During a recent podcast appearance,
Rita Ora discussed the backlash she faced following the release of
her bisexual single “Girls.”
On the track “Girls” from the album
Phoenix, Ora, 28, sings, “I ain't one-sided, I'm
open-minded. I'm 50-50 and I'm never gonna hide it.”
The song's lyrics were criticized by
several out artists, including Hayley Kiyoko, who said that she
doesn't “need to drink wine to kiss girls.” Kehlani said that
the song had “harmful lyrics.”
Ora apologized in a post, and added
that she has had previous relationships with men and women.
On the What's The Tee podcast,
Ora said that she “definitely didn't mean one bad intention.”
“The fact I survived that made me so
happy, because it was pretty dark. It's like making a baby, putting
it out in the world, then it getting brutally attacked,” Ora said.
Ora added that she understood how not
having come out publicly opened her up to criticism.
“But when I came out, I think people
looked at it, because they didn't know about my experience, like I
was using the culture – which was understandable. I never looked
at it like that because I knew I'd experienced it. But I forgot that
nobody else knew that,” she
said.