As Lorde sings on the song, “It’s you and me on a coin the industry loves to spin.”
A remix of Charli XCX’s song “Girl, So Confusing” has Lorde and Charli XCX revisiting their previous dispute.
Lorde’s new vocals on the remix explore their tumultuous relationship and the fears that stoked it.
Lorde sings in the song, which draws attention to Charli’s complicated connection with another musician, “It’s you and me on a coin the industry loves to spin.”
Originally released on 7 June as a single from Charli’s Brat album, “Girl, So Confusing” tells the story of her emotional involvement with another female vocalist.
In addition to awkward meetings when they had ill-fated plans to work together, Charli sings about the other woman’s want to watch her “falling over” and “failing.” With the song’s lyrics evoking Lorde’s “Team,” internet theories suggested it was about the singer.
Lorde and Charli trade lines in the remix about their fears and how they affected one another.
According to Lorde, she was “speechless” when Charli got a raw voicemail expressing her thoughts on their relationship. “Work it out on the remix,” Lorde assures.
‘Let’s go out,’ you often say, but I always cancel at the last minute. Having avoided my body for the past two years, I was terrified to appear in the photos and completely lost in my thoughts. “I gained all the weight back after trying to starve myself thinner,” Lorde confesses in the song.
“Your life seemed so amazing, and I was imprisoned in hate. I never once considered that my voice was inside your skull.”
Lorde and Charli’s remix refers to their comparable looks and the industry’s propensity for making comparisons between them. In a May Rolling Stone interview, Charli candidly addressed these parallels, citing a 2014 event in which she was confused for Lorde.
“I was envious of [Lorde’s] and that song’s popularity when ‘Royals’ came out. You assemble all of this in your head, thinking, “She liked my music.” Like me, she had long hair. She had on black lipstick, as I had once.
You draw these comparisons and conclude, ‘That could have been me.’ We’re different people, hence it couldn’t have happened,” Charli said.
Even with their past problems, Charli said they were getting along well at the time of the interview, and Lorde went to one of Charli’s shows in New York City on June 11, not long after Brat was released.