DETROIT — Club kids Charli xcx and Troye Sivan made Little Caesars Arena throb Saturday night at the kickoff of their joint "Sweat" tour, a high energy 30-song outing that saw the pop pair trading off stage time every few songs, and coming together in front of a hyped-up crowd of 13,000-plus for a couple of collaborations at the end of the nearly two-hour show.

Sivan, the 29-year-old Aussie pop singer, kicked things off performing alongside a team of six male dancers as they paced their way through highly choreographed, playfully innuendo-laden dance routines on songs like "Got Me Started" and "My My My!"

But it was Charli who brought the house down again and again, as the British party-pop princess blasted through material from this year's "Brat," a true breakthrough for the veteran performer ("Brat" is her sixth studio album), and those songs sounded absolutely massive pumping out of the arena's speakers and rattling through the building.

The stage show was slightly scaled back for an arena outing, unfolding on a tri-level scaffolded stage and a long catwalk with a small landing area at the end, and the only production gag had the two performers standing on a raised platform near the end of the night. The show's most innovative feature was the open sided cage-like pathway underneath the runway, which the performers utilized throughout the night, playing to cameramen in front of them who beamed their likenesses live to the stage's video screens. The footage had a slight underground feel to it and made it look like they were headed out to the ring at an MMA event, which somehow fit the overall mood of the night. It was like a raging warehouse party that just happened to be held at a downtown sports arena.

Even six months ago, a Charli xcx arena tour was unthinkable: Her last area concert was in 2022 at the Royal Oak Music Theatre, which has a capacity of about 1,700 people, and her biggest area concert to date was at the 3,000-capacity Fillmore Detroit, in 2015, a co-headlining tour with Jack Antonoff's band, Bleachers.

But then "Brat Summer" happened, and everything changed. "Brat," Charli's sixth album, was released in June, and features almost no concessions to mainstream pop. It is spiky and non-commercial by design, it has no obvious radio hits or readymade pop choruses, and yet it became her biggest hit to date for those very reasons. The songwriting is vulnerable and confessional and it bumps up against producer A.G. Cook's banging club beats, and against the odds the album has managed to obtain a cultural stickiness that none of her previous sets achieved. "Brat" currently sits at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 chart, 13 weeks after its release.

"Brat" managed to capture the zeitgeist in numerous ways: "Brat Summer" became an aesthetic, CNN debated whether Kamala Harris was brat, Barack Obama put "365" on his summer playlist and the album's lime green artwork and its lowercase font launched a bazillion memes.

That same lime green was the theme color of choice among the throngs of fans packed into Little Caesars Arena on Saturday. It dotted the crowd and could be seen on T-shirts, miniskirts, wigs, tank tops, pants, ball caps, sunglasses, glow sticks and in light-up $17.99 "Brat" themed-cocktails which the arena was selling for the night. When Charli first emerged on stage, she did so from behind a massive four-sided "Brat" curtain, which surrounded the stage at the end of the runway and fell when the opening blips of "365" hit.

Charli's setlist was particularly "Brat" heavy: she performed the majority of the new album, opening her set with sister songs "365" and "360" back to back, and also working through "Von Dutch," "Club Classics," "Sympathy is a Knife," "Apple" and "Everything is Romantic." "Girl So Confusing" and "Guess" received their piped-in guest verses from Lorde and Billie Eilish, respectively, as Charli used that mic time to charge down the stage's long runway like a strutting supermodel, never removing her dark sunglasses and treating the crowd like they were her own personal hype machine.

It worked. Charli more than proved herself an arena-worthy act, as her catalog hits "Vroom Vroom," "I Love It" and the "Barbie" soundtrack offering "Speed Drive" were greeted just as boisterously as her "Brat" material. And while she didn't have much to say beyond her party platitudes — "are you f------ sweating yet or what?" was typical of her stage banter — her wild energy made the building pulsate and shake.

Sivan complimented her well, even if his set was never quite as raucous as his tour partner's. He performed 12 songs to Charli's 16 — they performed a pair of songs together, songs of hers that he is featured on — and pulled largely from his latest album "Something to Give Each Other." At one point he made out with one of his dancers, the payoff of a escalating tease over the course of the night. Still, if Sivan was steadily cruising down the highway, Charli was going pedal to the metal every time she wrangled the steering wheel from him, but between them they delivered the audience where they needed to be and got them there safely and in one piece.

While Charli herself recently declared the death of "Brat Summer" — better to pronounce it yourself than have someone do it for you — her manic stage presence and her grasp of the party crown assures her moment is nowhere near being finished. "Maybe it's time for Brat Autumn to begin," she said at one point late in the show, and it's hers to claim if she wants it.

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Charli xcx and Troye Sivan "Sweat" tour set list

Got Me Started (Sivan)

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

My My My! (Sivan)

365 (xcx f/ Shygirl)

360 (xcx)

Von Dutch (xcx)

In My Room (Sivan)

Dance to This (Sivan)

Rager teenager! (Sivan)

Club Classics (xcx)

Unlock It (xcx)

Sympathy is a Knife (xcx)

Guess (remix) (xcx)

Bloom (Sivan)

Boys (xcx)

Girl, So Confusing (remix) (xcx)

One of Your Girls (Sivan)

Everything is Romantic (xcx)

Speed Drive (xcx)

Apple (xcx)

Silly (Sivan)

You (Sivan)

360/ 365 (xcx)

Vroom Vroom (xcx)

1999 (xcx and Sivan)

Track 10 (xcx)

I Love It (xcx)

Honey (Sivan)

Rush (Sivan)

Talk Talk (Remix) (xcx and Sivan)

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