As you may have heard, President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race in a letter to the American people last Sunday, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor. But Biden wasn’t the only public figure whose writing would upend the campaign that day. Later the same evening, pop music megastar Charli xcx, whose most recent album is called “BRAT,” tweeted three words that also captivated American political discourse: “kamala IS brat.”
Many cultural commentators had previously observed that “brat summer” was already in full swing, thanks to the album’s massive success. But the tweet seemed to anoint Vice President Harris as a Gen-Z icon, prompting a burst of enthusiasm for her candidacy, particularly among young voters. Much of this took the form of memes and TikTok videos showing Harris against a backdrop that referenced the album’s cover art - which is just the word “brat,” in lowercase black letters, set against a bright green square.
To make sense of this complex pop cultural moment, we turned, as we often do, to Amanda Kehrberg, a Ph.D. candidate at Arizona State University who studies digital culture. She spoke with “The Show’s” Sam Dingman.
