‘Brat’ Power: Charli XCX and Lorde Turn the Tables on Feud-Obsessed Fans

I have a confession to make: I wasn’t a Charli XCX fan until about two weeks ago when she released her sixth studio album, Brat. I wasn’t a hater either; I just hadn’t waded into those particular pop waters. Ditto with Lorde. I know the hits, but I don’t really care.

Brat, however, is a clubby, girly pleasure. It’s a wall-of-sound dance album with surprisingly vulnerable lyrics. Like the lyrics of “Girl, so confusing,” for example. Much of the song is about Charli’s complicated relationship with another musician:

“Yeah, 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
You always say, ‘Let’s go out’
So we go eat at a restaurant
Sometimes it feels a bit awkward
‘Cause we don’t have much in common

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.”

Fans immediately speculated that the song was about Lorde because the music industry and internet have long compared/confused the two, I guess because they’re both pop singers and they both have black hair (well, most of the time)? I don’t get it, as their music couldn’t be more different, in my opinion, but in 2014, an interviewer famously thought Charli was Lorde and told her “Royals” was her favorite track. She’s also talked about getting mistaken for Lorde in public. In an interview with Rolling Stone in May of this year, she admitted she was jealous of Lorde’s success:

“When ‘Royals’ came out, I was super jealous of the success that that song got, and that Ella [Lorde] got. You piece all of 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.”

Before Brat’s release, she went on Las Culturistas and played coy about the subject of the song:

“When I wrote it, I was like, ‘I’m revealing!’ But now, you know, the time is here; I’m like, ‘Mmmmrrmm.’ Do you think I should reveal? … People are gonna guess. 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.”

And she was refreshingly honest about how the whole fuss over their alleged feud made her feel:

“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 … 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, however, wasted no time setting the record straight about her feelings, posting praise of the album on her Instagram story the day it came out, saying “Charli just cooked this one different” and “there is NO ONE like this bitch.”

But haters gonna hate, as they say, and a bitter rivalry was still assumed. Until today, that is, when Charli released a remix of “Girl, so confusing,” featuring a verse by Lorde.

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Not only did she reiterate Charli’s confessions of feeling confused about their friendship, but she got vulnerable about her struggles with body image and fame and her discomfort about how they’ve been pitted against each other. “It’s you and me on the coin / The industry loves to spend,” she sings, and you can imagine her rolling her eyes before prophesying, “And when we put it to bed / The internet will go crazy.”

Well, she was right, and I’m here for it. With their bratty powers combined, they told us all to fuck off. It’s so satisfying because of course it’s misogynist and stupid that the comparison was ever made in the first place and that they were made to feel competitive with each other, but they’re also human beings, and sometimes being told you should feel competitive with someone makes you feel competitive with them. It would have been shallow if they’d said, “Of course I don’t compare myself to her, I support women!” and moved on. Instead, they did what great artists do: made it into art.

And if there’s ever again any doubt, remember Lorde’s last line: “I ride for you, Charli.”