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Every week, Consequence’s Songs of the Week column looks at great new tunes from the last seven days and analyzes notable releases. Find our new favorites and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist, and for other great songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Charli XCX and Bon Iver’s collaborative rework of “I think about it all the time” is even more poignant than the Brat original.
A Bon Iver and Charli XCX collaboration might not seem intuitive; Charli’s saturated, high stakes turbo pop, especially on Brat, is quite different from the more patient, folk-induced majesty of Bon Iver. But they meet in the middle for a rework of “I think about it all the time,” the original Brat’s existential peak and one of her most compelling songs yet.
As you’d expect with Justin Vernon in the room, the new track blooms with tenderness. While the production on the original felt almost shockingly immediate, Vernon and producers Easyfun and A.G. Cook allow for much more space and reverb to emphasize Charli’s internal panic. The synths yearn, Charli’s voice softens, and Vernon acts as a crooning chorus, punctuating her musings with his own emotional reflections.
“I think about it all the time featuring Bon Iver” is so poignant because Charli deepens her initial investigation into motherhood, aging, love, and her career. Where the original felt like the direct aftermath of a joyous-but-complicated visit to a friend who had become a new mother, the rework is much less about “they both know these things that I don’t.”
Instead, Charli dials up the urgency and wrestles with the idea that while she has “found love” and “found peace” with her partner (The 1975’s George Daniel), motherhood is appearing to be totally antithetical to her life and career at this moment. “Me and Gеorge sit down and try to plan for our future/ But there’s so much guilt involved when we stop working/ ‘Cause you’re not supposed to stop when things start working, no,” she recites in the first verse.
Later, she recalls a line from the original about the aforementioned new parents, but changes it to “And I’m exactly the same, but I’m older now/ And I got even more stress on my body.” To develop these ideas even further, Charli and Vernon call upon Bonnie Raitt’s “Nick of Time,” which follows a similar arc of Raitt feeling secure and blessed to have found love, but unsure if she wants to expand that love into motherhood. Raitt’s original line “Scared to run out of time” pops in and out of the track’s loaded atmosphere, mirroring Charli’s own urgent inquiries; both Raitt’s and Vernon’s voices become soothing, grounding ingredients for Charli’s anxious internal debate.
When all three appear together in the song’s shimmering bridge, they channel a softhearted warmth not always found in Charli XCX’s multi-genre explorations. Indeed, this is what Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat is all about: taking strong, already intriguing ideas and advancing upon them, showing that as an artist, there is always a deeper well.
— Paolo Ragusa
Associate Editor