Who Is Charli XCX’s ‘Girl, So Confusing’ About?

Charli XCX is delightfully blunt. She named her newly released album Brat, and if that weren’t literal enough, she went ahead and entitled the deluxe version Brat And It’s The Same But There’s Three More Songs So It’s Not. So, Charli XCX has never been one to mince words, but she made an exception for “Girl, So Confusing,” leaving fans to fall down rabbit holes and theorize until their collective heart’s content about the popular Brat track.

Who Is Charli XCX’s ‘Girl, So Confusing’ About?

In short, Charli XCX hasn’t confirmed the inspiration behind “Girl, So Confusing,” but fans have narrowed it down to three possible suspects, with one person universally identified atop the leaderboard.

Vulture did the lord’s work and decoded the song, explaining all of the reasons why “Girl, So Confusing” must be about Lorde. Plenty of fans agree, as seen below.

As noted by Out Magazine, Marina (formerly Marina And The Diamonds) and Rina Sawayama are also popular guesses.

Last week, Charli XCX appeared on Las Culturistas With Matt Rogers And Bowen Yang and expressed indecisiveness over whether she’ll publicly confirm whom she wrote “Girl, So Confusing” about.

“I haven’t quite decided whether I’m revealing,” the UK-bred global pop star said. “When I wrote it, I was like, ‘I’m revealing!’ But now, the time is here, [and] I’m like, ‘Oh, am I revealing?’ […] My thing is, people are gonna guess. You probably both have an accurate guess.”

Charli XCX also explained her broader motivations for writing the song, as seen below.

“I think we live in this world of pop music right now where women are like, ‘I support other women! I love women, and I’m a feminist!’ And that’s great. Like, love that. I don’t think that you become a bad feminist if you maybe don’t see eye-to-eye with every single woman. That’s just not the nature of human beings.

There is a competitiveness between us. There is envy. There is camaraderie. All of these different dynamics. I feel that, working in entertainment, there is this kind of dance that we all do with each other, whether you’re in music [or] in your world [and] no matter how you identify. There is this dance. Everybody’s watching each other. Everybody’s posing in the picture, like, ‘Hey, oh my god, it’s so nice to see you!’ But then, you’re also like, ‘I want what they have.’ And then, the next day, you’re like, ‘They suck. I killed it today!’

This happens, but no one, really, is willing to discuss it. But we all probably have our person or maybe a few different people, and I’m sure we are that person for other people. I just find that there is this strange, unspoken thing that often happens particularly with women because there is such a narrative of pitting women against each other within music, and sometimes, that’s not totally fabricated. Sometimes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”