On Lorde, Charli XCX & Women Baring Witness to Each Other

Hey Google play the 'Girl, so Confusing' remix

PS. This is not sponsored in any way I was just unexpectedly surprised and moved by this album and adore women lol

For a while now I’ve had this go-to phrase for when I’m just about to do anything stupid / vulnerable / brave. (Which pretty much covers most things I do)

It’s an extremely cool and timely reference to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, where, on the precipice of sacrificing onesself for the sake of his brethren, a ‘War Boy’ will yell: ‘WITNESS ME!’

Of course I use it for far less noble circumstances, but there’s something pertinent in asking to be witnessed, securing this bond with an accomplice that you will back each other no matter what.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot this week, thanks in large part to the very public and deeply special act of witnessing between Charli XCX and Lorde.

While I’ve always had respect for Hyperpop’s absurd and bodacious gall, I’ll admit that sometimes it leaves me scratching my chin like Principal Skinner wondering if he’s out of touch. It’s something that, sure, I think is cool, and yeah, I think enjoy, but… I’m not entirely sure I actively like.

A few tracks into BRAT, I couldn’t help but conclude much of the same. It felt candid and fun but kind of disposable, leaving me with little more than a ‘good for her’ sentiment.

But after a slew of songs about pill-popping and club-hopping, came the unexpected:

I go so cold, I go so cold / And I don't know if I belong herе anymore

I don't feel like nothing special / I snag my tights out on the lawn chair

Guess I'm a mess and play the role

‘I might say something stupid’ feels like a flash bulb in the dark - a moment where the number one party girl pulls back the curtain on herself, stepping out from the afters and into the cold light of day.

It got caught me off guard but was far from the anomaly.

From then on, BRAT charts vulnerability becoming progressively more real, from grief over the death of a friend, generational trauma, anxieties over becoming a mother, and the misery of being locked in competition with other women.

One of the most memorable tracks is ‘Girl, so confusing’, long-rumoured to be a diss track at Lorde.

What we find instead is something so intimate, without the fuss of poetry or pretence.

It feels like a glimpse into a world that we aren’t supposed to see; a vulnerable confession between one international popstar to another, almost lifted directly from the notes app or like a text that will never be sent.

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?

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

‘It’s so confusing sometimes, being a girl’ she reveals, exposing a very real facet of female friendships we so rarely see represented - the thin line between friend and foe.

It’s a familiar flame that I have felt the burn of before: passionate and deeply co-dependant love affairs with female friends that turn corruptively sour as if overnight.

These are those friends you are drawn to because you see yourself in each other’s pain, and find solace through the unity of shared experience. You may find yourself driven by a need to protect in them all the things you cannot protect in yourself. But while this pain is one that is shared, it’s also held individually alone.

And without intervention, this hurt can grow into something so insidiously volatile, that all it takes is a single step a fraction of an inch over the line to trigger a meltdown of self-defence so powerful, it can be impossible to salvage anything from the fallout.

I’ve lost some very dear friendships this way. Some I think about unbearably often.

And what Charli offers is a refusal to fall into this trap. She brings her pain, but as a peace offering, with a courage that seems to ask: will you meet me in the middle?

So I just about lost my mf mind when Lorde responded:

’Let’s work it out on the remix’

Every time I think about the collab I get a shiver of goosebumps. I find myself drawn to dig into it line by line, as Lorde drops some of the most succinct and devastating lines such as:

"Girl, you walk like a bitch"/ When I was ten, someone said that
And it's just self-defence / Until you're building a weapon

They dropped the remix last Friday via a screenshot of a text thread between the two of them where Lorde reveals her verse, to which Charli simply replies ‘Fucking hell’.

And just as our Lorde predicted, the internet exploded in response, gagging over this rare glimpse behind the iron-clad door where celebrities private lives are usually kept.

I guess it would be naive to believe there wasn’t some engineering of the situation. I’m certainly guilty of being an absolute cynic when a narrative seems suspiciously over-marketed. (I’m sorry Sabrina Carpenter, I’m sure you’re a really good kid.)

But there’s something about this which just feels completely and utterly compelling and real - even down to the small details of Lorde being saved as her real name ‘Ella’ in what seems to be Charli’s phone.

(It’s especially interesting to note that fellow hyperpop girlie Rina Sawayama recently tried to do this exact same thing - announcing a new collab with Paris Hilton with a simulated text conversation. However, this was met with a collective grimace, as the hamfisted insincerity of the interaction left fans rolling their eyes.)

The more I’ve learned about BRAT since its release, the more I’ve come to realise how much I underestimated Charli. Everything I’d assumed was lazy and throwaway has become clear is as deliberate as it is organic. In an interview with Billboard, Charli says:

This album is very direct. I’m over the idea of metaphor and flowery lyricism and not saying exactly what I think, the way I would say it to a friend in a text message. This record is all the things I would talk about with my friends, said exactly how I would say them.

And I guess that’s when the penny dropped for me. Maybe she was never trying to convince everyone how cool she is, but rather show us how everything - including being cool - is entirely bullshit.

By refusing to repackage what she wanted to say, she’s actively deconstructing the barrier between her as a person and her as a product.

After all, why pour your heart and soul into a masterpiece just for some algorithm to inevitably butcher in into tiktok soundbites that’ll be forgotten it a week?

Why agonise over which artwork or title will be the most marketable, when you can just pick a green square and name your deluxe: ‘Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not.’ ?

And why would you commit the sacrifice of serving everything, when you can get away with serving anything, because the machine only ever wants something?

In a kind of dystopian way, I think that’s actually pretty punk.

And so as I come full circle and contemplate whether Charli XCX is creative genius or anarchic opportunist, I want to end by saying the ache in my heart left from the phenomenal testament to womanhood that is the ‘Girl, so confusing’ remix is one I can only describe as longing.

The exchange these two artists are able to have, two women who have been pitted against each since the beginning of their careers, is nothing short of a miracle.

To be able to achieve a reconciliation with grace, humility and raw honesty is a place I can only dream of one day reaching with the lost friendships I lay awake at night thinking about.

And even if we have all been played for fools, nothing can deaden the impact of seeing two women refusing to vilifying one another, but instead step into the spotlight to bare witness to each other’s vulnerability and say:

‘I ride for you Charli’ / ‘You know I ride for you, too’