What’s the Beef Between Charli XCX and Lorde?

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | June 6, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | June 6, 2024 |

Charli XCX’s latest studio album drops in the United States tonight, but Lorde has already listened to it and apparently she loves it, despite rumors that a track titled “Girl, So Confusing” is about her. She posted this tribute on Instagram, though she didn’t mention the song in question:

The song details Charli’s confusion over feeling envious of an unnamed person while also admiring her. Since the singers have been compared in the past, and Charli has been vocal about feelings of jealousy over Lorde’s success, fans think the song must be commenting on that.

In an interview with Rolling Stone UK in 2013, she said:

“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.”

And then, on Friday, she went on “Las Culturistas” and told the hosts, “I haven’t quite decided whether I’m revealing,” when they asked her who the song was about. “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.”

She also got candid about the nature of the song:

“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.” (Variety)

Honestly, yeah. Big agree. I get so tired of the “women supporting women” thing because it’s just another concept that was well-intentioned in the beginning and then got coopted by the corporate machine just like everything else and turned around to actually pit women against each other, thus losing all meaning. It’s refreshing to hear a woman artist talk about jealousy so openly instead of acting like comparison doesn’t matter. Everyone else is comparing them to each other, and we expect them not to? Nice of Lorde to promote the album the way she did and everything, but Charli has a point.