Freshmen, many of you will take “THEO 100001: Foundations of Theology” this year. You have to take it at some point so why not now, right? For some of you, though, it will be not only your first theology course at Notre Dame but also your first theology class ever.
Who needs another x-number-of-stars review of “brat”? An introduction to exegesis — one of the core methods of theology which, in the right hands, can enable you to prove that something means anything you want it to — seems much more necessary, so instead of reviewing “brat,” let’s do theology to it.
We’ll start with “Club classics” which is obviously intended to be understood allegorically as a commentary on sacred scripture. Charli sings, “When I go to the club,” hoping we will catch her drift and realize that by “club” she means “church.” She then sings, “I wanna hear those club classics,” with “club classics” clearly meant to signify the gospel. Charli is right: when I go to the church, I want to hear the gospel. She was well catechized! When she then says, “I wanna dance,” this clearly a reference to the Catholic Church’s brief fling with liturgical dance — i.e. dancing at Mass — after the Second Vatican Council, and when she mentions wanting to dance to “A.G.” (not her producer, but perhaps an abbreviation for AuGustine?), “SOPHIE” (not the musician, but the saint and martyr Sophia of Rome no doubt) and George (not her fiancée, but the Catholic dragon-slayer), she alludes to the dance-like ecstasy of the heavenly banquet.
We are not going to engage with “Sympathy is a knife” because it is clearly a Nietzschean song and Nietzsche killed God or whatever. Hell, the lyrics could’ve come straight out of “Zarathustra.” In it, she rails against sympathy and pity — and by association, Judeo-Christian values and “slave morality.” A disappointing lapse on the part of Catholic writer Charli XCX.
“I might say something stupid” contains a passing mention to the healing power of the whole and entire presence of Christ in the Eucharist with the line “I get nervous, sip the wine.” “Talk talk” is about evangelization, the need to “talk, talk” about the good news with our friends and family. “Von dutch,” although the title might imply a Calvinist Dutch Reformed affiliation, is clearly about the “cult classic” Catholic Church as it mentions sacramental confession (“You’re obsessin’, just confess it” and “It’s okay to just admit that you’re jealous of me”). “Everything is romantic” is explicitly Christological—“Jesus Christ on a plastic sign.”
“Girl, so confusing” (specifically the version with Lorde, whose name invokes the first person of the trinity) is theologically rich on two levels Firstly, it exhibits an Augustinian, “Confessions” like sensibility. Singing “‘Girl, you walk like a b*tch’ / When I was ten someone said that,” Lorde—like the Bishop of Hippo—is meditating on her whole childhood and especially her adolescence in order to get a handle on her current spiritual state. Secondly, the song explores what it means to “work it out on the remix,” a way of speaking about penitence and forgiveness. One is reminded of David who, after killing and philandering, works it out (with the Lord) on the remix (Psalm 51).
Of course, the theological apex of “brat” is the hit track “Apple.” Its title instantly transports us to the Garden of Eden and points us towards its theme: original sin. Indeed, Catholics believe that “the apple don’t fall far from the tree” of the protoplasts. Charli borrows illness and rot imagery right from the dogma’s foundational texts, St. Paul and St. Augustine (“I guess the apple could turn yellow or green” and “I guess the apple’s rotten right to the core”). She touches on the inevitably of sin in our postlapsarian state: “I wanna grow the apple, keep all the seeds / but I can’t help get so angry.” The recurrent airport imagery represents the solution, removing ourselves from “the world” and turning to heaven in the way an airplane takes off from the ground.
Don’t worry about your theology courses too much, freshmen. If I can manage to squeeze all that out of a Charli XCX song, you can probably manage to squeeze it out of sacred scripture and sacred tradition.
