Review: Charli XCX treats her Minneapolis ‘Brat’ pack to a hyper dance party

“It’s okay to admit that you’re jealous of me.”

As she sang/snarled that line two songs into her Essex-thickened British accent Saturday night at Target Center, Charli XCX set the haughty and, yep, bratty attitude that defined her first Minnesota concert since becoming a pop superstar.

Any aspiring singer would be jealous of the success that has been thrust upon the real-life Charlotte Emma Aitchison. Last summer’s breakout album, “Brat,” not only took over the music biz but inspired pop-culture jargon and sloganeering for Kamala Harris’ campaign.

It’s doubtful Charli could have even filled the Armory in Minneapolis last April, and here she was playing to 15,000 fans – lots of young women, lots of gay men, lots of fun — between two Timberwolves’ home playoff games at Minnesota’s NBA arena.

While Charli’s mainstream crossover has been sudden, the 32-year-old singer has actually been grinding and hustling her way toward it for a full decade. “Brat” was her sixth album. She made many previous Twin Cities appearances, too, including club gigs, a KDWB Jingle Ball and opening for Coldplay and Taylor Swift.

To quote Swift about Charli’s big career bang, she was ready for it. She commanded the stage Saturday with impressively fierce dancing and charmingly attitudinal strutting. Audience members’ friends will be jealous hearing about all the fun they had come Sunday morning.

Charli really was all there was to the show. Instead of adding a massive stage production, large live band, T-shirt gun and other accruements that come with arena-headlining status, Charli put on what amounted to a very large, very high-energy dance-club show with her as the lone star. She didn’t even have a DJ with her on stage.

Playing up her Britishness, she blared “Bittersweet Symphony” by U.K. rockers the Verve as her walk-up song before the throbbing grooves of her remixed dance track “365” came booming over the sound system.

“Are you [expletive] ready, Minneapolis?” she yelled as she launched into “360” and “Von Dutch,” two of the biggest songs off “Brat” (the latter the one with the jealousy-baiting lyric).

This was one concert where the seats in the venue went entirely unused. Seas of fans could be seen jumping and fist-pumping in waves throughout the concert, especially during some of the hardest-thumping songs such as “Sympathy Is a Knife” and the pre-encore finale “365.”

During the slower numbers “I Might Say Something Stupid” and the synth-poppy “Rewind,” the crowd stayed upright and sang along loudly. Many fans dressed in “Brat”-brand neon-green shirts, which glowed under stage lights, and added to the concert’s rave-like vibe.

Nearly every “Brat” track was performed. Charli even included the “Brat” deluxe-edition bonus track “Spring Breakers” — not a great addition, but she livened it up by performing it entirely underneath her stage’s metal scaffolding, creating what looked like a cool subterranean party on the video cameras.

Clocking in at just under 90 minutes, the setlist was rounded out by a handful of her most high-wired dance-party songs from earlier albums, starting with “Unlock It.” Her encore was made up entirely of oldies, including “Party 4 U,” “Vroom Vroom” and “Track 10.” She delivered the latter tune under a deluge of rain that came from the stage rafters, setting up a “Flashdance” flashback.

It was hard to know how much actual singing was involved vs. pre-recorded vocals, but Charli certainly worked her derriere off in other ways all night. In one of her most intense dance numbers, “Guess,” she showed her dedication to her stage work by literally licking the stage. Ew, but also wow.

Charli even found time to change outfits, though they basically all featured different variations of bikini bottoms that continually showed off the aforementioned hard-working derriere.

During her “Barbie” soundtrack outtake “Speed Drive,” Charli mocked naysayers who don’t like her tour’s no-frills approach: “My God, she doesn’t have any dancers. It’s so boring,” she mimicked.

The fact that this was entirely a one-woman show is a big reason the concert proved anything but boring. Those haters must just be jealous.

Here’s the setlist from the Brat Tour stop in Minneapolis: