Girl…is it 2014 again? Charli XCX rocked the world (especially us Tumblr girlies) with her new remix of “Girl, so confusing” with pop powerhouse Lorde. The remix was released two weeks after her critically acclaimed album Brat, and we cannot get enough of this duo.
On the surface level, Brat is a party album, but it’s teeming with insights into Charli’s mind as a woman. Many of her fans (affectionately dubbed as Angels) tried to decipher who the subjects of her songs were. In “Sympathy is a knife” she refers to an elusive woman who appears backstage at her boyfriend’s show. Charli’s fiancé is The 1975 drummer George Daniel and many people speculated the song to be about Taylor Swift, who dated lead singer Matty Healy.
And it’s the same for “Girl, so confusing.” Charli compares herself to another unnamed pop darling. She spirals while trying to keep her individuality in tact, but succumbs to what her mind is telling her. She sings, “People say we’re alike / They say we’ve got the same hair / We talk about making music / But I don’t know if it’s honest / Can’t tell if you wanna see me / Falling over and failing / And you can’t tell what you’re feeling / I think I know how you feel.”
It has been since confirmed that the song is indeed about Lorde, and they have repaired their friendship in a way that made the internet go crazy. Take a look back at their so-called feud below dating back to 2013.
The biggest breakout in the 2010s. Lorde released her debut track “Royals” which dominated the Billboard 200 charts.
Charli XCX experienced an explosive career boom at the same time with her collaboration with Icona Pop on the song “I Love It.” It’s been a long running joke for Charli’s fans to yell at her, “Play ‘Royals'” because of their striking resemblance.
In a bizarre twist of events, an interviewer messes up the identities of our pop girlies and asks Charli how she came up with “Royals.” Instead of correcting her, Charli plays along with the act saying that she’s from New Zealand and doesn’t resonate with the bougie scene.
In an interview with Rolling Stone UK, Charli revealed that she compared herself to Lorde a lot during 2014. “When ‘Royals’ came out, I was super jealous of the success that that song got, and that Ella got,” she told the publication. “You piece all this stuff together in your brain, like: ‘She was into my music. She had big hair; I had big hair. She wore black lipstick; I once wore black lipstick.’ You create these parallels and think, ‘Well, that could have been me.’ But it couldn’t have because we’re completely different people. I wasn’t making music that sounded anything like ‘Royals’. I think you just read what you want into it because you’re feeling insecure about your own work.”
She assured they moved past that and were on great terms. “You get over it and then you try to figure out all the things that are unique about you and you pursue that, and then probably in five months’ time you have a breakdown about something else,” she said.
On Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’ hit podcast Las Culturistas, Charli sat down with the comedians to talk about her album. The two asked if she would ever consider talking about who the songs are about. “I haven’t quite decided whether I’m revealing,” Charli explained. “When I wrote it, I was like, ‘I’m revealing!’ But now, you know, the time is here; I’m like, ‘Mmm.’”
“People are gonna guess,” she added. “You probably have an accurate guess, and I’m not gonna say out loud ’cause you’ll tell by my face, but it’s probably going to be that person.”
In a pop world filled with women uplifting each other, Charli doesn’t think that’s always the case when it comes to being in the public sphere. “I think we live in the world of pop music right now where women are like, ‘I support other women! I love women! I’m a feminist,’” she told Bowen and Matt. “And that’s great. Love that. I don’t think you become a bad feminist if you maybe don’t see eye to eye with every single woman. That’s not the nature of human beings. There’s a competitiveness between us. There’s envy. There’s camaraderie. There’s all of these different dynamics.”
Brat day was a celebratory day for all Charli’s Angels. Within the nearly 40-minute album, fans immediately started to speculate who “Girl, so confusing” was about. Many of the popular theories about who this could be about led to Lorde and Marina from Marina and The Diamonds.
One Redditor posted, “everybody thinks it’s about lorde or marina but marina & charli already collabed so i think if anything it’s lorde but charli made a tiktok addressing the rumors saying that none of the songs are about one particular person & that this song is more about female artists being put against each other, etc”
Amid the slew of celebs that arrived in Brat fashion, fans encountered Lorde at Charli’s concert. The “Solar Power” singer was seen dancing the night away—especially when “Girl, so confusing” was performed.
Using the famous “Brat wall” in the Greenpoint neighborhood of New York City, Charli teased that she was going to release a remix of “Girl, so confusing” featuring Lorde. Lorde’s verses seem to respond back to Charli’s insecurities while also assuring her that everything is OK between them.
“Well, honestly, I was speechless / When I woke up to your voice note / You told me how you’d been feeling / Let’s work it out on the remix,” she opened up her verse.
The Melodrama singer even goes way more in-depth about their usual conversations and her reactions to Charli’s rise to global fame. She sings, “You’d always say, ‘Let’s go out’ / But then I’d cancel last minute / I was so lost in my head / And scared to be in your pictures / ‘Cause for the last couple years / I’ve been at war in my body I tried to starve myself thinner / And then I gained all the weight back / I was trapped in the hatred / And your life seemed so awesome I never thought for a second.”
Turns out, everyone has deep rooted insecurities—even popstars. Lorde closes it out, “My voice was in your head ‘Girl, you walk like a bitch’ / When I was ten, someone said that / And it’s just self-defence / Until you’re building a weapon / She believed my projection / And now I totally get it / Forgot that inside the icon / There’s still a young girl from Essex.”
In a sweltering chorus, Lorde chooses to stick to Charli’s side: “‘Cause I ride for you, Charli.”
