brat but it’s an analysis of streaming data so it’s not actually music
This one’s for all my data nerds who love Charli.
I analysed just how well brat is performing compared to Sucker (Charli’s last massive commercial success) and whether her remix album drop is likely to outperform brat itself over time.
Where did i get this data…
Short answer: Spotify.
Sat at my desk blasting 365 (obviously), I wrote down the stream count of every song in the brat releases, and Sucker, and put them in a spreadsheet.
You can see the raw data in WhyHive as a demo project - if you’d like to check it out make an account here and you’ll see the brat dataset when you first log in.
Disclaimer: I took this screenshot a day after the analysis so the stream count will already be a bunch higher let’s be real.
We know that Charli thinks about releases in terms of Campaigns rather than Albums (she’s a marketing genius - see recent interview here). So while Spotify lists every brat-related track under the album ‘brat and it’s completely different but also still brat’ — which, fair enough I get it — I’ve broken down stream counts associated with different stages of the brat campaign so we can visualise them in deliciously abhorrent shades of green and check out how they compare.
To keep things simple, I’m abbreviating the three releases like this:
Brat = brat (the original)
Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not = The bonus tracks
Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat = The remix album
Brat (the original)
360
Club Classics
Sympathy Is A Knife
Might Say Something Stupid
Talk Talk
Von Dutch
Everything Is Romantic
Rewind
So I
Girl, So Confusing
Apple
B2b
Mean Girls
I Think About It All The Time
365
The bonus tracks
Hello goodbye
Guess
Spring breakers
The remix album
360 featuring robyn & yung lean
Club classics featuring bb trickz
Sympathy is a knife featuring ariana grande
I might say something stupid featuring the 1975 & jon hopkins
Talk talk featuring troye sivan (vocals - dua lipa)
Von dutch a. g. cook remix featuring addison rae
Everything is romantic featuring caroline polachek
Rewind featuring bladee
So I featuring a. g. cook
Girl, so confusing featuring lorde
Apple featuring the japanese house
B2b featuring tinashe
Mean girls featuring julian casablancas
I think about it all the time featuring bon iver
365 featuring shygirl
Guess featuring billie eilish
Spring breakers featuring kesha
So how is brat tracking compared to Sucker?
Sucker is has been the album to beat in terms of Charli’s most successful releases.
The combined streams of all three brat releases sum to ~1.7b, while the total streams from tracks in the Sucker campaign sum to ~0.7b.
…just a casual billion stream difference.
So if you’ve been a Charli fan for years and you’re thinking “wow suddenly everyone’s talking about our girl” … you’re correct about that.
Is the wild success of brat just about the features from high-profile people like Billie Eilish etc?
The short answer is brat is a phenomenon unto itself. But I’m going to go ahead and communicate this with data now because that’s my love language.
TL;DR for this graph: brat (the original) alone crushes Sucker. Brat (the original) alone outshines Sucker by about 148%. So anyone who’s keen to attribute Charli’s recent success to piggybacking off high profile collabs… data says different I’m sorry (I’m not though).
But that’s not to say that it’s not doing incredibly well.
So is brat summer over?
Interestingly, tracks released under the remix album have amassed 44% of the volume of streams as the OG brat record - measured just 11 days after release.
Brat (the original) has been out for 19 weeks (137 days to be exact). So it’s averaged 8,371,190 streams per day. The remix album is averaging 46,389,631 streams per day. (Not considered is that singles were released for both records early).
Check out this graph below:
If the rate continues at this pace, according to my linear forecasting crystal ball (which any forecasting analyst will tell you is super limited) the remix album will outperform brat (the original) in terms of streams by November 9th. Lord knows what Charli has in store for us after that point.
Although to be fair - a lot of the streams from the remix album are attributable to Guess featuring Billie Eilish which has been out since the 1st of August.
Also - here’s a pie chart showing which tracks have been the most streamed from the original brat album.
So the moral of the story is for those who think brat summer is over, it may have only just begun. From recent interviews Charli seems to have an awareness that her future work will be compared to this campaign - and now is the time to climb even higher while she’s already on top.
I personally can’t wait to see what happens next.
Analysis completed on WhyHive (a dead-easy data analytics we made- think Canva but for your data)
- you can explore the Charli xcx dataset yourself here.
