Backstage at brat summer

Charli XCX’s manager Twiggy Rowley takes us behind the scenes on the cultural sensation of 2024.

To her Leeds friends, Twiggy Rowley (English 2014) is known as Katie.

They’ll remember her as someone who embraced culture, wrote about music and liked a good night of clubbing. Maybe they recall her mentioning Charli, a friend back home who had been DJing at warehouse raves since she was 14.

A decade on, that childhood friend went stratospheric and Katie was managing the campaign of the summer.

Charli XCX’s album ‘brat’ dominated pop culture, with chart-topping singles Apple, 360 and Guess streaming hundreds of millions of times. Charli’s look hit the streets, her arena tour sold out and Collins Dictionary declared ‘brat’ the word of the year.

Brands – including a US presidential candidate and the UK’s Green Party – co-opted the album’s shade of green and its fuzzy arial font.

Whether we knew it or not, we were experiencing the brat summer, which extended into the autumn and beyond. And Katie has been living it 365, 24/7.

The brat attitude, according to Charli, is “a pack of cigs and a Bic lighter. And like, a strappy white top with no bra.”

“You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes,” she explained on social media. “Who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like, parties through it, is very honest, very blunt.”

As Charli’s longtime friend, former housemate and manager, Katie watched brat change from noun to attitude. Back in late 2023 when Charli presented her fully formed, highly detailed ‘brat manifesto’, Katie was astounded. “It was essentially a brand bible which synthesised the ethos, the look, feel and references for the project,” Katie says. “It went down to details of the font, artwork, types of pose, music video directors, marketing beats and roll-out cadence.”

Everything was there for the team to develop the campaign’s parameters and goals and, subsequently, “pretty much everything Charli laid out in this document has come to fruition.”

Brat’s massive success came after years of Charli honing her musicianship and her management increasing their know-how. “Each Charli XCX release and each tour has been a step up from the last,” says Katie. “So for brat we dialled down on everything we’d learned as a team on previous releases.” When it arrived with its electro-pop-club belters, its “I want to dance to me” lyrics and au-point cultural references, the team jumped. “It finally felt that this was the project that we’d make no compromises on.”

The stage was set to dominate pop culture with an all-encompassing approach extending beyond music into film, TV, books, podcasts, scripts, fine art, media, press, fashion, digital spaces, AI/VR/AR, and the latest technology. Katie, along with co-managers Sam Pringle and Brandon Creed, are in constant touch with Charli’s longtime creative director, digital strategist, stylist and key record company associates.

“We’re in daily comms, with a near constant stream of message notifications. The majority of our work is in many ways conducted on WhatsApp,” says Katie, as their work extended Charli’s reign through a second, completely different, brat album and a sold out arena tour. Those messages would chronicle how the team enacted Charli’s desire for a sense of supply and demand and enabled longtime loyal fans to participate in meaningful ways.

Katie says: “we’ve had some fun with limited drops, special editions, surprise tracks on vinyl drops, hidden Easter eggs in music videos and membership clubs for exclusive events.” They’ve arranged video screening sessions, a Boiler Room launch party, online events, listening parties, pop-up DJ sets, a pool party, a ‘brat wall’ on the side of a New York building and even a sculptural installation.

But the beating heart of brat is, of course, Charli’s music, big personality and edgy look that the camera loves. Yet her photo doesn’t appear on the brat album cover, or on the follow-up remix album. “Charli always knew she wanted to do a font-based album cover,” says Katie. They explored all shades of green until they decided “on the most viscerally disgusting colour. Charli felt the one that provoked the most reaction was ‘the one’.”

Image credit: Henry Redcliffe

Indeed, it was. The look went viral in a far cry from the rave culture that it references. It's the club culture that Katie references too, as she thinks back to her student nights at Mint, The West Indian Centre and Beaverworks. “Leeds no doubt fuelled my love for music, nightlife and party culture as a means for expression, community and creative outlet.”

Fitting words, coming from the child of two Leeds graduates, Phil Rowley (Law 1983) and Heather nee Mabon (Medicine 1983), who met at le Phonographique in the Merrion Centre, their generation’s club of choice. “They’d both started at Bodington Hall, which was where I lived too in my first year, quite freakishly.

“At Leeds, it was so inspiring being around course mates who shared similar interests in art, culture, literature and music as me,” says Katie. She sees how her English degree supports her work as a manager. “You need to be able to communicate, interpret and be emotionally intelligent,” she says. “You need a sensitivity, a creative mind to work with true creatives and an appreciation and respect for creativity, community and storytelling.”

While Katie is sharing an incredible journey with her celebrity friend, she still cherishes friendships forged at Leeds. With her Leeds mates, at least, there are fewer urgent messages for ‘Twiggy’ to deal with.

“The nature of my job is very intensive,” she says. “It’s my friends from Leeds who can help remind me that I was also ‘Katie’ before all the current madness.”

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