Earlier, the author said Charli had briefly elaborated on the current status of their friendship, saying: “Honestly this whole thing has brought us closer. I know that’s so f***ing cheesy. But it has.”
For the uninitiated, speculation over the stars’ supposed rift reached fever-pitch in June following the release of Charli XCX’s zeitgeisty experimental pop album, Brat. One of its tracks, Girl, So Confusing, appeared to discuss Charli’s difficult relationship with another female musician, prompting fans and pop culture sleuths alike to decipher who the lyrics (“Sometimes I think you might hate me, sometimes I think I might hate you”) could be referring to.
It didn’t take long for people to hypothesise that Lorde was the subject of the song, given the two had long been compared after Charli, who was once confused for Lorde by a journalist, played along with the case of mistaken identity.
In an interview with Rolling Stone in May, Charli also admitted to being envious of Lorde amid the commercial success of her debut chart-topping single, Royals, in 2013.
“When Royals came out, I was super jealous of the success that that song got, and that Ella got. 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,’” Charli told the publication at the time.
“But it couldn’t have [been me] 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.”
However, Charli noted she and Lorde had since repaired their once-fraught friendship. “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.”
Two weeks after the release of Brat, Charli rewarded fans’ investigative efforts with the release of a Girl, So Confusing remix – a remix that featured, you guessed it, Lorde. “One day we might make some music, the internet would go crazy,” the original song had predicted – and “go crazy” it did.
In the Vulture interview, Charli also insisted the remix wasn’t a carefully orchestrated moment intended for virality. Instead, she said the remix was a by-product of the two hashing out their differences over text after Girl, So Confusing’s release, inspiring the exchange of verses centred around insecurities and projection.
“You’d always say, ‘Let’s go out’. But then I’d cancel last minute,” Lorde sings in one of her verses. “I was so lost in my head. And scared to be in the 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 a hatred.”
The response to the remix on social media has been frenzied, with one X user declaring: “Charli XCX and Lorde finally doing a song together is like the second coming of Christ for gay people.”
“GIRL SO CONFUSING FT LORDE CHANGED MY LIFE, THANK YOU MOTHER,” another wrote.
The duo even sang along to Girl, So Confusing at Charli’s star-studded 32nd birthday party earlier this month, a celebration that saw the likes of Billie Eilish, TikTok star Addison Rae, actor Glen Powell, The Queen’s Gambit actress Anya Taylor-Joy and Grammy winner Nelly Furtado in attendance.
Brat has enjoyed success in the charts since its UK summer release, climbing to a respectable number three on the Billboard 200 – Charli XCX’s best commercial performance to date.
The reaction to Brat has since seen the album permeate pop culture, creating the social media phenomenon #BratSummer and even playing a role in the upcoming US presidential election. After tweeting “Kamala IS Brat” following US President Joe Biden’s endorsement of Vice-President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, the politician’s campaign rebranded their HQ page on X to mimic Brat’s now-iconic neon green album art.
It prompted media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC to speculate whether trending musicians such as Charli XCX have the cultural power to influence politics – this year’s US election in particular.
