According to Marina Diamandis—aka MARINA—Charli XCX has worked it out on the remix in more ways than one. During a recent interview with Rolling Stone ahead of her album PRINCESS OF POWER’s release on June 6, the “Butterfly” singer revealed that any old beef between her and Charli has officially been squashed.
When Charli and Lorde worked their complications out on the remix of “Girl, so confusing” last summer, it struck a chord with Marina. She sent Charli a message on social media and admitted that the “courageous” track made her cry amid their own falling out, which marked a moment of reconciliation between the artists.
“I think these moments are important. It was sweet to see people respond to that,” Marina told Rolling Stone. “I love her work and it’s so inspiring to see what she did with Brat. She just fully deserves it.”
In case you need a refresher, the two Britpop darlings ran Tumblr back in the day thanks to the visual aesthetics brought forth by their True Romance and Electra Heart eras. The artists even toured together during the blogging site’s prime in 2013. A few years later, they had a public falling out when MARINA called Charli out for participating in a photo shoot with a concept similar to her album art for her 2015 single “Immortal,” which featured greenery and neon-colored fruit.
At the time, she posted a social status, writing, “Imagery is artistic property. Please respect your fellow artists.”
The “360” hitmaker responded and sent “positive vibes” along with her official statement, which reportedly read, “You know what, sometimes you do a photoshoot standing in front of a plant, sometimes you do a photoshoot in black and white, sometimes you wear purple eyeshadow. Sometimes you shoot with the same photographer a fellow artist has shot with. That’s just how things happen in the industry I work in. What was I supposed to do? Shoot it in the snow!?”
Per Entertainment Weekly, MARINA also referenced her album FROOT when she commented on photographer Charlotte Rutherford’s photo of Charli: “That FROOT looks familiar!”
The quote eventually became an inside joke across both fan bases over the years, and in 2023, Charli revealed that she and MARINA weren’t friends on her private Instagram account, @brat_360.
“It’s not like DEEP or anything, there’s no negativity in my opinion, our worlds just don’t cross. I will say I DID feel negatively years later because I just felt like I really looked up to her and almost saw her as a role model in a way, and when she publicly put me on blast via subtweet I was honestly really hurt and upset and confused and all the fans were coming for me and everything,” she wrote at the time.
She continued, “And I just thought we were friends so maybe she could have like, texted me or something ? So I just felt like she knew she was sending people to ‘get me’ online and as someone I looked up to I just thought that was really a mean thing to do at the time. Now I’m just like lol the whole thing is so funny like as if there was a beef over lemons. Pahaahha.”
Now that things are good between the girlies, let this serve as a reminder that we can all listen to their 2013 collab “Just Desserts” free of guilt. You’re welcome for this treat:
