Should We Work It Out on a Remix, Though?

Charli XCX and Lorde’s instantly iconic remix of “Girl, So Confusing” really did make the internet go crazy, and it may have opened a new era of celebrity feuds.

Charli XCX photographed by Harley Weir 

It’s a Brat Summer: Charli XCX’s sixth album cemented her ascent to superstar status. With its blasting hyperpop and EDM club bangers interspersed with some softer songs, this latest musical project is a defining one for the Essex singer’s career, garnering accolades from fans and critics alike. But in an era where we demand stars to be relatable, vulnerable, and accessible, it’s the lyrics that make Brat stand out: they don’t feel like notes app confessions of a tremendously successful person who’s trying to prove that they’re just like us – and, to this point, Hannah Montana did it first and did it better when she sang “I’m just an ordinary girl! / Sometimes I’m lazy / I get bored, I get scared / I feel ignored, I feel happy / I get silly, I choke on my own words”. Charli is much more artistically generous and authentic, in what is one of the most unfiltered, raw, and at times abrasive explorations of fame, obsession, jealousy, insecurity, and grief of the past year.

In “Sympathy is a knife” she asks: “Why I wanna buy a gun? / Why I wanna shoot myself?”, while in “I think about it all the time” she reflects on the future, wondering whether “Should I stop my birth control? / Cause my career feels so small / In the existential scheme of it all”. Similarly, in “I Might Say Something Stupid”, she describes feeling alienated at a celeb party, even declaring that she believes she’s not on the same level as her peers: “I’m famous but not quite / But I’m perfect for the background”.

Everything’s incredibly refreshing, and it fits perfectly in the 2000s-clubber-it girl-hot mess aesthetic that came to define Charli’s persona particularly during the Brat era, since the nuanced narrative of the album humanizes this bimbo party girl façade. As a society, we have moved past the finger-pointing, pearl-clutching attitude towards the TMZ darlings: today the Paris Hiltons, Lindsay Lohans, and Britney Spears of the tabloid era would probably not have to face the same treatment they had endured two decades ago, simply because their woes do not entertain anymore.

Youth culture in particular seems to have developed an unprecedented level of empathy and understanding, free from judgment, as this kind of panem et circensem level of snaring amusement doesn’t sit well with the new generations, revealing its grotesque nature in all its decadence. Brat’s Charli is allowed to be a messy bitch, not because it’s fun to watch her implode, but because she’s a human being, and hopefully, we’ve gotten to a place where it is more apparent that celebrity doesn’t shield from suffering.

Lorde photographed byJustin J Wee for The New York Times

This level of honesty and introspection reached new heights in the surprise-release of a remix of the album’s “Girl, So Confusing”. There was speculation that the song could be about either Rina Sawayama or Marina Diamandis. But it wasn’t about either one of them. It was about Lorde. Some time ago, a video of a 2014 interview where Charli got mistaken for Lorde went viral once again. It happens every couple of years, especially on gay Twitter (or should we say X?). In this video, we see the interviewer declaring that she “loves her music”, stating that one of her favorite songs is “Royals”, then proceeding to ask her about the inspiration behind the 2013 megahit. Charli doesn’t correct the interviewer but rather plays along, explaining that “<Royals> came from, you know, just me looking at, like, how I’m from New Zealand”. And thus, a decade-long meme was born.

What no one actually realized, however, is that the video was more than just a meme. It was a tassel of a wider mosaic, made of constant comparison, chronic insecurity, and lingering dissatisfaction which all had an impact on the Brat star who, in an interview with Rolling Stone UK, revealed she had been envious of Lorde: “You create these parallels and think, <Well, that could have been me>”. On the original version of “Girl, So Confusing”, Charli chronicles these insecurities, as well as the “awkward” feeling that she is left with from the complicated relationship with her fellow Tumblr it-girl, with whom she doesn’t “have much in common”.

Charli XCX and Lorde have eventually made up, with Lorde praising the Brat on her Instagram and attending Charli’s show at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater. “Girl, So Confusing”, however, served as the ideal opportunity for the two to address their years-long circa-beef, and also quash it altogether with a remix cleverly titled “The girl, so confusing version with Lorde.” In it, the New Zealand songwriter’s verses start with the admission that “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”.

And work it out on the remix they did. Lorde then reveals – with an astoundly high level of candidness – that she’s had to fight some an eating disorder what all of this was going on and that, similarly to Charli, she also looked at the other with some envy.

Peace is established, however, so you can all breathe a sigh of relief. This remix is a beautiful reminder that times have changed, and that the surface level feminism of days past, when the Buzzfeed girlboss was everything one should aspire to become, has hopefully gone extinct. Charli XCX explained it best when talking to Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang on their Las Culturistas podcast: “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 […] There’s a competitiveness between us. There’s envy. There’s camaraderie. There’s all of these different dynamics”.

So, this begs the question: should we all work it out on a remix? Should celebrities work it out on a remix? Probably. But will anyone? Probably not, and that’s okay. Because as much as we like celebs working through their differences, there’s one thing that we love more: drama. Petty catfights and feuds filled with diss tracks are the lifeblood of a society obsessed with celebrity culture. Taylor Swift wearing a fries costume and hugging Katy Perry who, in turn, is dressed as a hamburger is great. But you know what’s greater? Taylor writing a song about how Katy “did something so horrible” to her, and Katy responding the following day with a tweet saying “Watch out for the Regina George in sheep’s clothing ….”. Spectacular!

We would all have missed a decisive pop culture moment, had they decided not to go all in on this feud. Similar examples are countless: Mariah Carey uttering “I don’t know her” when asked about J.Lo during an interview with a German television network in 2000? Iconic!

Now that Charli XCX and Lorde have shown us the way, it’s likely that more and more artists will choose to go on the path of reconciliation through some sort of musical endeavor, and it’s something we should be looking for because it would signal a shift in the cultural zeitgeist to a point where musicians are ready to embrace their most unpleasant feelings and actively work to get over them in a more mature, vulnerable, and constructive way.

But until then, long live the feuds between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Princess Diana and The British Monarchy, Florence Pugh and Olivia Wilde, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. And, especially, long live the feuds between Azealia Banks and everyone else!