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

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.