get a new favorite reference, baby

The 2020s have been a real trend particle accelerator so far—the Large Hadron Collider for quantum crazes, yr cottagecore and mob wife aesthetic and tomato girl summer and glazed donut face and hot rodent boyfriend. Unless you lived in a coastal metropolis, you used to have to wait for a monthly magazine to tell you what was in style. Now you can look at your phone and a bunch of people with filter-carved jawlines will speak to you like you're their friend and lie to your face about what's popular, and everyone will nod and smile and say, of course, it's Gay Boyfriend Summer, it's Zucchini Picnic Aesthetic, it's Iowa Writers Workshop Realness.

Cutting through all this noise was a particular shade of lime green and a snotty British voice, auto-tuned to hell and back, demanding the DJ play her music at the club, or else. Brat came out a year ago, and beyond its musical utility (party soundtrack) and social utility (making the world safe for doing bumps in public again) it immediately had undeniable cultural utility: everyone was on the same page again, the particles formed a wave. The sound of Brat was less a blaring synth than a collective sigh—thank god, thank god for monoculture.

A year of Brat and Brat still reverberates on the streets, way after the first verdant billboards first appeared. Especially visually—the ersatz Y2K mirage has held longer than I expected it to. My friend sent me a voice note last weekend after she saw someone on the street in L.A. who was wearing Von Dutch clothing that just didn't sit right. It was too clean, too out of the box. Their companion wore a baby tee that said SUPER POPULAR. "are you wearing a graphic tee ironically?" my friend texted. "with colored Sambas? and tiny baby glasses? and a bag with charms? SHOULD WE THROW A PARTY! Should we invite Stacy London?!!"

My favorite thing about Charli's Coachella set this year, besides being dead sober and watching everyone around me get cranked, was her imperious banter. If the screaming calmed or the dancing lagged, she shouted at us like an exasperated cheer captain (or, given her country of origin, more like an unimpressed Gordon Ramsey). "ARE YOU PARTYING FOR ME??" she crowed. I was deeply amused by how bitchy she was. Brat Summer had given her full license to boss her fans around, and she was loving it.

She was the perfect ringleader for our trend-fried times, even though she slagged trend-followers off on her album: "I'm your favorite reference, baby." "No style? I can't relate." Now even though she's trying to tell people to let Brat go, closing out her Coachella sets with a montage of other types of summers to try on for size ("Cronenberg summer", "Pulp summer", "Celine Song summer"), the meerkats are still tilting their heads this way and that, scanning the scrubland for the next song of the season, the next big moment. Where is it? Who will tell us what to do?

I would personally point wayward souls toward Addison Rae, for starters. Addison's was the first name on Charli's outro montage. She's been vetted by the Bratmother. Ms. Rae's debut album is a delightful little confection, as sweet as a Crumbl cookie, as refreshing (and ever so slightly toothsome) as bubble tea. You don't even have to like the music, though who among us doesn't love some vibey late '90s lounge-pop? At the very least, it'd make a great soundtrack for waiting in line for a new Trader Joe's mini tote bag colorway.

You don't have to like the music, but you can take inspiration from Addison's growth. Once trapped in Viral Star Hell, having starred in a spon-infested She's All That Netflix remake and been forced to show off her dance moves by the late night demon Jimmy Fallon, she has since gone to the pop culture mattresses. She's been studying the blade. She has sought out the source material. She has tracked the sound down to the original hardware. She has tried to develop some taste. It should be an inspiration to us all.

"Copy of a copy" is a banging Nine Inch Nails song, not what you should aspire to be. Charli's errant name-check of Von Dutch was meant to evoke the dizzy contradictions of the turn of the '00s, the moral impurity and cheap materialism: drunk driving in Beverly Hills, making the Kitson boutique open at 2am on a Tuesday. When I see people wearing Von Dutch now, they're just referencing Charli. Go back to the archives! Everything's there, no sense in stealing forgeries when the originals are available. Buy an old magazine, read an old blog, hell, watch an old Weekend Update from when Jimmy Fallon still had some light in his eyes and see what we used to lose our minds about. This current iteration of Addison Rae reminds me of Party Girl: yes, the beginning of the movie when Parker Posey's character consumes falafel and nice, powerful, mind-altering substances; but also the end, when she develops a deep understanding of the Dewey Decimal System and uses it to help her roommate organize his records. Better Partying Through Research.

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