BBC Newsbeat<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Singer Lorde says collaborating with Charli XCX gave her more confidence to explore her vulnerabilities with her new music.<\/p>\n The singer-songwriter from New Zealand is gearing up to release her fourth album, Virgin, this summer, and the first single, What Was That, shot straight into the UK top 10.<\/p>\n Lorde tells BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders it’s taken a lot of work to get the album to this point: “I never thought it would come out,” she says.<\/p>\n “I wrote this from the perspective of, ‘well I could never say that’,” the singer, real name Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, says. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n “It was just sort of an exercise in saying everything I needed to say about a whole lot of different stuff and I put off dealing with that.<\/p>\n “I was like, that’s for future Ella to deal with.”<\/p>\n Then came a message from Charli XCX, inviting her to collaborate on her track girl, so confusing from her acclaimed album Brat. <\/p>\n In the remix, Lorde opens up about struggling with an eating disorder and comparing herself to the singer-songwriter from Essex.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Brat coming out really gave me a kick,” says Lorde.<\/p>\n “Meeting her in that place of rugged vulnerability and people responding really well to that, I was kind of like, ‘OK cool – this is a good thing to be doing’.<\/p>\n “I really suffer from this thing of not feeling my own power… and the remix just started me up and I was like, ‘no no, people are listening and they care and your words carry real weight’.”<\/p>\n Aside from its multiple awards, Brat also became a cultural phenomenon when it was released.<\/p>\n It featured in the US presidential election campaign<\/a> and the Collins Dictionary, which crowned it word of the year<\/a>. <\/p>\n Lorde performed the remix during Charli’s Coachella set in California last month, with Charli even suggesting “Lorde summer 2025” could follow 2024’s Brat summer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lorde says Brat also inspired her to refine what she wanted to say with her first new music in four years. <\/p>\n “It forced me to further define what I was doing because Charli had so masterfully defined everything about Brat,” she says.<\/p>\n “And it’s so amazing when a peer throws the gauntlet down like that. We’ve gotta pick it up and I’ve spoken to a lot of peers who all had the same feeling.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lorde’s lead single, What Was That, was officially released last week after being teased on TikTok, debuting in the UK Top 10.<\/p>\n Lorde says it gives a flavour of her upcoming album, where she’s tried to reconnect with her younger self.<\/p>\n “I really went into it like, ‘just make something for you, just make something you think is cool’,” she says.<\/p>\n “It’s not unlike how I was making music as a 15-year-old, just trying to impress myself.<\/p>\n “What Was That was the first song from this album that I wrote and was like, ‘OK, I know where to go with this’,” she says, describing the track as “Lorde canon” and “recognisably me”. <\/p>\n “It’s funny to be 12 years into your career and for people to have an understanding of your tropes and what you do.” <\/p>\n The singer says she “wanted to lock people back in” to her sound after her last album, 2021’s Solar Power, which she says was “a very different flavour for me”.<\/p>\n “It’s about going to the core of who I am in the purest way possible, stripping away anything unnecessary.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Getty](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/3297\/live\/27d31140-25ce-11f0-afc0-45abfc0cd2d6.jpg.webp\")
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