Demi Lovato Was the OG Brat

Lovato was always my favorite second-gen Disney girl. As an 11-year-old closeted Texan, she represented something that Miley and Selena couldn’t — a realness, a raw angst that the other girls just weren’t fully able to tap into. Demi Lovato was a rockstar; she was the real deal.

To me, she could play both sides: She was a smiley, Disney-friendly face on As the Bell Rings while making emo rock and “beating bitches up in private jets,” as some X users point out. Lovato was, and always has been, a chameleon. She could lean into sweetness when she needed to, then turn around and deliver a vocal like she was fronting a post-hardcore band. That duality — pop princess and riot girl — is exactly what makes her feel so Brat-coded in hindsight.

Before Brat was even a concept, Lovato was already embodying a chaotic girl archetype that bridged scene queen, club kid, and ‘Hot Topic if it made bangers.’ She wasn’t just performing at Jingle Ball — she was in the club after, making out with a bottle of Sobieski and dancing to Calvin Harris before your fave even knew what BPM meant. These were the golden days of pop girl rebellion, when Lindsay Lohan was wearing an ankle monitor and Sky Ferreira’s mugshot leaked.

But let’s talk about the music. Long before “Fast,” she was giving us thumping synths and icy breakdowns on “Neon Lights.” Before Crash cornered the market on sexy electro-pop, Lovato gave us “Cool for the Summer,” a track that basically said “I kissed a girl” but with a molly-snorting wink. She collaborated with EDM titans like Clean Bandit, Cheat Codes, and Marshmello. Her discography doesn’t just dabble in dance pop — it helped lay the groundwork. And Lovatics have the receipts. Since the early 2010s, Lovato has been promoting her songs in clubs. Silver bodycon dresses, leather jackets, and long black hair have been her staple for over a decade. She was the party girl of her generation before proudly getting sober. Really, you can’t understand the “Brat” girls without understanding the girl who did it for real, lived through it, and came out the other side in one piece.

So while some of the new creative direction might be reminiscent of Charli xcx, that doesn’t matter. This is just Lovato playing the game again. Lovato isn’t flirting with the brat archetype because she lived it. The chaos, the club anthems, the complicated softness beneath the hard exterior. Lovato’s new era might feel reminiscent of Charli and the Brat-ification of pop, but it’s more homecoming than rebrand. It’s the trend finally looping back to her.

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