In the song Girl, So Confusing on the 2024 album Brat, Charli XCX declares to an unnamed addressee: “You’re all about writing poems. But I’m about throwing parties.”
Fan speculation that fellow singer Lorde was the songwriter-poet in question was confirmed two weeks after the album’s release with the precisely titled remix, The Girl, So Confusing Version With Lorde. But what is curious about the first version of this song is Charli’s admission that she sees herself as less of a poet than Lorde.
In a recent interview, Charli said that she was over “the idea of metaphor and flowery lyricism and not saying exactly what I think, the way I would say it to a friend in a text message”. But is Brat really not poetry? As a literary researcher, I would classify Charli as a contemporary poet – especially if we contextualise her work within a wider tradition of modern literary writing.
