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Kamala Harris, “Brat Summer” and Charli XCX Explained

Charli XCX’s “kamala IS brat” post brought her album’s lime-green aesthetic into Harris campaign social media, alongside a separate viral coconut-tree meme.
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“Brat summer” began as the identity around Charli XCX’s June 2024 album Brat: lime-green, club-minded, deliberately messy and self-assured. In July, after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris, Charli posted “kamala IS brat.” Harris’s campaign then borrowed the album’s green-and-lowercase look for its Kamala HQ account. The moment joined pop culture and campaign social media, but it was not a formal campaign endorsement or evidence that memes changed votes.

What does “brat summer” mean?

Brat is Charli XCX’s album, released in June 2024, and “brat summer” became shorthand for its aesthetic and attitude. The album cover’s vivid lime green became an instantly recognizable visual cue; the phrase extended beyond the record into a broader online style.

In a July 2024 interview reported by The Guardian, Charli described a brat as “just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it”. CBS News characterized the album’s themes as edgy fun, partying and the messy parts of being a woman. These are descriptions of a cultural persona, not a checklist for judging someone.

The word’s reach outgrew the album reference. In November 2024, Collins Dictionary named “brat” its Word of the Year and defined it as “characterized by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude.” Collins said “brat summer” had become “an aesthetic and a way of life,” according to the Associated Press. Collins’s monitoring database covered 20 billion words; that figure describes the scale of its corpus, not the album’s audience or reach.

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How did Charli XCX connect “brat” to Kamala Harris?

On July 21, 2024, Biden announced he was ending his reelection campaign and endorsed Harris. The next day, Charli posted the short message “kamala IS brat.” ABC News and The Guardian reported the post on July 22 and 23, respectively. Its brevity invited interpretation: it applied the album’s cultural shorthand to Harris without spelling out a policy position or a campaign endorsement.

Harris’s own online visibility was already growing. As the CBS News report updated July 23, 2024 noted, TikTok had more than 101 million views and 9,000 posts under #kamalaharris over the preceding seven days. That is a dated snapshot, not a current total or evidence of electoral impact.

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Why was the campaign using Brat-like green?

After Charli’s post, the campaign’s Kamala HQ account adopted a lime-green backdrop and lowercase lettering that echoed the Brat cover. The Guardian reported the change; ABC News described the “kamala hq” banner and green background as styled after the album cover.

This was campaign branding borrowing a recognizable pop-culture look. It did not make Brat a campaign soundtrack or connect the album to Harris’s policy platform. Online fan edits and memes were a separate strand of the moment: creators were remixing Harris clips and campaign imagery with music and the album’s aesthetic.

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What does the coconut-tree meme have to do with it?

Harris’s coconut-tree remark came from a 2023 speech, not from a Brat lyric or the 2024 campaign. She was recounting her mother’s reminder about how people are shaped by their circumstances. As quoted by ABC News, her mother asked, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” Harris followed with, “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

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After Biden withdrew in July 2024, the clip resurfaced as Democrats rallied around Harris. Editors recut it with other Harris material, sometimes pairing it with Charli’s music and Brat-inspired visuals. The Washington Post’s July 22 account traces the clip’s circulation; ABC News and The Guardian describe the wider mix of campaign posts and fan-made memes. The joke traveled because the line sounded unusual out of context, while the full remark was about the importance of context itself.

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Was Charli XCX endorsing Harris?

“kamala IS brat” was an affirmative social-media post, but it should not be inflated into a formal campaign endorsement or a claim that Charli’s music was designed as political messaging. In an interview reported by the Los Angeles Times on August 26, 2024, Charli said, “I’m not Bob Dylan, and I’ve never pretended to be,” and “My music is not political. … Everything I do in my life feeds back into my art. Everything I say, wear, think, enjoy — it all funnels back into my art. Politics doesn’t feed my art.”

She also said, “To be on the right side of democracy, the right side of women’s rights, is hugely important to me,” and “I’m happy to help to prevent democracy from failing forever.” Taken together, those remarks distinguish her views and public actions from a claim that the album itself was political. The post’s effect on campaign branding and audiences is a separate question from the artist’s intended meaning.

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What the viral numbers do—and do not—show

Contemporary coverage documented substantial attention to Harris memes, but views and likes measure engagement with posts, not persuasion or votes. CBS News reported that one Harris meme had more than 2 million views and more than 500,000 likes as of July 23, 2024. ABC News reported 3.6 million views for a fan edit, attributing the figure to creator Ryan Long. These are snapshots tied to particular posts and dates.

The Guardian also noted a reported $81 million in donations in a day after Harris announced her bid. That timing does not establish that the meme, Charli’s post or Brat-inspired branding caused the donations. The evidence supports describing an unusually visible overlap between music, fan remix culture and campaign social media—not assigning it a measurable effect on fundraising or election results.

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