On late Friday afternoon, a pop culture moment: head brat and artist of the moment Charli xcx dropped the Girl, so confusing version with Lorde, a remix of her earlier track that had the internet guessing who it was about.

Of course it was about our Lorde! Ella writes poems, Charli throws parties, they have the same hair (fun fact: Kiwi Matt Benns does Charli’s hair now, and has worked with Lorde regularly).

“Fucking hell,” was Charli's response to Lorde’s lyrics, a similar reaction to that of both musicians’ extremely online fanbases once the new track was released. What did a few local fans think of the song and its many layers about friendship, insecurities and the entertainment industry? We asked for their reviews.

Rebecca Wadey, Ensemble co-founder

I’ve come at Brat in an incredibly specific moment in time: post-hysterectomy sans uterus and cervix, 21 years after a mastectomy, with a lot of inner-navel gazing on the concept of femininity and girlhood. Last weekend, the final in my official post surgery recovery, I drove to a remote location in the Coromandel, took an edible and danced to Brat like no one was watching (literally no one was) while looking out over the ocean, before tucking myself into bed with All Fours by Miranda July once the sun went down. That seemed to perfectly capture the space between two worlds where I currently find myself. I was satiated. I didn’t know I needed more until it dropped into my feed a few days later. 

Now I realise it’s exactly what I needed, and somehow I see it as the perfect companion piece to July’s book about a woman approaching middle age. Both works of art are about representation, the inner-monologue women have as they try to navigate the patriarchy; a world where they’re constantly told they’re not enough. Both are celebrations of the complexity of relationships and female friendships. I’ve read so much discourse recently on representation of women in fashion and celebrity culture in the age of Ozempic, and a slide back to unattainable standards of beauty. None of these many think pieces address the core problem: the intergenerational damage that’s been placed upon us, and how we can see a way out with sanity and esteem vaguely intact. Girl, so confusing, and All Fours give me hope.

Lyric Waiwiri-Smith, Stuff reporter

As a girl who is also at war with her body, tends to cancel last minute and gets trapped in the hatred, Friday June 21 will forever be remembered (by me, at least) as Girl Day.

On every listen to this song I can’t help feeling like I’m the Lorde in this sitch – self-hatred and isolation can be a weapon upon yourself and others, but you don’t think about the latter half when you’re in the thick of it. Then the fog clears, and you realise you’ve pushed everyone away. And thus the cycle continues.

This song is so interesting because a) those AG Cook-ified Lorde vocals have tickled an itch in my brain I didn’t realise was there and b) it gives a window into how both Charli and Lorde view their “beef”.

It’s a complete 180 on the other big diss tracks of the year – Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s – in that instead of firing off shoots behind backs, Charli and Lorde have been able to meet each other on the same level and talk it out. Certified brats, certified girls.

I can’t lie, I cringed very badly at the video of Charli getting giddy about this song on Las Culturistas – it sends mixed messages to claim there’s no diss track on Brat then jump on the radio and tease a “reveal”. It’s pretty bratty, in a Mean Girls way, so I’m glad they’ve hit rewind and there’s one less girl-v-girl beef to get brain rot from. B-b-bumpin’ that.

Bryer Oden, writer and content creator (and fan of Lorde’s emails)

Just as Sabrina Carpenter’s Please Please Please has marked a cultural shift where having a boyfriend is now more embarrassing and detrimental to your brand than not having one, Charli xcx’s Girl, so confusing version with Lorde marks a shift where pitting women against each other in the industry is no longer being tolerated as “harmless rivalry,” but as a damaging and outdated ideology.

By releasing the original track without Lorde’s verse, Charli cleverly played us all into her hands as people scrambled to work out the “drama” going on behind the scenes. When instead of a diss track, we were met with a collaboration, it turned a mirror on how we as fans play a role in artists “getting woman’d,” by being overly hungry for any scraps of celebrity drama.

It gets extra meta when you take into consideration a newsletter that Lorde published last September, where she candidly discussed the same themes in Girl, so confusing, such as how poor body image, mental health, and self-comparison can make you feel lethargic and jaded in the industry.

The newsletter reads:‍

“My body is really inflamed, it’s trying to tell me something and I’m trying to support it but nothing seems to help and I get frustrated. My gut isn’t working properly, my skin is worse than ever, I’ve gotten sick half a dozen times. I realised earlier this year that listening to my body is hard for me, it’s something I never really learned how to do…

I go online and look at everyone. Beautiful people sing to me. Everyone’s gotten really good at the same thing. I look at arched backs and wet flower mouths, the right bag, the right sunglasses. I wonder if it feels as good as it looks, it’s been so long since I chose the best picture from a hundred, lined it up like pulling an arrow taut in a bow, and let it go. Everyone looks very thin. Just thinking that makes me feel tired and far away. I’m not sure if it’s having an effect on anyone else. I keep spending money, wondering if what’s in the package will make me feel right, but I guess I buy the wrong things. 

I was gonna go to fashion week in Paris, had all these grand plans, but this week I texted my manager and pulled out. At the start of my career I promised myself I’d never be one of the people in the light smiling if it wasn’t real.”

News articles that were published about this newsletter led to an influx of unsolicited comments about Lorde’s health and body, with swathes of people either diminishing her mental health struggles completely, or criticising her for “complaining” as she “has the means to make a sufficient difference,” as if being famous negates you from being allowed to feel human.

I see Lorde jumping on the remix with Charli as a retaliation to these comments – she is continuing to speak on her experience, this time in solidarity with another artist who understands the world she lives in. Together, they have used the star power of a long-awaited collab to highlight that the real problem here is the toxic environment we create for women to exist within, where diet culture and gossip tabloids take precedence over genuine happiness, artistry, and wellbeing. Charli’s point is nuanced and succinct: women shouldn’t be positioned only as either competitors or best friends, and complex female relationships are just as valid as the ones we see represented in mainstream media. 

As Julia Fox posted in response to the track, “I love every girl I’ve ever had beef with.” By shutting down and resolving their supposed differences, these two incredible women have created an opportunity for reconciliation and healing by letting us reflect on our own personal friendship fallouts and find closure in the fact that, as Lily Allen addressed 10 years ago, it’s hard out here for a bitch. In a world where we want to see women turn Brat Green with envy and fight for a seat at the table, this track is a breath of fresh air.

Heidi Simpson, musician

Female friendships can be complicated, especially in the music industry where women are often made to feel like they're competing with each other. In female relationships, it can sometimes be a blurry line between love, hate and jealousy. However, most of the time, it can be resolved in a single moment of realisation of "Waiiiitt no, we actually love each other!" 

For them to publicly express this on a fun pop song that makes you want to dance is a big moment. I also loved hearing Lorde's voice with some autotune and heavier vocal effects. Honesty is powerful, and coming from two icons with strong personas and tough exteriors, it's a great reminder that being a girl IS so confusing sometimes. At the end of the day Charli was so right when she wrote, “and I don’t know I’m just a girl”. 

Sita Narsai, designer

Ok, but I am obsessed with this album, this song, this remix. It started with the low resolution brat on fluoro green. As a designer it was talking to me – asking me to judge it. Judge it I have, and I love it. This song in its original format is one that I didn't know I’d been waiting for my whole life. The remix is a balm to the rawness of the original – a bop therapy session; “let’s work it out on the remix”. It’s girls supporting girls. Communicating their anxiety – their insecurities, fears and differences. Nothing is truer to me than holding on to some bullshit someone said to you at 10-years-old. For Lorde it’s her walk, for me it was some kid saying, “you’ve got hairy arms”. The line “You'd always say, Let's go out, But then I'd cancel last minute”, the social anxiety caused by the overwhelming nature of the outside world, is sometimes all too real for me. We worry. We care. We’re all just girls.

Johanna Cosgrove, actor, writer and comedian

The shriek I shroke when I cottoned on (via every single social media post on my feed) that Girl, so confusing was a thinly veiled dissection of Charli's relationship not with any old high school frenemy but Lorde. Our Lorde?! Our Grammy darling! Our brooding poetic superstar who continues to bear the burden of being NZ's most recognisable export (soz Taika)?! 

Was Charli serving a direct donkey kick to the face of a fellow pop princess who has so graciously given Brat a primetime shout out on a very sparsely used social media channel? (Lorde lichrally has 1 post on the grid despite a following of 10.9 million) 

The lyrics are both cutting and vulnerable and the song made me want to let loose in the kitchen in knickers while hate-stalking my online nemesis. It taps into an age old patriarchal dance – women tentatively circling around connection in a veritable snake pit (in this instance, the entertainment industry) (Also – despite context, extremely relatable).

The narrative is immediately intoxicating. In an age of viral internet 'beefs' (most recent being the toxic hell spiral between Drake and Kendrick Lamar), one couldn't help but wonder – was Lorde at fault? Was Charli? What's actually going on in a situation that is both in one's head and deeply real?!

Imagine my response when the remix featuring Lorde was announced. My jaw hit the floor. My head spun on its axis. My wig hit the rafters. 

It's so genius and such sweet relief that Lorde was in on it the whole time (oh, to be a fly on the wall in those initial pitch conversations). There wasn't going to be a follow up defamatory diss track with multiple allegations – and for that I truly thank god. 

Brat has hit the intersection of music and concept at 100 km p/h. It is artistry – with this collab a sparkling diamond in its vivid green crown. For two women to bare their tentative misgivings for each other and say the thing is… marvellous. Yes – it's performed. But it's also honest. 

I'm reminded of hurtful and sticky times in my own navigation of female friendships (shout out girls’ schools!). Often, no one is really at fault and underneath the fracture in communication there is always so much going on. Hating one's body in a world that constantly hurls sickening abuse at you. Flaking on plans. Being unsure. Being misconstrued as "intimidating" and earning people's distrust for no other reason than 'you walk like a bitch'.

Lorde's verse gripped me in a kind of trance; she'd seen inside my brain. She was exposing text's I'd both received and sent to friends. She just knew. I mean, both Lorde and Charli are just human beings 'who also shit' (as someone once told me in an attempt to discourage some ill-gotten hero worship). What this version of Girl, so confusing does so beautifully is not continue to caper around the issue,but marches right through it, head on.

It acknowledges tiny little cracks of misunderstanding. Julia Fox posted a TikTok saying that this remix has "healed her girlhood trauma", and while I wouldn't go that far, I'd absolutely agree with a friend who immediately posted that this is "A POP EMERGENCY".

To see any relationship come full circle is gorgeous but to see two powerful women pull back the mask and forge an arc of solidarity to publicly declare 'I ride for u' while also being musically delicious? The ancient jig is up and I'm ready to hit this new acid green d-floor. 

'It's me and you on a coin, the industry loves to spend and when we put it to bed the internet will go crazy.'

Zoe Walker Ahwa, Ensemble editor

“Lorde’s lyrics on the Charli remix are 🥺😭❤️‍🩹💔🙌” was my intellectual contribution to the Ensemble group chat when the song came out on Friday. I listened to it on repeat many times; Ella’s verse hit like a gut punch (my second thought was that I hope she’s ok and that someone gave her a big hug). The immediate takeaway was the brutal and beautiful honesty, and call/response exploration of the complexities of female friendships; that vulnerability is, I think, what made so many people (in TikTok reaction videos) emotional when they first heard it.

Putting that and the history of their ‘beef’ aside, there were parts where I almost clapped in emo recognition: cancelling plans because you're in your head, social anxiety that unintentionally comes across to others as being aloof, a snob, a bitch. Girl! And not to make it all about fashion and all about me, but the line about being scared to be in the pictures reminded me so much of where NZ fashion and beauty is at right now, where every event is actually a marketing shoot and you're expected to go along and look good in the photos to promote and sell somebody else's product.

Also: from the lime green to the blurry font to the brat generator to the Boiler Room set to Charli’s niche TikTok appearances to the Internet it girl IYKYK video, the entire album roll out has been extremely fun and genius, and should be studied by marketing students for years to come. It’s Taylor Swift level calculated, but actually cool (this nerdy read is great). I think Charli’s collaboration with Lorde has been in the making for a while: in February that cringe TikToker who sings musician’s songs at them ‘bumped into’ Charli and sang Royals. ALL PART OF THE BRAT LORE!

Harriet Pudney, writer

Women dress for other women, and honestly, sometimes I think we save our most complicated feelings for them too. The love of a man might feel like acceptance, approval, a tidy place to land, but ultimately when it doesn't work, we tell ourselves, well, typical male behaviour. Classically immature, thinking with his dick in his mid-30s, all too standard. 

Difficulties in female friendships are scalpel-sharp in comparison. We know each other so much better and we feel like we're the same. When things go wrong it feels like a true reflection on our inner selves. 

It is so, so easy to look at another woman and think that she's got it together. We can talk past each other in friendships, especially when we're looking at someone we so admire and think, there's no way she could ever be upset by me, I'm sure she doesn't care. It's just self-defence until you're building a weapon. 

I've hurt friends, who I thought were worlds tougher and cooler than me, with thoughtless comments and worst-case assumptions. It's gone the other way as well. In the best of those friendships, one of us has taken a deep breath and explained how we feel. It's a gesture of love in itself. If you don't care, you just move on. Like in this song, that bravery and vulnerability has always brought us closer. You know that the other person wants the friendship to work, that it will survive misunderstandings and hurt feelings. How beautiful. 

And even better, the song's a hit. Here's to the party girls and to crying on the dancefloor.

Tyson Beckett, Ensemble writer

In the spirit of speaking our wholehearted truths, I will admit that when I first listened to the remix on Friday I didn't immediately warm to it. It was the end of a big week, I'd been at my desk too long, was feeling generally grouchy and inexcusably the song wasn't on Apple Music yet so I had to listen to it on YouTube.

I'm not used to Lorde singing at Charli's tempo and it threw me, I felt it was a bit forced and remembering Charli discussing her decision not to name who the original was about when she guested on Las Culturistas, I questioned whether this was an organic collab or part of a contrived marketing ploy. 

Very happy to report that 15 hours later, thrashing the tune while walking (stomping) about  in the sun, the errors of my way were blatantly audible. "Ok I was wrong," I messaged a friend, "the song slaps."

Maggie Hablous, writer

The specificity of the Girl, so confusing remix lyrics is like… amazing candour-wise, but so iPhone-notes-app specific I am left desperate to Get To The Bottom Of This.

I have questions: Why does Charli want to party with Lorde if they’re having dry conversations at dinner? What are the numbers on how often Lorde cancelled (surely once or twice is all goodies)? How long has this gentle beef been brewing?

And what did Charli say in her VOICE note (!!!)? How long was it? If we believe Lorde's lyrics, she learnt about this significant misunderstanding by waking up to a message from Charli. I just wonder what the hell that listening experience was like.

Despite my questions, I appreciate how two successful pop girlies working out their problems in an intensely honest way via public remix expresses the complexities of female relationships – showing us all that being direct and talk-singing it out is the best way to address an issue (not via voice note, I would suggest).

I can still enjoy the remix without the answers to my questions. I happily quiet my mind and bump it, but not as much at 365 or Everything is Romantic, because I prefer my song lyrics to be a lil’ more general (or so completely impenetrable they could apply to any situation). While I don't demand answers, I am asking for an additional remix that is simply the lyrics “think you should come to my party and put your hands up” over and over.