How Charli XCX Just Revolutionized Album Rollouts

Okay, follow me for a second… we're going to get weird… I'm at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this summer, in the heart of Chicago, around a bunch of the dorkiest, least cool people to nominate Kamala Harris for president. And yet, everywhere I look there’s brat. Charli XCX had released an album with a cover that was initially widely mocked but grew to be the biggest branding phenomenon inspired by an album cover of recent times.

The merchandising around the simple lo-fi abrasively green album cover is hard to miss in any direction you look. Some say “demobrat,” some say “kamala is brat,” and some say “anti-brat” with pictures of politicians they don't like. I'm across from 77-year-old Hawaiin Senator Mazie Hirono, who I've just been introduced to, as I'm about to produce a segment with her on a podcast I produce. And she turns to me and looks me dead in the eye and says, "I'm brat."

My host and dear friend, Molly Jong-Fast, then turns to her and says, "Jesse knows everything about Charli XCX.... He has a tattoo of her." Which I do, and have had for years. She then tells me that her favorite song is "360," which is not the one Barack Obama chose to put on his playlist. That's the one about doing tons of cocaine in a dance club. After that, I explained to her that she has many songs, and I have her hit song from 2012, “I Love It” tattooed on me. I then start to ponder how the niche artist that was making music for cool queer kids just a few years ago ended up being so huge that this geriatric senator is telling me she is brat. The answer is the most revolutionary album rollout in years that will change how artists, whether DIY or massive, will release albums for years to come.

The Death of the Boring Album Rollout

Let's talk about the most boring album rollout strategy commonly used today. (I have already taken this on in a previous newsletter from the lens of Charli’s instincts, but this is a different discussion.) You know, the type you go to ChatGPT to solve for you, and it'll literally tell you this boring strategy, and then you'll get forgotten because you should not be listening to ChatGPT on things like this. Three to six months before release, artists drop a string of singles - usually, two to six seems to be the norm, with 8 being the max. While some of you are clutching your pearls (trust me, my audience wears tons of them), releasing eight singles is actually smart. When we do a postmortem look back at album cycles, it's very easy for those of us who can read graphs to see if we had released more singles, the splash would have been bigger. Actively feeding fans using algorithmic spread of more singles in time makes for more streams, more algorithmic connections to people, and more people who are in conversations around us, which increases how many people get alerted to the album.

The biggest question in album releases today becomes what to do after the album drop. I have dubbed this period The WTF Area since no one has any clue what to do here, aside from occasionally dropping another video, deluxe version, or remix album a year later. And maybe tour????

The Brat Timeline

So on February 29th (leap year, because why not), Charli drops Von Dutch - a focus track bridging her sound. Then we get a barrage: Addison Rae remix, b2b/club classic double drop, another Von Dutch remix, 360 as the breakout, and a Robyn/Young Lean collab. This is exactly what I mean about smart artists needing more singles - each release expanded her algorithmic reach to different corners of music. The Addison collab hit mainstream pop algorithms, Robyn got the dance heads, Yung Lean accessed the underground cloud rap world. More singles equals more algorithmic bridges to potential fans before the album even drops. This way, the album can get onto as many algorithmic-based playlists and YouTube browse pages as possible.

The Wall That Changed Everything

The Brat wall became this cultural beacon no one saw coming. Charli bought a billboard (coincidentally outside my gym, where, if you could see through it with x-ray glasses, you'd see me struggling on the rowing machine). The wall became a place where she constantly announced what was coming next. She did a DJ set and performance outside the wall, which she announced the day of. This kept fans on the edge of their seat, wondering what would happen next. In the following weeks, she used it to reveal the deluxe, features, teasers, and hints at what’s next that sparked serious conversations amongst fans.

brat And The WTF Area

What brat changed so much was The WTF Area. In normal album rollouts, before it comes out, the conversation is about what the record will be, and it switches to what it is post-release. But by releasing so many songs, remixes, and collaborations so close to the album’s release, it condensed the conversations around the record into a timeline that created a bigger splash in the pond of internet conversations. This caused a more significant ripple effect as the conversation continually evolved for a much longer period than usual. Artists like Lady Gaga take over a year to release remix records like Dawn of Chromatica, but when you are consistently releasing the most potent marketing tool (new songs) in a condensed period, you sustain the conversation rather than allowing the discussion to happen a million Internet years later when passion has died for the release. In a world where the conversations around songs are posted on TikTok, Reels, and YouTube, condensing the conversation allows the ForYou Pages to use their recency bias to surface to people who were previously interested in it and keep reminding them to re-up their relationship with the album.

The Contradictions ARE the Conversation 

So many of you have listened to a few too many entrepreneurial gurus (you know those dudes with the Gen Z alpaca haircut), and they tell you really basic, not based ideas on branding. They contend that if everything isn't aligned in a brand and controlled, the project will fall apart. However, the reality is that the contradictions and the chaos when it comes to artistry are often the conversation. Keeping fans on the edge of their seat and doing things they wouldn't expect gets them talking to their friends and talking online, and that's what spreads the word on an album. 

Charli's contradictions, including singing songs about doing key bumps or if she should have a child (which are polar opposites), were a big discussion. When Charli started rolling out her remix album with songs like "Guess featuring Billie Eilish" months after Brat’s initial release, her monthly listeners shot from 24.4 million to 46.5 million in a single month. That's what happens when you give people something to talk about and bring in more algorithmic connections. Is Charli’s “remix record” even one? It’s much more like a record in which she collaborated with other artists. There’s a contradiction that creates conversation.

That horned-up Billie Eilish track changed everyone's conversation about Billie taking things too seriously. When Charli wrote a song about Lorde, and Lorde “worked it out on the remix” of “Girl So Confusing,” the conversation amongst the girls and the gayz changed from it was “kinda fucked up to talk about her like that” to “look at how beautiful this friendship is.” And, of course, Charli's song "Spring Breakers" where she literally threatens to burn down the Grammys if they don't give her an award this year - that should be an interesting ceremony since she has 7 nominations - created yet another conversation

The New Album Marketing Reality

If you're a metal group, study what the neckbeards chatting at shows and online are talking about. Can you make orchestral alternate versions? Metal neckbeards love horror movies - can you create a low-budget horror movie soundtrack version of your record? If you're a folk artist, maybe do what the seminal emo group American Football just did and release a record of your buds covering your songs.

What matters is that you keep evolving the conversation around your record during those immediate few months after release. Can you make people hear it differently? Is there a version where you change the lyrics upon reflection? Maybe collaborate with another artist to get their perspective? The goal is to have this conversation as the record is digested and sustain it for as long as possible, not years later.

In a world where creators constantly talk about music and culture online, and friends have these discussions for months, being part of the conversation drives listening and learning about artists. The bigger the conversation, the more people are likely to see you as doing something important and to understand it.