Lorde says Charli xcx’s ‘Brat’ gave her the courage to share her vulnerable side on her new album.
The New Zealand pop star recently returned with her first new music in four years, ‘What Was That’, the lead single from her forthcoming LP ‘Virgin’.
Prior to then, she featured on the remix of Charli’s ‘Brat’ track ‘Girl, so Confusing’ and it gave her a “kick” to say the things she wants to say.
Lorde told BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders: “I never thought it would come out.
“I wrote this from the perspective of, ‘Well I could never say that.'”
“It was just sort of an exercise in saying everything I needed to say about a whole lot of different stuff and I put off dealing with that.
“I was like, that’s for future Ella to deal with.”
On Charli’s album inspiring her to show her vulnerabilities, she continued: “Brat coming out really gave me a kick.
“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’.
“I really suffer from this thing of not feeling my own power… and the remix just started me up and I was like, ‘No, no, people are listening, and they care, and your words carry real weight.'”
She continued: “It forced me to further define what I was doing because Charli had so masterfully defined everything about Brat.
“And it’s so amazing when a peer throws the gauntlet down like that. We’ve gotta pick it up and I’ve spoken to a lot of peers who all had the same feeling.”
On 2024’s cultural pop phenomenon, ‘Brat’, Charli tackled issues about success and her appearance, insisting her “Brat behaviour comes from insecurities”.