If "Brat Summer" is indeed over, Charli XCX's pop takeover is just beginning.

The 32-year-old British pop singer, long branded pop music's Next Big Thing by wishful thinkers and cultural forecasters, finally experienced her breakthrough moment with this year's "Brat," her sixth studio album, which laid her hyper-confessional lyrics about her fears, vulnerabilities and insecurities over banging, off-kilter club beats.

The noise around "Brat" (and its heavily meme-able fluorescent green artwork) became so loud that CNN was having debates over whether or not Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was indeed "Brat" (and whether that was a good thing, and what it even meant), Taylor Swift praised the album, and Charli's pop peers Lorde and Billie Eilish hopped on remixes of the album's tracks. Former President Barack Obama even named "365" to his summer playlist.

But "Brat" didn't come out of nowhere. Charli, born Charlotte Aitchison, has been scaling the pop music mountain since the release of her debut album "True Romance" in 2013. And while she has had her share of success along the way — "Fancy," her collaboration with Iggy Azalea, hit No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in 2014, and "The Fault in Our Stars" ballad "Boom Clap" reached the Top 10 that same year — "Brat" marked the moment where everything came together and she met the moment she had been flirting with for more than a decade.

With the kickoff earlier this month of the "Sweat" tour, her co-headlining jaunt with Troye Sivan, here's a look back at some of the key tracks, fan favorites and buried gems that marked the rise of Charli XCX and paved the way for "Brat" and the dearly departed "Brat Summer."

'You (Ha Ha Ha)' (2013)

Flipping a giddy sample from Gold Panda's "You," Charli offers this spiky kiss-off to a noncommital ex on this single from her debut album, "True Romance." The album, named for the 1993 rebel love story starring Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, is full of moody, experimental, electronic bedroom pop, and "You (Ha Ha Ha)" is one of its liveliest moments, full of the kind of attitude, spunk and left-of-center sensibility that would come to define her as an artist.

'Superlove' (2013)

This non-album track, slated for Charli's second album but ultimately left off the track list, is hyper-caffeinated and punch drunk with love, with Charli cramming so many words into the chorus that is sounds like she's in a race against time. It's a fun, bubbly depiction of the euphoric rush that comes with an all-consuming crush.

'Famous' (2014)

Charli's second album "Sucker" took her in a bratty punk-pop direction which Olivia Rodrigo, who was just 11 at the time the album was released, must have studied and took to heart. "Famous" is about the teenage fantasy of going out and crashing a party, making a mess of yourself and having your picture taken by the paparazzi, just like the stars in the magazines, and its energy is dizzyingly infectious.

'Rollercoaster' (2015)

On his way to becoming pop's most important, in-demand producer, Jack Antonoff had female singers cover every song on his band Bleachers' debut album "Strange Desire," and Charli's sultry vocals bring the rip-roaring "Rollercoaster" to life in a way that Antonoff never could. The pair wound up touring together on 2015's Charli and Jack Do America Tour, and Charli seemingly has a job waiting for her as a frontwoman of a rock band should she ever want it.

'Vroom Vroom' (2016)

Charli teamed with deeply avant-garde electronic music producer Sophie for this darkly bracing piece of whiplash pop, which is so jarring it twists you in knots as it comes speeding at you like an out of control Ferrari. For Charli's believers, this was the watershed moment that proved she really was alt-pop's bleeding edge, and her boundaries felt limitless. It still sounds futuristic eight years later, and it will still sound futuristic 88 years from now.

'After the Afterparty' (2016)

Once again it's Sophie, working alongside producers Stargate and Fred Again, and they liberally borrow from the "I Dream of Jeannie" theme song for this playful ode to partying and bouncing off the walls until all hours of the night. It's by no means hefty material but Charli, our Patron Saint of Partying Too Hard, laces her vocals with a sense of yearning that makes staying up until 4 a.m. sound like a spiritual quest. She parties with her whole heart.

'Emotional' (2017)

After her third studio album was scrapped due to an online leak, Charli retooled and released her "Number 1 Angel" mixtape, where she distilled and focused her sound and expanded her list of underground, underdog collaborators. The set has its share of club tracks ("Dreamer") and filthy come-ons ("Lipgloss," featuring the immortal Cupcakke), but "Emotional" is "Number 1 Angel's" sweetest moment, a ballad about two people promised to others who never quite share a moment but feel all the feelings associated with one.

'Don't Delete the Kisses' (2017)

Wolf Alice's dreamy pop ballad gets a makeover from Charli and Post Precious, who strip it down to its essence and inject it with a sense of heartache and longing not present in the original. Where AutoTune is often used as a crutch to mask human feelings, Charli has long used it as a tool, and here she employs it to extrapolate an extra layer of emotion from the song. She makes a lovely song even lovelier, and she makes it her own.

'Unlock It' (2017)

Charli's "Number 1 Angel" follow-up, "Pop 2," marked a turning point in her career where people started playing catch-up and began to validate the "future of pop" tag that had been hoisted onto her. "Pop 2," largely helmed by PC Music's A.G. Cook, was future-leaning and full of guests that shared her just-outside-the-mainstream pop aesthetic (Carly Rae Jepsen, Tove Lo, Caroline Polachek), and "Unlock It" is an annoyingly catchy earworm that latches onto your brain and refuses to let go.

'Cross You Out' (2019)

Sky Ferreira and Charli XCX both released their debut albums in 2013, and where Charli followed it up with albums, EPs mixtapes, remixes, loosies and more, Ferreira never properly followed up "Night Time, My Time." But she remains a towering cult figure in the pop landscape, so this collaboration on Charli's self-titled third album was an indie pop event, with the two songstresses meeting underneath a monolithic, crunching, metallic beat and bidding adieu to those they no longer need in their lives. It was likely a cathartic moment for both of them.

'Forever' (2020)

While many spent the pandemic learning to bake banana bread, Charli used the downtime to make an album in real time, documenting every step of the process online and in collaboration with her fans. The result is a time capsule of a very specific moment and mood, and "Forever" is a nakedly romantic love song, sung over a whirring instrumental that sounds like a chaotic first person shooter video game being played in the background.

'Yuck' (2022)

Charli herself is not a fan — she singled it out in an interview this year with The Face, calling it a song "I would never listen to" — but this tongue-in-cheek lament about being so eye-rollingly in love that you make yourself sick to your stomach is the kind of humorous, catchy, dance floor-ready pop that Sabrina Carpenter is currently spinning gold (and platinum) from.

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