Every Song I Love is a series where I attempt to write about every song that I love, or die trying. Sometimes I’ll explain why I love them, sometimes I’ll tell the stories behind how I fell in love with them, sometimes I’ll do both. Most importantly, I hope you love them too.

“Lets work it out on the remix” – Charli XCX & Lorde – Girl, so Confusing

I have to admit, I questioned the value of a Brat remix album when it was first announced last year. Brat was such a perfect album, what could the remixes really add? The record of remixes improving on originals is spotty at best, especially when starting from an already high bar. Was there really a need for this or would it just dilute the quality of the original album.

The purpose of remixes had changed over the years too. The origin of the remix in the form we understand it now, lay in the dub versions of reggae tracks created to be played at the great soundclashes. Stripping records down to their bare essence, maximising the intensity of the sound reverberating through the giant speakers. As remixes became popularised throughout the world during the 1970s and 1980s, they retained that purpose of taking a song and extending it, stripping it down to the most dancefloor orientated elements. They also became commercialised through the 12″ record, which became not a just a tool for DJs but a format the general public would buy.

As sales of vinyl declined in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so did the need for remixes. They remained popular in club orientated genres, and didn’t disappear for pop artists, but they were not as ubiquitous as the days when most hit singles had a 12″ remix. However, by the time I became a serious music lover in the mid 1990s, things had changed again. There had started to be a remix resurgence.

Singles had become mainly promotional tools for albums (which were more profitable) rather than making money in their own right. Every record company wanted to get the number one single to maximise radio and TV exposure. In the UK at least, this would mean trying to maximise sales in the first week to gain that coveted number one spot, even if sales fell off immediately after that. Bands often put out up to four versions of a single, maybe two CDs, a cassette and a vinyl, with different b-sides on each, to convince avid fans to buy all four versions and improve the songs chart position (these were often heavily discounted in the first week, or even only available for a week to concentrate sales in that week). Most bands were not going to write half a dozen new tracks to fill out the b-sides of the various formats, so found easier, cheaper ways to fill them up. One common choice was live tracks, the other was remixes.

Very occasionally you got a remix that broke through and had success in its own right, Armand Van Helden’s take on Tori Amos’s Cornflake Girl for example, or Paul Oakenfold’s remix of Wide Open Space by Mansun. Most though were disposable, forgettable, actively terrible even (I seem to remember a remix of Statuesque by Sleeper that was particularly egregious). Aphex Twin has a story about forgetting he was supposed to complete a remix of the Lemonheads until the courier turned up, and then dashing off a copy of one of his own spare tracks, claiming he had spend up the original Lemonheads track to the point where it just comprised a single beat. The fact that the compilation album of his remixes of other artists was called ’26 Remixes for Cash’ gives you an idea of the esteem in which they should be held.

Even those remixers who were successful and/or had some artistic merit, tended to fall into the trap of applying much the same treatment to every song they remixed. Fatboy Slim was the go to in the late 1990s if you wanted to turn your song into a hit, and he always used the same tricks. Jaunty beats, cut-up vocals, slowing the song down then speeding it back up again. This worked well on say, his remix of Wildchild’s Renegade Master, but treating Cornershop’s gorgeous Brimful of Asha in this way bordered on a crime, albeit a lucrative one.

As the CD era slowly died there was remixes no longer had to fill physical space. Although there was always the need for dancefloor versions of songs, there was less need for filler. For a while at least. Then along came the streaming services, and content became king. It was less acceptable for artists to simply disappear for two or three years between albums (or ten, if you happen to be Joanna Newsom). There had to be a constant stream of material to feed the algorithm. There was no turning back to the 1950s and 1960s when artists could be expected to put out two or three or more albums a year. Not now, when artists also had to undertake endless worldwide touring and promotion. Easy ways to crank out new material were needed again. We were back to live versions, demos, re-recordings and of course, remixes.

The nature of the remixes had changed though. In the 90s and 2000s, the main selling point of a remix was getting a famous named DJ or electronic producer attached to your record, adding some credibility and a different audience. In the streaming era, the trick is to get another well known singer or rapper to appear on the remix. The way streaming works, if that artist is credited on the remix of your record, it will appear in the playlists of their fans as well as yours. The purpose is similar, to gain credibility and/or a new audience, but the mechanism is different, and the financial impact more direct, as streaming numbers increase.

Charlie XCX’s ‘Brat and it’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat’ was very much in this vein. Brat summer had been such a phenomenon, how could she keep momentum through the autumn? By putting out a full album of remixes of every track on Brat (plus a few new ones) each featuring at least one other artist, including a few of the biggest names in pop, including, on ‘Girl, so Confusing’, Lorde. Not every track on the album was a winner (I can certainly live without the Julian Casablancas appearance for example), but more than enough were to make it worthwhile, and Girl, so Confusing was the best of all.

The original version of the track had XCX describing her difficult, complex relationship with another female artist, without mentioning who that artist was, but internet sleuths quickly figured out it was Lorde. This could easily have been very awkward. If it had been two male artists, no doubt it would have led to a feud that escalated to the point of one calling the other a paedophile in front of hundreds of millions of people at the Superbowl. But Charli XCX and Lorde chose a different (better) path. They chose to work it out on the remix.

On the remixed version of the song, they trade verses, lay their insecurities out. The way that the pressures of the music industry made it hard to be themselves, hard to trust others, and how these factors had caused the difficulties in their relationship. Ultimately they join together to sing in glorious unison, in a way that is thrilling, two young women banding together against an industry and a world that longs to pit them against each other. The original song was already great, but the remix gave it a real emotional heft, and made it perhaps the most thrilling musical moment of 2024. Lets hope the future holds fewer manufactured rivalries, more working it out on the remix.