Charli XCX’s contribution to the Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 soundtrack has also surfaced. “Kingdom” is a collaboration with Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon and Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij. Here’s what she had to say about it in an interview with Pitchfork from earlier this week: “It was definitely exciting to be working with someone who’s iconic and from a different time than me, though. That was something Ella [Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde] felt really strong about—bringing in another time period.” Listen and read some more about how the collaboration came together below.

Pitchfork: Speaking of Lorde, you recently collaborated with her on The Hunger Games: Mockingjay soundtrack, which she curated, for a song called “Kingdom” with Simon Le Bon. Are you a big Duran Duran fan? 
XCX: If I’m being honest, I’m a fan, but not the world’s #1 fan. It was definitely exciting to be working with someone who’s iconic and from a different time than me, though. That was something Ella [Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde] felt really strong about—bringing in another time period. We spoke about a lot of different people, and Simon seemed like the right one, so we were excited when he said yes. 

I also worked with Rostam [Batmanglij] on that song. We went to the Miley Cyrus show in L.A. and got really wasted. Then we went back to his house and I sat on top of his piano, and we wrote “Kingdom”. We sung it into his phone. I remember thinking in the morning, “Ugh, this is going to be the worst thing ever,” but it was really good. So when Ella reached out to me about the soundtrack, I decided to send her that song even though it’s really different than my usual shit. She was really complimentary about it. 

A photo posted by CHARLI XCX (@charli_xcx) on Mar 3, 2014 at 4:24pm PST

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 OST is out 11/18 via Republic.