Though “BRAT” summer has come to an end, Charli xcx wasn’t about to let her surge of fame dissipate. She released her remix album “brat and it’s completely different but also still brat” on Oct. 11 and it’s only allowed more people to discover her severely underrated musical genius in the short time it’s been out.
The difference between the original version of the album and remix version could be a whole dissertation in and of itself. I’m only talking about one song.
“I think about it all the time” is one of the slower, more gut-wrenching songs on both the original album and the remix album. Some songs on the remix album cover different topics than their original versions (like how the first “Everything is romantic” is Charli romanticizing and appreciating her life with the small amount of fame she had and “Everything is romantic” featuring Caroline Polachek on the remix album is Charli struggling to enjoy her life and live in the moment and she’s asking Caroline for advice after she became so much more famous from the first version of “BRAT” – omg a lyrical genius).
Both versions of “I think about it all the time” talk about Charli deciding when to have kids or whether to have kids at all.
Let’s start with the original version and talk about the context of the song.
Charli recently got engaged to producer and drummer of The 1975 George Daniels. Charli is also a pretty intense party girl. In addition to her high energy shows and DJ sets, she is drug user (what do you think “when I’m in the club, yeah I’m bumpin’ that” means?) and smoker.
She works hard and her lifestyle is hard on her body. So maybe that’s one thing on her mind when talking about when or if she should have kids.
But what the song mostly focuses on is the time she has left to have children. It’s no secret women have a biological clock ticking constantly. The best time for women to have healthy children is from your 20s to your early 30s. Charli is 32.
Over and over in the song Charli repeats, “I think about it all the time, that I might run out of time. But I finally met my baby, and a baby might be mine.”
Charli feels that she has finally met someone she would consider having a baby with but doesn’t know if she is ready to have a baby. She’s also worrying about that biological clock; will she have enough time to have children and continue her successful career?
Later in the song Charli mentions how a pair of her friends just had a baby. She talks about how happy they seem and how they are already great parents. She talks about how now they know things she doesn’t and she’s watching her friends’ lives change in a way she has yet to experience.
Now on to the remix version with Bon Iver.
After releasing “BRAT” (the OG version), she has had time to reflect on the immense amount of success and fame it brought her. In other songs she talks about how grateful she is for it. In “I think about it all the time” featuring Bon Iver Charil reveals that she already feels that another significant chunk of her time has run out. Not only did she release two albums she has done promo for both and gone on a nationwide tour with an international tour not far behind.
In this version Charli talks about having a conversation with her fiancĂ© about them trying to plan out their future. But she says they both felt guilty for even thinking about stopping work because “you’re not supposed to stop when things start working” she sings.
Charli saw a crazy boost in success and fame after the release of “BRAT” and often in the music industry artists are encouraged to keep going when they are doing well so they don’t lose that momentum. Attention spans have dropped way down, and everyone has such an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality. Charli and George both feel guilty for thinking about their future when their number one priority now is working and continuing to produce music.
While I do find it hard to sympathize with big artists, I think we do sometimes forget that producing and promoting music is their livelihood.
Okay, now that you know the important context of the song and Charli’s reason for writing, allow me to address the title of the article and my connection to the topic.
So, I don’t think about it all the time – “it” being having children.
To be fair, I am only 20 so of course I really shouldn’t be thinking about it at all. But I have friends that are already thinking about their futures in that way and planning where they want to be by the time they have kids.
But I’ve known for a long time, like before I started 10th grade, that I don’t want kids.
While “I think about it all the time” is not my favorite song on either version of “BRAT” (“i might say something stupid” featuring The 1975 fans rise up!), I do feel a weird connection to it in a unique sort of way.
I never think about having kids. What I do think about is my friends having kids and having this whole other part of life I won’t understand. My life will look so different from so many of my friends’, I sometimes wonder if we will still have anything in common.
I also think about people’s judgments of me when I say I don’t want to have kids. Having a child and becoming a mother is a woman’s true purpose (please tell me you get my sarcasm and reference to Harrison Butker’s horrific commencement speech).
People tell me I will change my mind and when I’m older I will want kids.
“You’re just too young to understand!”
No, I’m not.
And not wanting kids has nothing to do with how my parents raised me. I couldn’t have asked for more loving, thoughtful, caring parents.
I was raised to believe family is the most important thing overall. And I do believe that. While money is essential to life, it is not everything (a concept lost on many).
But family to me doesn’t mean someone you pushed out of your vagina. Family is the people that love and care for you, blood-related or not.
I look at the way my parents raised me, and all they sacrificed for me, and I know for the career I want and the life I want to live, I couldn’t do that for my own kids.
And maybe it’s controversial to say, but I think I would resent my kids if I had them. They would stop me from my dream life.
But instead of being a terrible, mean, or absent mother, I’m being proactive and deciding not to have children.
Being a journalist means your time is not your own. You are at the mercy of the news. You serve the public before anyone else because the public relies on you to stay informed. Even when not on the clock, journalists are on the lookout for breaking news so they can be first to cover the story.
I can’t very well cover breaking news if I’m changing diapers and wiping noses, now can I?
And my dreams of being a foreign correspondent would be impossible with kids, especially when they are young. Constant travel is tough on kids. You can’t bring a baby to a war-torn country either, or interview refugees with a crying toddler on your hip.
I’ve never, ever been a big fan of kids and pretty much anyone that knows me knows that.
So, while I don’t relate to Charli for thinking about when or if I should have kids, I do relate to her watching her friends’ lives change without her and feeling a bit guilty at times for prioritizing my career instead.