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Tag: Ariana Grande The Boy Is Mine remix

  • The Week of Laying to Rest a Feud Remixes: “The Boy Is Mine” and “Girl, so confusing”

    The Week of Laying to Rest a Feud Remixes: “The Boy Is Mine” and “Girl, so confusing”

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    In what is perhaps a “sign o’ the times” for the world of pop, the week in music has offered an overarching theme that centers on “laying to rest feuds.” Or, as Junior LaBeija would put it, “Category is: ‘laying to rest feuds.’” Ariana Grande and Charli XCX are weirdly in sync about this topic, for both pop stars have seen fit to put out remixes that are decidedly “bury the hatchet”-chic. In Grande’s case, the “burial” comes in the form of a remix of her latest single, “the boy is mine,” and in Charli’s, it’s another arbitrary remix (like “360” featuring Robyn and Yung Lean) from Brat: “Girl, so confusing.” The latter features Lorde, one of the public figures that Charli was speculated to be singing about on the track (the other was MARINA). 

    Indeed, Brat is an album all about trying to tame the green-eyed monster (hence Charli coming up with the shade that will henceforth be called “Brat green”)…or at least subdue it slightly into submission. And even Taylor Swift appears to be a source of inspiration for Charli’s insecurity flare-ups, as evidenced by another song on the record, “Sympathy is a knife.” On this particular track, XCX confesses, “I don’t wanna share the space/I don’t wanna force a smile/This one girl taps my insecurities/Don’t know if it’s real or if I’m spiraling.” Or if the media is a key force in fueling these types of anxieties. After all, Brandy and Monica represented one of the earliest modern examples (following Madonna and Cyndi Lauper—though there wasn’t ultimately much of a comparison there) of how various outlets relish reporting on so-called rivalries between two “similar” female artists. In the wake of Brandy and Monica, there would be Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez and Mariah Carey (though that’s still a pretty real feud…for Mariah), Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry (fueled by Taylor herself), Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter—and many others in between. Including, of course, Charli XCX and Lorde. 

    While the two have never shared an outright feud in the same way as Brandy and Monica, who were more openly pitted against one another during a time when there was hardly as much space for Black female musicians to thrive (not that there’s all that much now either), there was always a little bit of resentment there. More openly on Charli’s part perhaps…particularly as she was the one who had to deal with being mistaken for Lorde during the Pure Heroine era despite having been in the music game long before the New Zealander traipsed into town (so to speak) with the automatic hit that was 2013’s “Royals.” So it is that Charli pulls no punches when she admits on the song, “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/You always say, ‘Let’s go out’/So we go eat at a restaurant/Sometimes it feels a bit awkward/‘Cause we don’t have much in common.” Save for the crippling sense of self-doubt that even the most successful of women can’t seem to shake. 

    In the revamped version of the song, Lorde responds to these specific lyrics with, “You’d always say, ‘Let’s go out’/But then I’d cancel last minute/I was so lost in my head/And scared to be in your pictures/‘Cause for the last couple years I’ve been at war in my body/I tried to starve myself thinner/And then I gained all the weight back/I was trapped in the hatred/And your life seemed so awesome/I never thought for a second/My voice was in your head.”

    This deeply personal addition to the song layers it with the exact message Charli was talking about when she told The Guardian, “Relationships between women are super-complex… You can like someone and dislike them at the same time; you can have the best time of your life on a night out with someone but not be that close to them at all.” Lorde has fallen into the former category for XCX, mainly as a result of the Brat green-eyed monster affecting her feelings toward the fellow acclaimed singer. Ironically enough, though, in the same interview, Charli insists that female rivalry in the entertainment industry has died down compared to previous decades, remarking, “We’ve got past the point of the media always pitting women against one another. In the mid to late 00s, it literally sold magazines and papers: ‘Britney versus Christina,’ ‘Paris versus Lindsay.’ Then feminism became a popular marketing tool. In the music industry, it was distilled into this idea that if you support women, and you like other women, then you’re a good feminist. The reverse of that is, if you don’t like all other women who exist and breathe on this Earth then you’re a bad feminist. If you’re not a girl’s girl then you’re a bad woman.” And, speaking of that phrase, “girl’s girl,” it was weaponized against Ariana Grande in the aftermath of her “homewrecker” scandal. Specifically, when Ethan Slater’s ex-wife, Lilly Jay, called out Grande for not being a “girl’s girl.” Because “girl’s girls” don’t allow themselves to fall into the trap of being “the other woman.” They instead choose to “walk away”—or simply get the dude in question to actually leave his wife.

    Maybe that’s why Grande is quite deliberate in having Monica tout the line, “Well, he better sort out his business, ‘cause I’ll never be nobody’s mistress.” A lyric that also shows how far Brandy and Monica have come since their teen years when they were singing this song. This declaration is also one that “absolves” Grande of being a homewrecker in the rawer sense of the word. Instead, she falls more into the category of the scenario described by Olivia Rodrigo on “traitor” when ripping into the bloke that left her, “It took you two weeks/To go off and date her/Guess you didn’t cheat/But you’re still a traitor.”

    This sense of feeling stabbed in the back by the woman who “took” her man (in lieu of blaming the man himself for his shady actions) only adding to the overall sense of competitiveness between women. Rightfully convinced of the scarcity of men to “possess” (that is, in terms of the somewhat straight ones who are non-bald and non-short…Grande didn’t quite care about the latter description when it came to pursuing Slater). So on the one hand, there is this remix that addresses a common trope for why women feud—because of a guy—and on the other there’s Charli and Lorde’s remix that addresses another all-too-familiar trope: women being jealous of each other’s looks and success—even their “aura.” But both tropes, more often than not, relate to competing for a man because “being better” is how they’re able to catch and hold his attention. Because, yes, unfortunately, much of what women do is still latently rooted in attracting the male gaze. Worse still, male approval. 

    At the same time, women are just as concerned with gaining the favor of other women. As Charli was when she had to deal with the public shaming from MARINA in 2016 after the “that FROOT looks familiar” debacle. Which is what makes it so momentous that MARINA was actually moved enough by the “Girl, so confusing” remix to publicly comment (yet again), “THIS IS BEAUTIFUL. Just cried listening to it. It’s so courageous and human to make work about this topic and it’s so healing to listen to it. Congratulations on an iconic album @charlixcx.” And yes, she was probably just glad to learn that Charli didn’t end up admitting the song was about her instead of Lorde. Though both Lorde and MARINA can be accused of having “the same hair” as Charli at one point or another… 

    Signs of Lorde’s involvement with the record were already noticeable when she declared on social media, “The only album I’ve ever pre-saved is out today… Charli just cooked this one different. So much grit, grace & skin in the game. I speak for all of us when I say it’s an honor to be moved, changed and gagged by her work. There is NO ONE like this bitch.” That statement feels like a retroactive “Easter egg” about the lyrical contributions she would provide for this particular song. 

    As for Brandy and Monica, their feud might be laid to rest in their personal lives, but for the sake of the song, they can still bring the catty, possessive vibe necessary for a theme of this nature, presently singing, “How could you still be so disillusioned after all of this time, time?/I told you once before, I’ll tell you once more, the boy is still mine, mine.” In his mind, of course, he’s both of theirs, thinks there’s “plenty” of him to go around. And such casual, cavalier thinking on many a man’s part is what helps keep stoking the fires of female competitiveness. Also manifest in Charli allegedly referring to Taylor Swift on “Sympathy is a knife” when she laments, “‘Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried/I’m opposite, I’m on the other side/I feel all these feelings I can’t control/Oh no, don’t know why…/Why I wanna buy a gun?/Why I wanna shoot myself?/Volatilе at war with my dialogue.” 

    Perhaps the only way to mitigate some of that negative dialogue is by hashing it out with the other woman in question. The one who’s causing all this envy—yet who might actually be envious as well. For no woman, no matter how seemingly self-confident, is immune to the trap of low self-esteem/self-regard that tends to be a more pervasive affliction among this particular gender.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • With “The Boy Is Mine” Remix, Ariana Grande Puts A Mostly Faux Feud to Rest

    With “The Boy Is Mine” Remix, Ariana Grande Puts A Mostly Faux Feud to Rest

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    In 1998, few songs had as much of a chokehold on the nation as Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine.” In fact, it came in at number two on Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 singles list, bested by, of all things, Next’s “Too Close” at number one for the year. Not only was “The Boy Is Mine” better as a song, but also as a video—even if the logistics presented in said video proved to be a highly unrealistic nightmare. With all of that in mind, to have the balls to release a song called “the boy is mine” in a similar style and pitch (regardless of “enough time” passing) was not only a huge risk on Ariana Grande’s part, but also a potentially huge affront. After all, who is she to take up the mantle for Brandy and Monica? 

    Fortunately, Grande found a double whammy kind of way to pay homage to the R&B duo’s masterwork by not only featuring them in her video for the song (with a Catwoman-inspired premise that continues to build on Grande’s movie tribute universe), but also having them jump on a remix version of the track. While some quipped that there was hardly any room for more vocal layering on this song, it manages to work much better as a remix than the “yes, and?” one that featured a surprisingly out of place Mariah Carey on it. Perhaps because two singers vying for dominance in such a similar pitch all the time simply ends up canceling the other one out.

    In any case, “yes, and?” now comes across as an especially inferior remix compared to “the boy is mine.” What’s more, Grande’s overarching theme on the track differentiates itself from Brandy and Monica’s in that, while it still focuses on the idea of “possession,” its larger focus is on a sense of “destiny,” “stars aligning,” etc. In short, that it’s through no fault of her own that the boy is hers, he simply is because “God” or whoever willed it so. 

    Accordingly, there’s less braggadocio involved on Ariana’s rendering than there is on the original, with Monica taking the lead on the mea culpa/“not my fault” verse that goes, “Please know this ain’t what I planned for/Probably wouldn’t bet a dime or my life on/There’s gotta be a reason why/My girls, they always come through in a sticky situation/Say, ‘It’s fine’ (it’s fine)/Happens all the time.” In truth, compared to 1998’s “The Boy Is Mine,” Monica is much more noticeable on this track, her vocals being more present than Brandy’s, who was the ostensible “star” of the original song. Indeed, part of the reason Monica was tapped for a feature on “The Boy Is Mine” in the first place was to capitalize on the presumed rivalry between the two similarly aged solo artists at that time. A rivalry that both women ended up playing into because they were teenagers (granted, at the end of their teenage years when the song was recorded and released) easily susceptible to suggestion and competition. 

    Buying into the hype around their rivalry was something that crested for both women in September of 1998. A moment highlighted, in an interview with Monica’s producer, Dallas Austin, for Vlad TV a few years back. One during which he brought up their supposed altercation. In yet another interview for Vlad TV with Brandy’s producer for the song, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, it is, presciently enough, mentioned there was a rumor that Darkchild might remake the song with Ariana Grande. He balked, “That was a rumor,” adding, “To me it would never do justice for it to be done over with two females unless they don’t like each other.” This, of course, is a very male take on the matter. For it has always served men to have women pitted against one another in the media so as to make them look both frivolous and foolish (and, where a rival record label is concerned, to force women to have more “drive” when it comes to upping their game on sales). This is in part why it was rather groundbreaking for Grande to say nothing during the media furor surrounding her homewrecking romance with Ethan Slater, after which Slater’s fresh ex-wife, Lilly Jay, released a statement in which she said of Grande, “She’s not a girl’s girl.” A withering statement for a pop star with a largely female audience. 

    Nonetheless, Grande’s “fairy princess” vibe (further solidified by playing Gilda) managed to return as 2024 rolled around and the release of her seventh album, Eternal Sunshine, was upon the masses. For few could resist the “shake it off” (Mariah reference intended) attitude of “yes, and?”—which would turn out to be the only single Grande chose to put out before the record’s release. In between “yes, and?” and “the boy is mine,” there was the much more serious “we can’t be friends (wait for your love).” For it seems Grande wanted to unveil a more tongue-in-cheek side of the album yet again, even though it is filled with woeful ruminations inspired by her divorce from Dalton Gomez (e.g., “don’t wanna break up again,” “eternal sunshine” and “i wish i hated you”). And for “tongue-in-cheekness” assistance, there can be no better duo than Brandy and Monica (except maybe Patsy and Edina). 

    In many ways, certain lyrics of “the boy is mine” remix apply to the relationship between Brandy and Monica themselves. Namely, “And I know that this is meant to be and I/I’ll show you accountability and empathy and sympathy/How could you still be so disillusioned after all of this time time?” That “disillusionment” effortlessly applying to the on-again, off-again feud between the two singers. Crystallized even further by the aforementioned lore that Monica “punched” (though a slap, at best, seems more believable) Brandy before their only live performance together of “The Boy Is Mine” at the 1998 VMAs. The fact that the two weren’t seen together again for years afterward only fanned the flames of speculation. In addition to how neither one seemed game to reteam for another collab. That is, until 2012, with the single, “It All Belongs To Me.” As Brandy noted of what took so long to duet again, “[Monica] didn’t want us doing a new collaboration to affect the old collaboration.” Because no matter what new song they put out, or how excited the fans were about the prospect, it would always be pitted against “The Boy Is Mine”—much the same way that Brandy and Monica were perennially pitted against one another. 

    Hence, when their second song together did get the green light, it was unfortunate that a dark pall had to be cast over the single. This as a consequence of the release date coinciding with the death of their respective mentors, Whitney Houston, on February 11, 2012. The single came out just two days later. And although designed to be more empowering instead of kowtowing (to a man), many critics were quick to jump on its lackluster nature in comparison to “The Boy Is Mine.” Another comparison that came up was Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable.” And yet, “It All Belongs To Me” is actually far more cutting than that, with Brandy and Monica savagely reminding their respective former objects of affection just who pays for all of his shit (though, in this regard, too, Beyoncé still comes to mind in the form of Destiny’s Child’s “Bills Bills Bills”). But perhaps the song was too chock-full of “references” in every way, with the video also pulling inspo from Waiting to Exhale (the car burning scene, duh) and, in its way, Thelma and Louise. In short, it didn’t capture the same “magic” or “lightning in a bottle” as “The Boy Is Mine” (even though that song, too, wasn’t entirely original in that its premise was extrapolated from Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney’s “The Girl Is Mine”—not to mention, as Brandy stated, watching The Jerry Springer Show…though she left out the part where she was, indeed, involved in her own very dramatic love triangle a few years earlier with Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men and Adina Howard). 

    The lyrics of the song also didn’t come across quite as timelessly, with Brandy and Monica choosing to rhyme MacBook with Facebook (almost on par with 50 Cent saying, “If you be a nympho/I be a nympho”). All of which is to say that Grande has achieved no small feat in reuniting the two for what is likely to be the closest they’ll ever come to “The Boy Is Mine” again (for obvious reasons). In a promo clip posted the day before the remix’s release, Brandy and Monica return in their newscaster guises from the video for “the boy is mine,” with Monica asking Brandy, “How did we decide this is the time?” Brandy shrugs, “Because we’re on it. Periodt.” Monica adds, “They called us, see that’s what I’m saying. When you call us, I barks with Ariana. She knew to call the girls.” Brandy then praises, “She can really really sing.” Another big compliment from an industry titan. Even so, Grande knows to step aside for large portions of the remix and let the iconic duo take their spotlight to help reimagine a concept they perfected. 

    One of the verses they add in for the remix is also particularly poignant, as it speaks to a shift in women’s attitudes since 1998. Presently unwilling to play the “mistress” role for the sake of getting only a small modicum of time with the man who claims to “love” them. Thus, they sing in harmony, “Yeah, said he wanna make plans with me/But I don’t fuck with affairs, you see, I know/But listen what they say to me/‘If it ain’t broke then it can’t be broken’/Well, he better sort out his business/‘Cause I’ll never be nobody’s mistress.” As for the “If it ain’t broke it can’t be broken” line, it feels like some clear shade at Lilly Jay, who still wants to put all the blame on Grande for the dissolution of her marriage. Resultantly, with this remix, Grande has put a few matters to rest for good…or at least for now.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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