a big weekend for charli xcx, lorde, taylor swift, travis kelce and the prince of wales

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My angels!!!!! I’m gonna be totally upfront with you here and say that if you aren’t interested in pop music or its lore, then first:

and second say you might not like this newsy, so come back tomorrow where I’ll be talking about a BIG STUCK SHIP (which I know you all love.) xxx

⊹˚. ♡.𖥔 ݁ ˖ IN THE NEWS⊹˚. ♡.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Sorry, but pop music has been changed forever imo

Maybe this is me exaggerating, which I tend to do, but right now NOTHING MEANS MORE TO ME THAN THIS RIGHT HERE:

I want to try and explain why this means SO much to pop girlies (and tbh girlies everywhere) in the quickest and easiest way possible, so here goes:

A timeline of Lorde + Charli xcx

• 2014: ok so at the same time as Lorde’s song Royals was popping off, Charli was also seeing big success with her songs like ‘I love it’

• then it became an iconic internet joke that Lorde and Charli are the same person (which I think started here when a reporter asked Charli about Royals (Lorde’s hit song, obv and Charli just went along with it)

• since they look so similar it’s also been a long-running joke for Charli’s fans to yell at her, “Play ‘Royals” at her shows

• 2024 (10 years on): in May Charli let Rolling Stone know that yeah, she was jealous of Lorde’s success with Royals, but actually, that’s okay and they’re over it, saying: “When ‘Royals’ came out, I was super jealous of the success that that song got, and that Ella got,” she told the publication. “You piece all this stuff together in your brain, like: ‘She was into my music. She had big hair; I had big hair. She wore black lipstick; I once wore black lipstick.’ You create these parallels and think, ‘Well, that could have been me.’ But it couldn’t have because we’re completely different people. I wasn’t making music that sounded anything like ‘Royals’. I think you just read what you want into it because you’re feeling insecure about your own work.”

  She assured they moved past that and were on great terms. “You get over it and then you try to figure out all the things that are unique about you and you pursue that, and then probably in five months’ time you have a breakdown about something else,” she said.

• And then Charli’s new album brat dropped, which had the track ‘the girl, so confusing’ on it. The track was obvious to anyone who knew the lore that it was about Lorde, with lyrics like:

  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

  
  People say we're alike
  They say we've got the same hair
  We talk about making music
  But I don't know if it's honest
  Can't tell if you wanna see me
  Falling over and failing
  And you can't tell what you're feeling
  I think I know how you feel

• AND THEN SHE DROPPED A LORDE REMIX WITH THE MOST HONEST AND GUT WRENCHING LYRICS YOU’VE EVER HEARD ON IT:

  Well, honestly, I was speechless
  When I woke up to your voice note
  You told me how you'd been feeling
  Let's work it out on the remix
  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
  "Girl, you walk like a bitch"
  When I was ten, someone said that
  And it's just self-defence
  Until you're building a weapon
  She believed my projection
  And now I totally get it
  Forgot that inside the icon
  There's still a young girl from Essex

  
  People say we're alike
  They say we've got the same hair
  It's you and me on the coin
  The industry loves to spend
  And when we put this to bed
  The internet will go crazy
  I'm glad I know how you feel
  'Cause I ride for you, Charli

Since this track dropped I’ve literally listened to this song at least a thousand times (anyone with me this weekend can attest to that) because there is NOTHING CONFUSING ABOUT THOSE LYRICS. I love to be moved by a good lyric as much as the next girlie, but didn’t expect to be stabbed in the chest like that!!!

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Deeping it a lil

Obviously I wanted to talk to my pop music mentor and brother-in-arms (Slam Dunc) about this huge pop moment, and while our conversation started like the pyschos we are:

Dunc actually wrote something fucking beautiful about the state of pop music, and I wanted to quote what he wrote about this remix (and pop music in general) here:

Part of what made Girl, So Confusing so compelling was the way it dropped the artifice and revealed deep insecurity. Lorde responds in kind, dropping that untouchable poise which has radiated out of her in recent years in favour of a wildly human admission. “’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.” It’s a startling window into what a forthcoming more raw Lorde album might portend, a return to the deeply human revelations of Pure Heroine. 

All this means that in the space of a couple of months, the moribund state of pop feels shot full of energy. Carpenter is going to make it. Charli has crafted the best music of her career. Lorde is back in pop. Chappell Roan is on another planet – tellingly the collaborator is Dan Nigro, who has credits on iconic songs from more couture artists like Sky Ferreira and Caroline Polachek, as well as chart destroyers like Rodrigo and Conan Grey. After years of the Jack Antonoff flattening machine, Nigro’s sound is a technicolour dream, and feels made for the artist, rather than the artist following him.

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The internet did, in fact, go crazy

This was like… the biggest internet event for those of us who were on tumblr in the early 2010s. First, we had our two witches collabing and telling us all their innermost feelings, then we had MARINA (previously and the diamonds) chiming in with her adoration for the track (which is a whole thing in itself which I won’t get into.)

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And we still don’t know what Lorde thinks about it all

Did Lorde leave me on ‘seen’ or was she just lost in her head and at war with her body and trapped in the hatred etc?

But I don’t feel too bad about it bc Charli tried to get in comms with her too:

*exhales*

OK, I just had to get that all off my chest. Anyway, go stream the girl, so confusing version with lorde x

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☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★ ON THE WEB ☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★

It was a big weekend for Taylor Swift too

First she hard launched Travis Kelce on her social media via a selfie with the literal Prince of Wales:

taylorswift

A post shared by @taylorswift

And then she BROUGHT TRAVIS OUT ON STAGE AT ONE OF HER LONDON SHOWS:

@shityoushouldcareabouttaylor swift brought travis kelce out on stage in London!!!!!!

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@shityoushouldcareabouttravis kelce shaking taylor swift and telling her to “wake up!!” as he picks her up and carries her across the stage is everything

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And here’s a great hi-def picture of it!!

I was also a really brave girl posting about this on Instagram (look at my caption):

i loved this persons response too heheh

I love powerful women:

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Taylor Swift vs Foo Fighters?

When she wasn’t hanging out with the Prince of Wales or bringing her boyfriend to the summit (the stage of the Eras tour) she was lightly responding to Dave Grohl, who on stage in London, appeared to take a swipe at her (or her band at least) for “not playing live.”

Here’s how Variety reported it:

After mentioning that Swift’s Eras Tour was currently taking place at London’s Wembley Stadium, Grohl said on stage, “I tell you, man, you don’t want to suffer the wrath of Taylor Swift.”

He continued: “So we like to call our tour the ‘Errors Tour.’ We’ve had more than a few eras, and more than a few fucking errors as well. Just a couple.”

Grohl then implied that Swift doesn’t perform live, telling the crowd, “That’s because we actually play live. What? Just saying. You guys like raw, live rock ‘n’ roll music, right? You came to the right fucking place.”

Taylor Swift, who (somehow) doesn’t miss much, seemed to respond to this on stage by thanking her crew, and her band who she said “are going to be playing live for you for three and a half hours tonight."

Love that from her xoxoxox

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