"360" is a song by British singer Charli XCX. It was released on 10 May 2024 through Atlantic Records as the fourth single from her sixth studio album, Brat, wherein it was included as the opening track. Featuring minimalist electropop and hyperpop production by A. G. Cook and Cirkut and deadpan singing by Charli XCX, its boastful, tongue-in-cheek lyrics make references to her musical career, her reverence in the music industry, and her friends Julia Fox and Gabbriette. Its Aidan Zamiri-directed music video stars an ensemble cast of online "it girl" influencers, models, and actresses, including Fox, Gabbriette, Rachel Sennott, and Chloë Sevigny, and begins with a skit in which they meet at dinner to find a "new hot Internet girl".
"360" was critically lauded for its catchiness and memorable lyrical catchphrases—the latter of which, particularly "I'm so Julia", were the subjects of Internet memes, merchandising, and critical analysis—and nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. Its music video received similar praise, winning the UK Music Video Award for Video of the Year and earning nominations for an MTV Video Music Award, an MTV Europe Music Award, and the Grammy Award for Best Music Video. "360" peaked at number 11 on the UK Singles Chart and on the Irish Singles Chart and at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Charli XCX performed "360" live throughout her co-headlining tour with Troye Sivan, Sweat, and on her solo Brat Tour. She also performed it on an episode of Saturday Night Live that she hosted and during a surprise set in Times Square. It was remixed by Aminé and covered by Tourist and Blossoms, both for BBC Radio 1, while an official remix of "360" featuring Swedish singer Robyn and Swedish rapper Yung Lean was released on 31 May 2024. Critics commended it for Robyn's verses but some criticised it for its underutilisation of Robyn.
Release and promotion "360" was released through Atlantic Records on 10 May 2024. It was the second single from Charli XCX's sixth studio album, Brat, after "Von Dutch" and the album's fourth pre-release following the promotional single release for her songs "Club Classics" and "B2B". Brat was released on 7 June 2024, with "360" as its opening track.
Charli XCX premiered "360" during a pop-up event in early May 2024 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where she danced to the song on top of an SUV in front of a wall painted the same shade of green as Brats cover art. It later became known as the "brat wall" and, in June 2024, was painted to read, "I'm your fav reference", a lyric from "360". T-shirts and keychains based on the lyrics of "360" were sold on Charli XCX's website starting in July 2024.
Composition
"360" is a hyperpop, synth-pop, electropop, dance-pop, and electroclash song. It was produced by Charli XCX's longtime collaborator A. G. Cook with Canadian record producer Cirkut and written by Charli XCX, Blake Slatkin, and Omer Fedi. Cook stated that the song was made "really quickly" due to Charli XCX having a clear vision for it. It has minimalist, synth-led production and Charli XCX rap-sings on it in a deadpan tone with slightly pitch-raised vocals. Written in common time in the key of C major, it runs for two minutes and 13 seconds at 120 beats per minute.
Carrie Battan of The New Yorker described the lyrics of "360" as "an assemblage of vague ideas about glamour and celebrities that listeners can disappear into"; The Daily Beasts Coleman Spilde jokingly referred to the song as a "hot girl hymn" due to its focus on "the subject of hotness". The song opens with the lyric "I went my own way and I made it/I'm your favorite reference, baby", which Hannah Mylrea of NME detailed as Charli XCX expressing "self-confidence, celebration and the knowledge of the place [she] holds in the musical landscape" and which Laura Snapes of The Guardian called "indicative of her cult status" and her "wealth of lore". She describes herself as "666 with a princess streak", which Grace Robins-Somerville of Paste wrote typified the most common definition of a "brat" as "badly behaved" and "not afraid to cause a scene" and which Brittany Allen of Literary Hub joked was "invok[ing] the devil". She also "venomously" sings in another verse, "If you love it, if you hate it/I don't fucking care what you think". Spilde wrote that the lyric was Charli XCX's way of expressing that "she couldn't be more tired of critics conflating her ego-inflated persona with the quality of her music".
Its further lyrics reference several of Charli XCX's colleagues and friends: Cook ("You gon' jump if A. G. made it"); model Gabbriette ("Call me Gabbriette, you're so inspired")—the lead singer of the disbanded punk rock band Nasty Cherry, which Charli XCX formed for the Netflix docuseries I'm with the Band: Nasty Cherry, and wife to Matty Healy, who is bandmates in the 1975 with Charli XCX's husband George Daniel—and, in the song's chorus, actress Julia Fox ("I'm everywhere, I'm so Julia"), who rose to prominence for her role in the 2019 film Uncut Gems and her highly publicised relationship with Kanye West. In a 2023 interview with Fox, Charli XCX told her that the lyric "I'm so Julia" was "about how [Fox] started every trend of 2022". The song contains an interpolation of Ciara and Missy Elliott's "1, 2 Step".
Matthew Kim, for The Line of Best Fit, wrote that the confident lyrics of "360" "sound less like re-affirmations of [Charli XCX's] greatness and more like attempts to convince herself of it" within the context of Brat, which he called "easily the most insecure, dark album Charli has ever released". Abigail Firth, for Dork, also wrote that the "cocky and cunty" atmosphere of "360" is shown to "serve as a facade" based on the insecurities she expresses throughout the rest of the album.
Reception and impact Jason P. Frank of Vulture and Thom Donovan of American Songwriter both praised "360" as "one of the best pop songs of the year", with Frank calling it a "sonic sugar rush" and Donovan writing that it "may be her best yet". For Pastes review of Brat, Eric Bennett named "360" "an all-timer in [Charli XCX's] catalog already" due to its "simple but thrilling beat", over which Charli XCX "absolutely floats" with an "icy, disaffected cool". Meaghan Garvey of Pitchfork, in a positive review of Brat, opined that "360" was Charli XCX's "best pure pop tune in ages", with Billboards Kyle Denis referring to it as a "delicious pure-pop opener" and Andrew Unterberger, also for Billboard, calling it "impressively kinetic". For The Daily Beast, Coleman Spilde wrote that "360" was "a lyrical masterclass in hotness" and "an intensive on vanity so hyper-focused that it could be taught at the Learning Annex". For The New York Times, Lindsay Zoladz acclaimed "360" as "wryly funny", "deliriously catchy", and "endlessly quotable". Elles Natalie Zannikos called "360" "an absolute electro-pop ear-worm" whose instrumental opening had a "sort of inescapable catchiness" comparable to that of a ringtone.
In a review of Brat, Rolling Stones Brittany Spanos called "360" and "Club Classics", the second track on Brat, a "one-two punch" of "bouncy ragers" that were reminiscent of "classic club hits, the kind that don't do more than tell you to free your mind and keep dancing". Describing it as an "it-girl anthem", Lucas Martins of Beats Per Minute complimented "360" on its "watertight groove", its "undeniably catchy hook", and its lyrics, which, he wrote, "show Charli unafraid to revel in her impact". Dakota West Foss of Sputnikmusic also called its hook "catchy" and "cutesy". For The Independent, Olivia Petter called "360" an "undisputed banger... that make[s] you want to wriggle and bop into the wee hours". Emily Bootle wrote for i that the song's lyrics "I'm so Julia" and "666 with a princess streak" were among the most memorable on Brat and contained tongue-in-cheek millennial irony. Rod Liddle called "360" a "cute modern pop song" by which he was "taken for a moment" in his review of Brat for The Spectator. In a negative review of Brat for the World Socialist Web Site, Nick Barrickman wrote that "360" and its references to Fox showed Charli XCX to be "as arrogant and selfish as multimillionaire and billionaire celebrities like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift".
Following the song's release, "I'm so Julia" became an Internet meme and a popular marketing phrase. "360" was used in a viral TikTok video edit of then–U.S. vice president Kamala Harris, made by George Washington University student Aly McCormick following Harris's presidential campaign announcement in July 2024. It was based around her "You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?" speech and replaced the song's lyric "I'm so Julia" with "I'm so Kamala"; it had more than one and a half million views by late July. A remix of "360" featuring audio from the "coconut tree" speech also went viral on TikTok and gained over one million likes by August 2024. "360" soundtracked a Marc Jacobs advertisement starring Gabbriette, model Alex Consani, and singer Clairo, among others, in August 2024. The American Heart Association praised the song in September 2024 for being the right tempo at which to perform CPR on someone who has collapsed.
Entertainment Weekly named "360" the second-best song of 2024, with Lester Fabian Brathwaite writing for the publication that it "lit the match of Brat summer" and had a "propulsive beat" and "memorable lyrics". Stereogum, Billboard, and Complex also included it on their lists of the best songs of the year. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards.
Live performances Charli XCX performed "360" on her co-headlining 2024 U.S. tour with Troye Sivan, Sweat. She also performed it on her solo 2024–2025 Brat Tour. She also performed the song as the host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live on 16 November. Fox, whom Charli XCX asked to appear on the episode two weeks prior, introduced Charli XCX for her performance of the song, in which she performed the song wearing a Lou Reed t-shirt in front of a lime green screen. She performed "360" again during a surprise live performance in Times Square later that month.
Commercial performance "360" peaked at number 11 on the UK Singles Chart and on the Irish Singles Chart. , "360" is Charli XCX's 12th most commercially successful song on the UK Singles Chart. It debuted at number 73 on the Billboard Hot 100 following Brats release, becoming the first song from the album to appear on the chart, and peaked at number 41 for the week dated 17 August 2024, the same week that the remix version of Charli XCX's song "Guess" featuring Billie Eilish debuted on the chart. Its American chart success coincided with the announcement of Harris's presidential campaign and Charli XCX tweeting "Kamala IS Brat". It also became her first top-ten entry on Billboards Pop Airplay chart since 2014, when her song "Boom Clap" topped the chart, and peaked at number two on Billboards Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, where it became her highest peak on the chart as a lead artist in June 2024. It debuted at number 70 on the Canadian Hot 100 for the week dated 22 June 2024. It also peaked at number 24 on the ARIA Charts for the week dated 9 August 2024.
Music video Synopsis