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Charli sings: “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.”<\/p>\n
It hit the 28-year-old New Zealand\/Aotearoa singer-songwriter hard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I felt this unmistakable mix of the love of someone putting you into a piece of art and this sort of sick feeling of hurting someone, and of being misunderstood,” Lorde recalls.<\/p>\n
“It still destroys me, I find it so heartbreaking and beautiful.”<\/p>\n
Lorde instantly recognised that the lyrics described her relationship with the artist \u2014 and Charli had given her a heads up it would be appearing on the album \u2014 but the public was left in the dark.<\/p>\n
Questions reverberated on social media. Was this song about Lorde? Was it a diss track?<\/p>\n
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Lorde wanted to complete the song with her voice.\u00a0 (ABC)<\/p>\n
Lorde didn’t see it like that.<\/p>\n
“When someone sees you in that way and is moved by you in that way \u2026 that is an act of love,” she tells Take 5 with Zan Rowe.<\/p>\n
In an interview with BBC Radio 1, Charli explained the song described a complex relationship between women.<\/p>\n
Watch Take 5 with Zan Rowe on ABC iview<\/a><\/p>\n Icons in music and screen join Double J host Zan Rowe to delve deep into intimate moments in their lives as they share five songs they love.<\/p>\n “I was very aware when I put that song on the record that immediately people were going to view it as some kind of diss track, but actually if you take the time to listen to the lyrical content that’s really not the case at all,” she told BBC Radio 1.<\/p>\n “The song is about being confused with where you stand with another woman, and it’s not about attacking their personality or anything about that other person, and I think the thing is, being a woman is very complex.”<\/p>\n Lorde agrees wholeheartedly.<\/p>\n “She was reaching out for me, and she grabbed me, and it was a bit of a crossroads moment of deciding what kind of woman I was going to be,” she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n And for her, there was a clear path forward.<\/p>\n “I was like, the only way this song gets completed is with my voice.”<\/p>\n Lorde let Charli XCX in on her next steps. (Reuters: Jaimi Joy)<\/p>\n Working it out on the remix<\/p>\n A remixed version of Girl, so confusing \u2014 featuring a new verse written and sung by Lorde \u2014 silenced the speculation and ignited a global conversation about the complexities of women’s friendship.<\/p>\n Lorde’s Take 5 songs:Lucinda Williams \u2014 Fruits of My Labour, 2003Bronski Beat \u2014 Smalltown Boy, 1984Nina Simone \u2014 Suzanne, 1969Westerman \u2014 Confirmation, 2020Charli xcx, Lorde \u2014 Girl, so confusing featuring lorde, 2024<\/p>\n “It really did change the course of my life, being dragged into that in the way that I was,” Lorde says.<\/p>\n She knew her verse had to expose her vulnerabilities in a way she never had before.<\/p>\n “I was so grateful to Charli for being able to make that expression because that must’ve been so difficult,” she says.<\/p>\n “To have this opportunity to meet her vulnerability with my vulnerability, it gave me this feeling, like I’ve been misunderstood and I’ve facilitated that misunderstanding in some ways. Now I can try and make it right.”<\/p>\n The pair were lauded for their ability to capture their raw internal dialogue, as seen in Lorde’s response verse:<\/p>\n “I was trapped in the hatred, and your life seemed so awesome\/ I never thought for a second my voice was in your head.”<\/p>\n Lorde says it’s a piece of work that brings her great pride, which is why she couldn’t look past it when selecting her Take 5 songs.\u00a0<\/p>\n “When someone writes a song about you, it’s the highest honour,” she says.<\/p>\n “It’s honestly been one of my career highlights.”<\/p>\n Lorde and Charli XCX performed Girl, So Confusing together at Coachella. (Instagram\/Charli xcx)<\/p>\n Cutting the cord<\/p>\n “Part of my faith in pop music and why I continue to make it is because I think it is an endlessly expandable container,” says Lorde.\u00a0<\/p>\n She finds inspiration in other pop songs that explore the theme of renewal, like the 1984 hit Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat, another of her Take 5 choices.<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n It tells the tale of a young gay man escaping his hometown for the city after facing rejection and isolation.<\/p>\n “I think you can put any emotional scenario into a pop song, and the fact that these kids could be writing this song about such a heartbreaking and poignant topic, and it’s going to get all of us on the dance floor, that just gives me so much faith in the medium.”<\/p>\n Lorde has continued exploring her own vulnerabilities in her latest album, Virgin<\/a>.<\/p>\n Her track Man of the Year is a particular highlight:\u00a0<\/p>\n “Take my knife and\u205fI\u205fcut\u205fthe cord\/ My babe\u205fcan’t believe I’ve\u205fbecome someone else\/ Someone more like myself,” she sings.<\/p>\n Lorde says that song was about the end of a relationship, but she now sees that “a few cords were cut”.<\/p>\n She says she was “severing” herself from the ways she had been policing her body, and from a constricted version of femininity she had previously identified with.<\/p>\n Listen to the Take 5 podcast<\/a><\/p>\n The Take 5 is a podcast where the people you love, share five songs they love.<\/p>\n “I just chose to take myself off the map in a few ways, and I think it’s very specific to me saying ‘Take my knife,’ like there’s a violence to these big changes sometimes,” she says.<\/p>\n She expects life will take her to many “crazy places”.<\/p>\n “All I can do is let it happen, try to write about it, try to feel it fully. I love it, totally down for the mystery.”<\/p>\n Stream all episodes of Take 5 with Zan Rowe free on ABC iview<\/a>. Hear extended Take 5 podcast episodes on the ABC listen app<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Lorde first heard Charli xcx’s song Girl, so confusing, she felt an influx of emotions. The track…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,115591,71538,134,115587,81569,115594,115596,115595,115593,115592,6522,115589,90569,7033,115588,115590],"class_list":["post-179412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brat","tag-charli-xcx","tag-entertainment","tag-girl-so-confusing","tag-lorde","tag-lorde-and-charli-xcx-beef","tag-lorde-charli-xcx","tag-lorde-charli-xcx-drama","tag-lorde-songs","tag-lorde-tour","tag-new-music","tag-take-5","tag-take-5-with-zan-rowe","tag-virgin","tag-virgin-album","tag-zan-rowe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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