I SURVIVED SWEAT TOUR
When Spotify Wrapped came out the first week of December, it was no surprise that my top artist was Charli XCX. As I opened the app and watched the cheeky, laid-back video she sent to her top listeners, I smiled and reminisced on my trip to Washington two months earlier to see her perform live.
My California fingers were numb as I tried to pull up my digital ticket, nearing the entrance of the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington. The crowd was thick and buzzed with excitement, with one word stuck onto every person’s lips: “BRAT.”
Oct. 23 was the final night of the North American leg of “Sweat,” pop sensations Charli XCX’s and Troye Sivan’s co-headlining tour. “BRAT,” the album and general sensation of the tour, was arguably the soundtrack of the summer, with the Sweat tour bringing bodies to arenas all over the nation.
The tour included 22 shows, beginning in Detroit, Michigan and concluding in Seattle. According to “Touring Data,” a box score reporting company for concerts, each show was completely sold out and generated revenue of at least one million dollars.
Before Charli XCX and Sivan , the headliners’ supporting act Shygirl amplified the restless crowd, playing hits “thicc” and “4eva.” Fans began to scream as she strutted along the length of the stage and the general admission pit surrounding it, filled to the brim.
At 8:30 p.m. sharp, Sivan entered the stage and began his first set with songs “Got Me Started,” “What’s the Time Where You Are?” and “My My My!” After his three-song intro, the 29-year-old Australian singer took a break to chat with the audience and reminisced on the last time he performed in Seattle, nine years ago.
“Last time I was here I was too scared to look at the crowd, now we’re sold out,” he said.
As he thanked the crowd and walked off stage, the lights began to shift and the crowd became a ruckus of excitement for Charli XCX’s entrance, with her iconic Brat wall beginning to drop from the stadium above. Once the neon green sheets touched the stage, lights around the arena began flashing, resembling an alien spaceship beginning to land. The sheets fell, the hum of the stadium roared and the “360” intro began.
“What the fuck is up Seattle?” she said to the thunderous crowd.
The concluding show of the tour was a strong finish to a sensational summer of influence. Dubbed “one of the best pop albums of the year” by Pitchfork, Brat led a social media wave across TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Each show brought a swarm of videos and comments uploaded to social media, with over 76.5 million posts being uploaded to TikTok in relation to the Sweat tour.
Before this summer Charli XCX and Sivan held strong and dedicated fan bases but skyrocketed to mainstream stardom through Sweat.
In May 2024, Charli XCX had 11 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Post Sweat, she now ranks as the 128th most streamed artist on Spotify with 33.7 million monthly listeners, her most popular song being “Guess” featuring Billie Eilish at over 330 million streams.
Now, Troye Sivan sits at the 276th most popular artist in the world with over 22 million monthly listeners.
Across the length of the show, the pair performed 31 songs, pulling from their most recent albums: Sivan’s “Something to Give Eachother,” Charli XCX’s “BRAT” and derivatives “Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not” and “Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat.”
The setlist also included fan favorites like “Bloom,” “Vroom Vroom” and the collaborative track “1999.”
The pop duo came out for three encores including Sivan’s hit “Rush,” Charli XCX’s collaboration with Icona Pop “I Love It” and “Track 10.” The two closed the show with their final encore, a hit from the Brat remix album, “Talk talk featuring troye sivan.”
“Iconic, gay culture, gay culture hunte, work mama,” show attendee Jacob Viramontes said. “When you thought it was over, it was not over. When you thought it was over again, it was not over. She came, she lived, she served. It was fantastic.”
Although the likelihood of a co-headlining tour like Sweat happening again may be small, the memory of this once-in-a-lifetime show will leave a lingering reputation — the summer of Brat.
