Charli XCX sent her Coachella audience into a frenzy on Saturday as she revealed Lorde as one of her surprise guests.
The New Zealand singer appeared on stage to perform the “Girl, so confusing” remix, which she features on.
The lyrics of the song delve into the pair’s relationship as two female pop stars who share mixed feelings of admiration and envy for each other.
After performing the song, Charli embraced Lorde and yelled, “Lorde summer 2025!” teasing the latter’s long-awaited comeback.
Lorde fans recently celebrated the singer sharing a snippet of new solo material for the first time in four years.
The singer has historically dropped new records in four-year intervals; she released her debut album, Pure Heroine, in 2013, Melodrama in 2017, and the critically divisive Solar Power in 2021.
Featuring on Charli XCX’s acclaimed 2024 album, Brat, fans quickly assumed that “Girl, so confusing” was about Lorde thanks to lyrics including “We’ve got the same hair” and “You’re all about writing poems.”
After sending Lorde a voice note to inform her of the original track, the “Royals” singer suggested she should record a version of the song, Charli later told Billboard.
“I had to go through the process of telling her that this song is about her and her being OK with that first,” Charli told the outlet. “I was trying to meet up with her for almost a year, and we kept having this weird, like, we were [going to], then we wouldn’t. It spoke to the narrative of the song itself. In the end, it didn’t work out.”
She explained, “Then the day before the record came out, I left her a voice note. [Lorde] replied straight away and was like, ‘Oh, my God, I had no idea you felt this way. I’m so sorry.’ And then was like, ‘You know, maybe I should be on a version of the song.’ I didn’t even ask her. She brought it up.”
Lorde told Billboard that writing her verse for the “Girl, So Confusing” remix was the first time she openly shared with Charli the reasons behind her apparent withdrawal from their friendship.
“There was such a rawness and an immediacy to what I was saying. I love that we truly did work it out on the remix,” she said. “There’s something very Brat about that, something very meta and modern. Only Charli could make that happen.”
The “Green Light” singer continued, “She had opened up a channel between us, and it made me say things that I had never said. I was articulating things I’d never said or maybe even things I’ve never even heard said. This whole thing has been such a huge honor.”
The Independent named the remix the best song of 2024.
Lorde wasn’t Charli’s only surprise guest at Coachella — she later brought out Billie Eilish for a lively performance of their hit, “Guess.”
The post Charli XCX sends crowd into frenzy with surprise Lorde appearance appeared first on The Independent.
