This is what it feels like to be reverse Carly Simon-ed. Turns out the titular “boy” at the center of Monica & Brandy’s 1998 megahit “The Boy Is Mine” never existed. And the feud being played up by the iconic music video was equally fake.

Just breathe into the bag, it’ll be okay. We’re going to get through this together.

Monica revealed the Earth-shattering news in an interview with HuffPost Live:

“People are still asking, ‘Who was the boy?’ and ‘Who got the boy?’ There was no boy! It just was a song!…We played up the dramatics of it all, but I’m like, ‘Guys, we were 16 and 17.’ We’re 35 and 36 now. There was no boy and no beef.”

Monica added that entire seeming feud between the two R&B stars was a fabrication, a bit of a marketing tactic that got out of control.

“It started off as brilliant marketing and what started to happen was people started creating these skits and then our fans divided and it became this really real thing.”

Monica dropped this bombshell as part of an interview promoting her new album Code Red, an album that actually sounds pretty great. If you still don’t feel totally betrayed, you should definitely check out “I Know” and the title track before it drops on December 18.

(Via Jezebel)