers or moving set pieces.
English lads who normally apologize when someone bumps into them suddenly become bass-gobbling, beat-thirsty creatures with unearned confidence, while girls too shy to ask for ketchup at Nando’s suddenly flick ash off a cigarette in the smoking area like they invented cool.
Charli is the wave of ego that hits just before the comedown.
The show was stripped down, yes. But Charli was full power: gloriously hot, brusquely flirtatious, commanding without ever looking like she tried.
A visible bruise on her bum felt like an accessory, as if she’d been slammed into a speaker while chasing the night. Totally brat. Totally believable.
The set closed with a message on the big screen: ‘I thought Brat Summer was over… but actually it isn’t over.’
Then, more tenderly: ‘Would you hate me if I stick around? Because honestly I don’t know who I am if it’s over.’ And finally: ‘Please don’t let it be over.’
If you came expecting a summer album, you left with a life philosophy.
And just when we thought we’d collectively ascended, she brought out her 2012 mega hit I Love It, reminding us she’s been around a lot longer than that specific shade of green. The screams that erupted could have earned a noise complaint at Buckingham Palace.
Artificial rain then fell as Charli screamed Blame It On Your Love on a stage tilted so steeply it might qualify as a ski slope. She was literally upstaged by her own legend.
As the evening reached its crescendo, Charli proved that Brat isn’t just an album and it’s not (as often claimed by its critics) about being shallow or chaotic for chaos’ sake. It’s about surviving the end of the world with a cigarette in one hand, a half-warm vodka soda in the other, and a tiny top that says ‘try me.’
It’s political and nihilistic, sexy and strange, a bit self-aware and fully self-indulgent.
You can’t see brat, you just feel it. And in Victoria Park, you could feel it in your chest, your knees, your soul.
Charli’s victory lap at Lido Fest proved that she really is more than a summer fad – and she never needed anything more than a microphone to make her a star.
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