Miles away from the Wells Fargo Center, where Charli XCX and Troye Sivan were set to perform their co-headlined Sweat tour, subway cars packed with hundreds of people decked out in lime green made it clear that Charli’s fan base had taken over Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

As Charli and Sivan descended upon the arena for their Sept. 25 performance, so too did thousands of fans embracing the “Brat” fashion aesthetic. “Brat,” Charli’s sixth studio album, sparked a cultural phenomenon over the summer, and its impact was on full display. Thousands wore outfits featuring pops of lime green with Arial narrow font text written across their chests, containing anything from notable lyrics to queer slang.

Before Charli took to the stage, Sivan wowed the crowd with his setlist, displaying his vocal range and high-energy choreography. Throughout the night, Sivan’s setlist intertwined with Charli’s, as the two each took turns on stage before eventually performing together. His setlist included hits like “My, My, My!” and “Rush,” but the standout moment of his set was his performance of “One of Your Girls.” While he sang the song, Sivan and a male backup dancer delivered suggestive choreography, complementing the song's themes of a complicated romantic dynamic between a gay man and a straight man.

While Sivan put on quite a show, make no mistake: this night belonged to Charli. Her rabid fan base and potent setlist turned a basketball arena into a rave venue from beginning to end, and her frenetic energy repeatedly sent the crowd into a delirious state.

Charli’s set began with her emerging on a platform after lime green “brat” curtains dropped to the ground, revealing her to the crowd. Easyfun’s unreleased remix of “365,” set to drop on Oct. 11, reverberated throughout the arena while strobe lights pulsated at a breakneck pace.

A standout moment from the early portion of Charli’s set was her commanding performance of “Sympathy is a Knife,” a song many fans believe is about her insecurities stemming from interactions with Taylor Swift. For an artist who often lets the instrumentals and the crowd do a lot of the heavy lifting, Charli noticeably raised her vocal intensity on this track. She powerfully delivered each line, capturing her frustration in making unfair self-comparisons to “this one girl [who] taps my insecurities.”

A key moment in the concert came right as Charli began to sing “Girl, so confusing.” Charli addressed the crowd by saying “You saw what happened last night,” referencing how Lorde joined her onstage to sing her verse during her Sept. 24 show at Madison Square Garden. Charli then acknowledged that Lorde was not in attendance this time around; instead, she implored the crowd to sing along during Lorde’s verse on her behalf. The crowd obliged, with practically the entire arena shouting out the song’s most well-known line: “Let’s work it out on the remix.”

Other standout moments from the middle of the show included Charli’s autotuned crooning of the “Everything is Romantic” outro, along with the “Apple” dance camera, which captured audience members performing the viral TikTok dance for the whole arena to see. As Charli closed out her solo portion of the night, she performed a triumphant rendition of “I Love It,” capping off a successful show with her most internationally renowned song.

For the grand finale, Charli and Sivan joined forces onstage one final time to perform their newly released remix of “Talk Talk.” The performance featured playful interactions between the pair, who have been close friends for over eight years. As the nearly two-hour pop culture spectacle came to a close, the arena erupted with applause for two of this year’s most impactful artists.

Charli XCX Takes “Brat” on Tour

MARIST CIRCLE