After a summer full of early morning walks back home from the club, going deaf from sneaking into the DJ booth, and spending your last $20 on lash extensions and cigarettes, Charli XCX’s army of “brats” weren’t sure that their livers or their wallets could handle another season of partying this hard.
There were rumors in the stratosphere of making the transition from brat summer to demure autumn, where perhaps we could all drink some water and get a full eight hours of sleep. However, the global pop phenom flew from Dallas on Thursday to make a brief appearance at the Storm King Art Center in New Windsor—after playing a sold out show to nearly 22,000 fans at the American Airlines Center the night before—to make the grand proclamation that there ain’t no rest for the wicked under Charli’s reign.
We are officially doing brat fall, and what better place to make such an announcement than the region that is world renowned for its glamorous and lively autumns—the Hudson Valley.
The pop-up event, which was announced via the pop star’s instagram story to her 6.4 million followers on Tuesday, was her official release party for her remix album, Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat, which was released on all streaming platforms on Friday morning. Charli’s post read “nyyyyyy i want to play you my new album 🙂 shall we go upstate?” Underneath, there was a link to RSVP, and within seconds, thousands of people from all over the Northeast had put in their information in hopes of getting a confirmation email, which more than half of the hundreds of people lined up outside Storm King’s main entrance did not.
Since the event was announced a mere 48 hours before the Storm King doors opened, and especially because it was at 3pm on a Thursday, many people had to take off work. According to an onsite Chronogram poll, at least half of the people in the unconfirmed line had skipped work, banking on the slim chance that they may be able to see Charli for free, amidst the biggest and most expensive tour of her career. Some had driven five or more hours to be there and an extra special fan by the name of Aaron Madaej had even chosen to skip meeting his newborn nephew to be there. He ended up getting in.
“I’ve been here since 12:30,” says Aram Rampers, a fan from Westchester who wanted to be the first person in the unconfirmed line. “I was in a BJ’s when I saw Charli’s post, and RSVPd immediately. I was really hoping they’d confirm people by zip code, but I never got a confirmation email.”
However, thanks to the sponsorship of Twitch, a popular online platform used to watch and stream digital broadcasts who partnered with Charli to host the release party, local fans who did not get confirmed—as well as anyone else around the world who felt like tuning in—were able to experience the intimacy and magic of the afternoon remotely. According to Twitch, the event was live streamed to 300,000 viewers.
At 3 pm sharp, fans were let in to Storm King. First, they let in family, friends, press and confirmed guests, and then there were a lucky few on the unconfirmed list who made it in. After the security checkpoint, guests either strolled or were shuttled through about a mile of pristine fall foliage and larger-than-life sculptures by 20th-century artistic titans like Alexander Calder and Louise Bourgeois. Right near the stage, local vendors were giving out free food and drinks, as well as commemorative t-shirts.
As fans gathered patiently near the stage, the original Brat blasted on repeat through the speakers. Finally, at 4:36 p.m., the crowd of a thousand people roared. The queen had arrived.
“We’re fine arts bitches now,” said Charli as she stood on top of the booth that was handmade for her by the production team at Storm King.
The booth was tucked in the corner of a lime green monolith, made to look like an open CD case. All along the inside were the names of all the new remixes, which includes features from other A-list musicians across a variety of genres such as Yung Lean, Ariana Grande, Lorde, Julian Casablancas, Bon Iver, Troye Sivan, and Billie Eilish.
The installation, which is going to stay up on the Storm King property as an immersive Charli XCX experience to promote her new album until Monday, did not include a barricade. Fans were pressed right up against her DJ booth, and could have reached out and touched her if they wanted to. But that’s the thing about Charli’s cult—they respect her. Not a single person acted rudely or out of place, no one yelled when she was picking songs off her phone to play, people even picked up their trash at the end of her set.
“I think the audience of people who want to come and do something immersive and amazing with a recording artist as interesting as Charli XCX are also people who, we believe, would really like to come to Storm King and have immersive experiences with lots of works by contemporary artists,” says Nora Lawrence, artistic director and chief curator at Storm King.
Lawrence and the rest of her staff are hopeful that the worldwide publicity from Charli’s event will bring a newer and younger audience to Storm King’s grounds. Though they didn’t explicitly say that Storm King was going to continue to bring big musical acts to their exhibitions, there was a sense of excitement in the air of the possibilities that lay ahead for Hudson Valley.
This article appears in October 2024.
