Being a girl might be confusing, but Charli XCX and Lorde just put any uncertainty about their relationship to rest.
Three weeks after Charli, 31, released her sixth studio album, Brat, which featured a song called “Girl, So Confusing” that seemed to undoubtedly be about Lorde, 27, the twosome teamed up for a remix of the song. (The tune is fittingly titled “The Girl, So Confusing Version With Lorde”.)
In the candid duet, the singers admit to the complicated feelings they’ve had for one another in the past before burying the hatchet.
“I don’t know if you like me, sometimes I think you might hate me / Sometimes I think I might hate you, maybe you just wanna be me,” Charli sings on the opening verse of the both the OG version, which dropped June 7, and the remix, which was released on Friday, June 21.
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“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,” Charli continues.
Lorde’s verse begins with her confessing she “was speechless” when she “woke up to [a] voice note” from Charli about the song.
“You told me how you’d been feeling, let’s work it out in the remix / 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,” Lorde sings.
Lorde goes on to explain how being “at war” with her body and trying to “starve [herself] thinner” contributed to the walls she put up in her friendship with Charli.
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“I was trapped in the hatred, and your life seemed so awesome / I never thought for a second my voice was in your head,” she sings. “And it’s just self-defense until you’re building a weapon / She believed my projection, and now I totally get it / Forgot that inside that icon there’s still a young girl from Essex.”
Toward the end of the song, Lorde concludes that she’s “glad” she knows how Charli feels “cause I ride for you, Charli.”
“You know I ride for you, too,” Charli later sings.
Before the remix confirmed that “Girl, So Confusing” is about Lorde, Charli played coy about the song’s inspiration during an appearance on the “Las Culturistas” podcast earlier this month.
“I haven’t quite decided whether I’m revealing,” she said. “When I wrote it, I was like, ‘I’m revealing!’ But now, you know, the time is here, I’m like, ‘Hmmm.’”
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The “360” singer also explained that the song is about much more than just her and one other person.
“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.’ And that’s great. Love that,” she began. “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.”
Lorde previously gave Brat her stamp of approval by praising the album via her Instagram Story earlier this month.
“The only album I’ve ever presaved is out today … Charli just cooked this one different,” she wrote. “So much grit, grace & skin in the game. I speak for all of us when I say it’s an honor to be moved, changed and gagged by her work. There is NO ONE like this bitch.”
