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Charli XCX’s Brooklyn Brat Show Had Live Debuts, A Lorde Appearance, And Matty Healy Seemingly Announcing He’s Engaged

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On Friday, Charli XCX released Brat, and it’s immediately emerged as a consensus critical pick for album of the year. Right now, Brat is projected to debut at #1 on the American album chart, which is way higher than Charli’s ever been over here. (The UK chart-topper Crash, her last album, debuted at #7 over here, and that was her first time in the American top 10.) If Brat really does go all the way, it’ll break the seven-week chart-topping streak from former Charli tourmate and possible Brat side character Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department — though another bonus-track release of Tortured Poets could complicate that story.

Charli has been doing a whole lot of promo work to get the Brat front of people’s faces. On Friday night, she played a DJ set in London. On Monday, when she was on vocal rest, she did a signing at Rough Trade NYC. Tonight, she’ll play Chicago. And last night, Charli played a big-deal Brat record-release show in Brooklyn.

The New York Brat show was originally scheduled for the Knockdown Center in Queens, but Charli moved it, telling ticket-buyers, “the show i want to put on has evolved significantly from what we originally booked, so we need to move to accommodate.” From all available evidence, the show really was elaborate, with a big light show and a setlist full of live debuts. Brooklyn indie-sleaze revivalist the Dare, who co-produced the Brat bonus track “Guess” and who’s mentioned in the lyrics, opened the show.

“Guess” is one of the tracks that Charli performed live for the first time at the Brooklyn show. The others were “Spring Breakers,” “Rewind,” “Girl, so confusing,” “Talk talk,” “I might say something stupid,” “Apple,” “Mean girls,” “Sympathy is a knife,” and the “Von dutch” remix with Addison Rae. Charli sprinkled a few of her old favorites into the setlist — “Track 10,” “Unlock It,” “1999,” “Speed Drive,” “Party 4 U,” “Vroom Vroom,” Icona Pop’s Charli-written “I Love It.” But the Brat tracks were the focus here. Charli performed every track from the album, as well as two of the three bonus tracks. The whole night, Charli was the only person onstage — no DJ, no musicians, no dancers, no Addison Rae. In the videos from the show, you can see the fired-up crowd singing along with every song.

As far as anyone knows, Taylor Swift was not in the Brooklyn Paramount last night, but a few other possible Brat side characters were. Lorde is widely believed to be the subject of Charli’s song “Girl, so confusing,” and if that’s the case, the song isn’t entirely complimentary of her. But Lorde made a statement of support when the album came out, and then came out to Brooklyn for the show. At this point, nobody can question Lorde’s love of Charli, since it’s hard to imagine flying from New Zealand to New York just for appearance’s sake.

Matty Healy, who’s in the 1975 with Charli’s financé George Daniel and who’s alluded to on Brat, was also at the Brooklyn show, though he was watching soccer on his phone for at least part of it. He was there with girlfriend Gabbriette, a model and former member of the Charli-protege girl group Nasty Cherry. On her Instagram story, Gabriette posted an image of a ring on her finger with the caption “MARRYING THE 1975 IS VERY BRAT.” Healy re-shared that image, implying that the two of them are engaged.