ReportWire

Tag: Brat album

  • How to Have a BRAT Summer

    How to Have a BRAT Summer

    [ad_1]

    From the moment Megan Thee Stallion crowned summer 2019 “Hot Girl Summer,” each subsequent summer has fought to earn its own moniker. And just before the solstice, Charli XCX came to claim the crown with her album BRAT. The very instant the neon green album cover made its way to our Spotify feeds, it was clear it would be an instant classic.

    And now, after sitting with the album for a few weeks — and blasting it through my headphones like armor against the heatwave — it’s undeniable that these timeless tracks will define summer 2024. So everyone, like your pilot after a flight, I’d like to be the first to welcome you to BRAT summer.

    Let’s be clear: BRAT summer is an extension of the summer of
    gay pop. Look at the charts, and you’ll discover that many of this summer’s favorite earworms are made by and for the gays. Happy Pride from the queer community! Songs like “Good Luck Babe!” by our favorite performer Chappell Roan [who we interviewed here!] and “LUNCH” by alt-pop queen Billie Eilish are proudly queer anthems that aren’t going anywhere all summer and beyond. And while Charli isn’t queer herself, she’s a cornerstone of the queer music community. Her impact on the gay music scene cannot be ignored — she did the soundtrack to the lesbian cult film Bottoms, for goodness sake. And that’s to say nothing of her years making gay pop bangers before Jojo Siwa crowned this the summer of the genre.

    Think of it like the parents who get citizenship in a country because their children were born there. For many queer folks, Charli is mother, and her music is directly influenced by and produced for LGBTQIA+ audiences. She follows a tradition of other hyperpop divas who have become icons in the queer community. Madonna. Kylie Minogue. Lady Gaga. Charli XCX.

    Though for too long she was relegated to “gay famous” — aka only a household name to queer people and mostly unknown to mainstream pop charts — everyone has finally caught on. So if you’re new to Charli standom, welcome to a party so fun you’ll never want to leave.

    BRAT is Charli’s seminal work — no wonder this is the record drawing the most public intrigue and influence of her career. She teased the album for months. With interviews, campaigns, DJ shows, and even announcing a joint tour with Troye Sivan, Charli was telling us to get ready for BRAT summer for months. For a while, some even wondered if it would live up to the hype. Luckily, it has exceeded it.

    In her cover story interview for THE FACE magazine, she described
    BRAT as “irresistible club pop made by a dyed-in-the-wool party girl.” And she delivered on her promise. BRAT is infectious and instantly timeless. It’s party fodder that’s surprisingly poignant. It’s not just an album, it’s a lifestyle. And everybody’s going to be living it all summer long.

    Already,
    BRAT has brought back partying. Even The New York Times has caught on — they recently published an article on partying in the new age. It included items like social media etiquette and not taking off your shoes in someone’s apartment. Overall, it feels like a treatise on BRATty behavior.

    Consider this our take. From how to dress to how to act, here’s the Popdust guide to having a BRAT summer.

    Bring back indie sleaze

    Every year since the pandemic, fashion blogs have been predicting the return of indie sleaze. This Tumblr-era aesthetic reigned during the height of the early 2010s party girl era. It was characterized by cigarettes, ripped tights, and smudged eyeliner. It was embodied by Tumblr icons like Alexa Chung and the rest of the “rockstar girlfriend” set. And, in recent years, many of its markers have returned.
    Arctic Monkeys put out a new album. Everyone is preoccupied with It-Girls again. But Indie Sleaze as an aesthetic has failed to regain its grip on the youth culture.

    However, BRAT might be singlehandedly bringing back that vibe. It makes me want to put on a crop top and buy a choker. It makes me yearn for American Apparel days and wearing Doc Martens to the club. The #CleanLook aesthetic is out. Dressing for the most feral night of your life? In. Call it inner child healing and go full tilt into Tumblrcore.

    Add one more accessory to your outfit before leaving the house

    Allegedly, Coco Chanel once said: “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.” Clearly she was not a BRAT. Instead, add an accessory to your look each time you leave the house. Being a BRAT is about being over the top. It’s about buying the rhinestone and bedazzled tourist caps when you’re on vacation. It’s about giant sunglasses at night. It’s not just about accessorizing, it’s about
    over-accessorizing.

    My rule of thumb is to pick a go-to accessory and exaggerate it as much as possible. For example, if you love a funky earring, commit to the biggest, most outrageous earrings you can find. Personally, I adore rings, so this summer, I’m literally stacking every ring I own every day. If my hands weigh as much as my head, I’m doing it right.

    Don’t sleep in your makeup — but make it look like you did

    The cardinal sin in beauty is sleeping in your makeup. You run the risk of clogging your pores, activating or worsening acne, causing premature aging, drying out your skin barrier, and irritating your dermis. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You’re also missing out on all the potential benefits of your nighttime skincare routine when your skin needs the TLC the most.

    Being a BRAT might be about being booked and busy, but it’s also about keeping yourself at your best to do it all over again tomorrow. So, no, don’t use BRAT summer as an excuse to sleep in your makeup, but use it as inspiration to
    look like you slept in your eyeliner.

    I’m talking thick brows, smudged eyeliner, smoky shadow, and finger blush. Apply with no caution whatsoever, and you have the look.

    Say yes — to everything.

    Consider that one Jim Carrey movie
    Yes Man. When he’s bound to say yes to everything, hilarity ensues. In real life, the same is true. Doing it for the plot, as the kids say, can open doors you never expected. In the winter, I’m protective of my boundaries and selective about what I do. In the summer, I’ll take any opportunity to be outside.

    An extension of this rule is keeping the conversation open. Don’t just ask people what they’re doing, ask them if you can tag along. You’ll be surprised how often they tell you that the more, the merrier.

    Don’t flake

    Saying yes to plans is a commitment. But it’s not very BRATty to cancel at the last minute. Once you affirm plans, respond to a Partiful invite, or slide up on someone’s story about a house party, you’re bound to it. Even if you only go for a moment, show your face, and leave, it’s better than flaking completely.

    Dance!

    In the song “girl, so confusing” (not the version with Lorde, but we’ll get there), Charli says: “Think you should come to my party and put your hands up!” The queen has spoken — y’all better put your hands up.

    It might seem like a given since we’re talking about parties, but people don’t want to clock in and dance anymore. It’s time to break the cycle. This summer, let’s make a pact to actually dance at parties. No more standing on the walls, trying to look cool and nonchalant. Being a BRAT is about being chalant.

    Think Troye Sivan in his icon run of music videos last year. I want to channel “Get Me Started” energy to every song on
    BRAT. You don’t have to have full choreo, but let the music move you, for goodness sake! That’s what it’s for.

    Especially if they’re playing throwback 2000s and 2010s recession-pop

    This one is for the DJs: If you’re playing
    BRAT at the club (you should be), it’s best paired with recession pop. Play Charli mixed with the greats and their own pop bangers. BRAT is influenced by the music of the past decade. And considering Cahrli has been making music that whole time, BRAT is an homage to this era. The best way to pay it respect is by

    Pregame with sad girl music

    A BRAT is complicated. They contain multitudes. They’re complex and layered. Behind the party girl exterior is a deep yearning that can only be soothed by sad girl music. If you’re watching
    Lana Del Rey’s Coachella 2024 performance on YouTube before going out, congratulations, you’re a BRAT.

    I personally find that starting the pregame with Phoebe Bridgers, moving on to Billie Eilish, and ending with Charli sets the perfect mood. You have to work your way up to Charli. You have to emotionally earn it.

    Wired headphones forever

    The above is true when you’re alone, too. Listening to music in your headphones, it better be either La Del Rey or Charli this summer. But the headphones themselves matter. Until they make neon green skins for your bulky wireless Airpods, wired earphones are the official choice for a BRAT summer. Whether you choose the classic Apple earphones or trendy ones like the Koss vintage-inspired earphones,
    as long as they have a wire, you’re good.

    Ponder the meaning of life

    “I think about it all the time, that I might run out of time,” ponders Charli on BRAT. “My career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all,” she ends the song, “i think about it all the time,” before leading into a song of the summer, “365.” Clearly, her career means something — both to her and the culture. And it’s a sign to us all. It’s normal to ponder the meaning of life, to spiral at the club, to have an existential crisis in the car on the way home. As long as you show up and dance.

    Take digitals. Post the good, bad, and the ugly

    Every other year comes a photo trend. During Tumblr, it was the Polaroid camera. For the past few years, it’s been the disposable. Now, it’s the digital cameras. While we don’t have to bring back Facebook albums compiling every photo from every night, I shudder to recall that dark time, digital cameras offer both whimsy and functionality. Just don’t dilly-dally before sharing with your friends.

    It’s also about being real online and offline. There’s no room for shame or regret when you’re a BRAT. So post every pic, even if your eye is half closed — in fact, that makes you seem cooler. Like, wow, you’re too busy living your super cool and awesome life to stress about your photos. And I’ll be in the likes of all your photo dumps and stories because BRATs support BRATs.

    No beef. Work it out on the remix

    Undoubtedly, the most viral storyline from the BRAT rollout came a few weeks later with a remix. Many had already speculated that the song was about Cahrli and Lorde’s purported beef. After years in the industry, the two kept being compared to each other and Charli has spoken out about these comparisons before. While they weren’t fighting it out on Instagram Live, the fans hyped up this so-called rivalry. It finally seemed like Charli was addressing it in “girl, so confusing,” a song straight out of the
    Barbie soundtrack (which she also worked on).

    So, imagine all of our surprises when Lorde and Charli worked it out on the remix. Released days after the initial album, “The girl, so confusing version with Lorde” was a surprisingly vulnerable and completely powerful move to end this alt-girl beef. Lorde hopped on the track to talk about her insecurities and the defense mechanisms we make to protect ourselves and hurt other people. I almost cried to that heavy pop beat. And Charli wouldn’t have it any other way.

    In a world filled with nonsensical (though entertaining) feuds like Kendrick and Drake, this summer is about working it out on the remix. It’s about supporting other BRATs. And inviting that girl you think hates you to your party. Truly iconic.

    [ad_2]

    Langa Chinyoka

    Source link

  • 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”

    [ad_1]

    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.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Girl, so confusing (To Some) That Charli XCX and Lorde Have Joined Forces

    Girl, so confusing (To Some) That Charli XCX and Lorde Have Joined Forces

    [ad_1]

    While some may be convinced that a Lorde-featuring remix of “Girl, so confusing” is just a red herring to distract from the fact that it’s still ultimately referring to MARINA (#thatfrootlooksfamiliar), Charli XCX seems to want to put fan theories about a feud between her and the other big-haired singer to rest. It actually appears to be a week of “laying to rest feud” songs, with Ariana Grande also achieving the impossible and getting Brandy and Monica to come together on her own remix of “the boy is mine.” But with Charli and Lorde, the signs of the “feud” were subtler, even though they arose from the same place: women feeling jealous of one another’s success thanks to the assumption that there isn’t “enough room” for “everyone” (read: just women) in the entertainment industry. Even though Britney Spears, angel that she is (or at least that’s how Spring Breakers bills her), did once declare, “There’s room for all of us” at one of the many press conferences of her early career. 

    If only that were true. Alas, in the present landscape, the competition between women in music has only seemed to become more fierce as they vie for the ever-diminishing attention spans of listeners who can barely focus on a song that’s longer than two minutes, let alone multiple artists that keep cropping up like a game of whack-a-mole. That Lorde herself “cropped up” in 2013 was a bit of a bane for Charli XCX. For this similar-looking girl (a.k.a. they both had dark, curly, big hair) came along right before XCX was finally about to break through ever so slightly into the mainstream with 2014’s “Boom Clap.” And since people apparently can’t differentiate women who have the same hair color (see also: Lady Gaga dyeing her hair blonde early in her career to avoid being confused with Amy Winehouse), it was going to be a problem. So much that she was actually mistaken for Lorde during a now illustrious TV interview. Rather than correcting the interviewer (a fellow female, to boot), however, Charli decided to just run with it.

    Two years prior to 2014, her name was becoming more prominent thanks to her feature on Icona Pop’s “I Love It,” but it wasn’t her own solo effort. “Boom Clap” would mark her full-on breakthrough on the charts, but only after she was featured on yet another hit that same year: Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy.” Alas, in Charli’s mind, a lot of that success was mitigated by how easy it seemed for Lorde to get “all the flowers” right away. Whereas Charli had already been around since 2008, creating her version of Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant in the form of an unreleased album called 14 (technically before Adele thought to start naming her own records after her age, as Charli was recording some of these tracks as early as 2006). 

    It was in the booklet of said album, distributed to a very select few, that Charli wrote, “The songs I write are about my mates and experiences.” Not much has really changed on that front, with the entire Brat album being a reflection of those two preferred topics. Except that Lorde falls somewhere in between. Not necessarily a full-on “mate” (though maybe more of an “experience”), Lorde has been, at the very least, something of a “driving force” in XCX’s professional life, with the latter at one point commenting, “When ‘Royals’ came out, I was super jealous of the success that that song got, and that Ella got. You piece all this stuff together in your brain, like: ‘She was into my music. She had big hair; I had big hair. She wore black lipstick; I once wore black lipstick.’ You create these parallels and think, ‘Well, that could have been me.’” 

    Instead, Charli was destined to take a much more circuitous path toward becoming a respected, applauded pop star of her own kind. Nonetheless, “Girl, so confusing” sets out to address many of those early insecurities that have lingered on even after XCX’s irrefutable success. But it’s been hard-won in comparison to Lorde’s, a singer who was instantaneously embraced and praised for her brilliance. Deemed a musical prodigy (like Charli, Lorde also has the benefit of synesthesia to help her compose songs) from the outset, it’s easy to understand why XCX would home in on Lorde as a source of envy. That XCX’s debut album, True Romance, was released five months before Lorde’s in 2013 also set a competitive precedent in that, technically, the two were “launched” the same year. To add insult to Charli’s injury, Lorde was also garnering more praise and sales at an even younger age than Charli (the two are four years apart). 

    The difference in their paths, personalities and general “vibes” couldn’t have been more apparent than in the only photos of the two of them together that exist (apart from that rando snap of them with Carly Rae Jepsen)—taken at the 2014 VMAs. In one of them, Charli holds up two peace signs while sticking her tongue out in typical bombastic Leo fashion while Lorde, ever-staid, cool, calm and collected (such a Scorpio), stands next to her with a close-mouthed half-smile. Her aura of disinterested ennui being something that Charli only managed to cultivate much later, having perfected it in the Crash era. 

    In the meantime, Lorde’s own lack of confidence seems to have shined through more openly in recent years—and perhaps most openly of all in the lengthy verse she contributes to the “Girl, so confusing” remix (marking her second release of the year after a cover of “Take Me to the River” for Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense). For there is a portion where she gets extremely candid about her body image issues via the lines, “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 with my body/I tried to starve myself thinner/And then I gained all the weight back.”

    Considering that women in the public eye are deemed “fair game” for the media on all matters body critical, it’s no wonder Lorde would be paranoid about having her photo taken in a state of anything less than “perfection” (by warped societal standards). Knowing full well it could be dissected and analyzed for all of eternity on the internet. XCX knows all about this heightened fear too, commenting on her own struggles with body dysmorphia on “Rewind” as she admits, “Nowadays, I only eat at the good restaurants/But, honestly, I’m always thinking ’bout my weight.” 

    The power in joining together—especially in the wake of so much speculation as to whether or not they had “beef” (though, again, it’s nothing compared to the speculation about XCX and MARINA’s beef)—comes at a time when patriarchal forces still seek to keep women pitted against one another. Some recent examples include Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter (which spawned the latter’s “because i like a boy”), or Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift (surprisingly, though, not Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish), or Taylor Swift and Charli herself, or Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish—or, shit, Taylor Swift and every other female artist. Thus, for two women in the music business to team up like this does not go unnoticed. Nor does its powerful message. 

    Lorde’s candor about female competitiveness only adds to the remix’s power as she sings, “I was trapped in the hatred/And your life seemed so awesome/I never thought for a second/My voice was in your head/‘Girl, you walk like a bitch’/When I was ten, someone said that/And it’s just self-defense/Until you’re building a weapon.” In other words, protecting yourself, as a woman, can end up turning dangerous for other women who are just as insecure. Take, for example, Lily Allen stating of her early twenties propensity to openly criticize other women (including the fellow singer she was pitted against at the time, Amy Winehouse) that she was extremely dissatisfied with her own self during this period (Paris Hilton would make a similar assessment of her rampant racist and homophobic comments in the 00s). 

    Putting forth a “tough as nails” facade, women convince both genders that they’re impervious to what anyone thinks when, in fact, they’re crumpling over in fear of others’ opinions on the inside. Thus, Lorde adds to her verse, “She believed my projection/And now I totally get it/Forgot that inside the icon/There’s still a young girl from Essex.” In short, even Lorde can forget, thanks to her own deft ability to project a false persona and confidence, that Charli has probably been doing the same. That she’s still, in spite of the steely exterior, that unformed rave scene girl at heart.

    The two singers eventually join one another to sing a version of the chorus that goes, “People say we’re alike/They say we’ve got the same hair/It’s you and me on the coin/The industry loves to spend/And when we put this to bed/The internet will go crazy/I’m glad I know how you feel.” It’s after this line that Lorde goes back to singing solo so she can say, once and for all: “‘Cause I ride for you, Charli.” Only during the outro can Charli finally return the sentiment with the declaration, “You know I ride for you too.” It only took about ten years to get to that point, but hey, some feuds between women never end at all (here’s looking at you, Bette and Joan).

    And yet, XCX still leaves the feud potentially open for further fodder when the song concludes with: “It’s so confusing-ing” (which plays in the same pitch as Grimes). Perhaps confusing enough to make Charli and Lorde fall into old competitive habits once more. Though hopefully it’s nothing but “love you, mean its” and musical collabs from here on out. Because the two do pair (un)surprisingly well together.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link