Lorde is opening up like never before, and she’s giving full credit to Charli XCX for giving her the courage to do it. In a recent chat with BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, the New Zealand pop star admitted that Charli’s 2024 cultural reset Brat helped her dig deeper emotionally while working on her upcoming album Virgin.
Lorde has just dropped “What Was That,” the first single from the new LP and her first release in four years. But it was her feature on Charli’s remix of Brat track “Girl, so Confusing” that really shifted something in her creatively. “I never thought it would come out,” Lorde said of the remix. “I wrote this from the perspective of, ‘Well, I could never say that.’”
She revealed it started as a way to vent and sort through feelings she hadn’t addressed. “It was just sort of an exercise in saying everything I needed to say about a whole lot of different stuff,” she explained. “I was like, that’s for future Ella to deal with.” But once the track was released and people connected with its honesty, Lorde felt something click.
“Brat coming out really gave me a kick,” she admitted. “Meeting her in that place of rugged vulnerability and people responding really well to that, I was kind of like, ‘OK cool, this is a good thing to be doing.’”
Lorde also touched on how the response to Brat helped her realize her own voice had weight. “I really suffer from this thing of not feeling my own power,” she said. “The remix just started me up, and I was like, ‘No, no, people are listening, and they care, and your words carry real weight.’”
What really pushed her creatively was watching Charli’s sharp artistic direction. “It forced me to further define what I was doing because Charli had so masterfully defined everything about Brat,” Lorde said. She also added that many of her peers felt the same, Brat didn’t just inspire; it challenged them to level up.
Charli’s Brat was all about confronting personal insecurities, success, and image. That same fearless energy clearly lit a fire under Lorde, who’s now using her own music to face some truths she once shelved for “future Ella.”
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