Charli XCX & Troye Sivan Brought Brat Summer to Montreal: 6 Best Moments at the Sweat Tour's Second Date

Charli XCX and Troye Sivan brought Brat Summer to Montreal on Monday night (September 16).

The pop star duo took to the stage at Montreal suburb Laval for the second stop on their joint headline Sweat Tour (the opener took place in Detroit two days earlier), and things definitely got sweaty in the room, as they turned Place Bell arena into a private club for one night only.

Charli XCX has had a huge year, with her acclaimed Brat becoming her highest charting album at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, as well as dominating the cultural — and even the political — zeitgeist. Brat's success solidifies Charli's return to the pop mainstream, after a detour towards experimental mixtapes like POP 2 and the spontaneous songwriting of How I'm Feeling Now.

What's so impressive about her rise back up the charts — she hit No. 1 in 2014 featuring on Iggy Azaelia's "Fancy" — is that she's done it on her terms, bringing her raver's sensibility with her. Charli has remade pop music in her image, instead of the other way around.

The Sweat tour was booked long before Brat blew up, and there's another version of it where Charli could be a solo headliner, but the version she brought to Place Bell felt more true to Charli's collaborative spirit. She swapped the stage with Troye throughout the night, who was bringing the Grammy-nominated songs from 2023's Something To Give Each Other.

The back-and-forth kept both performances feeling fresh and brought a nice variety to the show, with Troye's sleek choreography and lush pop songs complementing Charli's brash solo performances and grittier club tracks. Overlapping moments between their sets gave the whole concert a fluid feel, and it was clear the two love performing together, as they ascended on a rising platform while performing closing track "1999." The Sweat concert was a reminder that the club is always better with friends.

Here are the show's best moments:

The Rave Cage

The SWEAT Tour's production was fairly minimal, for the most part, aside from a giant BRAT banner and a king-sized bed prop for Troye, but there was a key piece of stage design that held the show together: a rave cage.

The cage was set up beneath a long platform extending into the crowd from the main stage, meaning that general admission fans could get up close with the silver bars surrounding Troye, Charli and their dancers whenever they descended into it.

They popped in and out of the cage throughout the show, bringing sweaty energy and establishing a closeness with the dancing crowd. That closeness and intensity helped the concert feel a bit more like an underground club than a massively produced Beyoncé or Taylor Swift show.

Charli XCX's Bratty Stage Presence

While Troye performed with backup dancers, Charli was alone on stage, just her and a backing track and a lot of vibes. Charli's path to pop stardom hasn't been conventional, so it makes sense that she wouldn't be a conventional pop performer, either.

Her performances don't have precise choreography or major vocal moments — instead, Charli is giving bratty chaos from start to finish, strutting across the stage, preening for a roving videographer who followed her around like paparazzi, periodically yelling to the crowd that Montreal was looking extremely cute and sexy. During Brat's "Sympathy Is a Knife," she crawled across the floor and belted like a collapsed diva.

It's an approach to performing that's hard to pull off in an arena context. At her 2019 show at Montreal's Beanfield Theatre, the intimacy allowed Charli's energy to reach every person in the room. But by performing mini sets back-to-back with Troye, Charli was able to create a sense of electricity every time she stepped back on stage. Brat broke through because it captured a sensibility that resonated: Charli is a party girl with a vulnerable side, confident and confused at the same time, having fun through the mess.

Eschewing choreo and massive production for pure vibes? That's Brat.

Serving A Lipstick Message During 'Guess'

The brattiest moment of the night came during "Guess," a bonus track on the album featuring Billie Eilish, and the record's highest charting single, peaking at No. 12.

"Guess" is a sexy, cheeky song all about underwear, and Charli made sure to show hers off as she performed, walking over the see-through stage with her videographer underneath.

When Billie Eilish's guest verse blasted through the speakers, Charli knelt down to write a message in lipstick on the stage, with the camera person broadcasting it to the crowd from rave cage below: "C-U-N-T," she wrote, licking it as the crowd screamed.

Working It Out on the Remix

If the crowd was hyped up during "Guess," the biggest crowd reaction of the night might have been to Charli's performance of the "Girl, So Confusing" remix, featuring Lorde. That track was one of the major talking points on Brat, describing Charli's uncertain friendship with another female singer. When the album came out, fans speculated that the song was about Lorde — and their guesses were confirmed when Charli dropped the remix, where Lorde appeared with her own verse about anxieties, insecurities, and how confusing it is to be a girl in the industry.

The remix hit No. 63 on the Billboard Hot 100 and clearly struck a chord with fans, as a rare example of two women in music hashing things out publicly and deciding to collaborate instead of compete.

The crowd at Place Bell belted along to the track, with thousands of fans in their best lime green brat-wear taking videos of themselves singing Lorde's verse, and every person in the room screaming: "let's work it out on the remix!" It didn't matter that Charli was alone on stage — she had thousands of collaborators with her in the room.

Troye Sivan's Hot and Heavy Choreography

Troye gave a deeply sultry performance throughout the Sweat concert, and his voice shone through on some of his more stripped back songs like "Rager teenager!" He also brought some sleek moves to the stage, with a group of hunky backup dancers, especially during the sensual "One of Your Girls." The standout track from Something To Give Each Other was introduced with a brief clip of Troye in full drag on the phone, before he emerged IRL in a corset, serenading one of the dancers seated in a chair on stage. The two performers got up close and physical, bringing the heat to Place Bell, and creating some space amidst the raver energy for a sense of romantic intimacy and connection.

Fan Favourite Encores

After finishing with "1999," Charli came back to the stage for a series of encores, two of which came from her back catalogue. She began the encore set with "Track 10," the closing number off of POP 2. "Track 10," one of Charli's best songs, is a distorted masterclass in anthemic avant-garde pop. Charli gave it her all at Place Bell, performing in a fur coat and bra and collapsing back down to the ground as she sang the sang's hook, joined by the crowd: "I blame it on your love / every time I fuck it up." It's a deep cut from her increasingly large discography, and maybe not an obvious choice for an arena given its glitching production, but it was a standout number in the night.

From there she went into "I Love It," the Icona Pop track from 2013 that was Charli's first Hot 100 entry, peaking at No. 7. People tend to give her "a bit of shit," about that song, she told the crowd, but it goes off. The crowd jumped around and cheered for the true club classic.

Troye returned to the stage for renditions of Something To Give Each Other singles "Rush" and "Honey" before they closed it out together with the Sivan-featuring "Talk Talk" remix — giving Brat summer one last bump in Montreal before fall takes over.

Charli XCX and Troye Sivan at Place Bell, September 16, full set list:

1. Got Me Started (Troye Sivan)

2. What's the Time Where You Are? (Troye Sivan)

3. My My My! (Troye Sivan)

4. 365 remix with easyfun and shygirl (Charli XCX)

5. 360 (Charli XCX)

6. Von Dutch (Charli XCX)

7. In My Room (Troye Sivan)

8. Dance to This (Troye Sivan)

9. Rager teenager! (Troye Sivan cover)

10. Club Classics (Charli XCX)

11. Unlock It (Charli XCX)

12. Sympathy is a Knife (Charli XCX)

13. Guess featuring Billie Eilish (Charli XCX)

14. Bloom (Troye Sivan)

15. Spring Breakers (Charli XCX)

16. Girl, So Confusing featuring Lorde (Charli XCX)

17. One of Your Girls (Troye Sivan)

18. Everything is Romantic (Charli XCX)

19. Speed Drive (Charli XCX)

20. Apple (Charli XCX)

21. Silly (Troye Sivan)

22. You (Troye Sivan)

23. STUD (Troye Sivan)

24. 365 (Charli XCX)

25. Vroom Vroom (Charli XCX)

26. 1999 (Charli XCX and Troye Sivan)

Encores

1. Track 10 (Charli XCX)

2. I Love It (Charli XCX)

3. Rush (Troye Sivan)

4. Honey (Troye Sivan)

5. Talk Talk (Charli XCX and Troye Sivan)