Following the release of Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, the internet, understandably, has opinions.
And along with her husband-to-be, Travis Kelce, and how he’s inspired her new tunes, being a hot topic of conversation, there’s another celebrity people reckon served as a muse.
Enter Actually Romantic, a track on the dazzling record that people are convinced is a reference to the Grammy-winning star’s feud with Brat hitmaker Charli XCX, 33.
Of course, Taylor, 35, hasn’t confirmed as such, but Swifties and Charli fans alike have been joining the dots and reckon Actually Romantic could be a direct response to one of the Von Dutch hitmaker’s previous hits, perhaps all the more confusing considering Taylor danced along to Charli’s performance at the last Grammy Awards.
‘I heard you call me “Boring Barbie” when the coke’s got you brave’, Taylor sings in the opening line, referring to the Barbie persona the blonde pop star has long been associated with, followed by an apparent dig at Charli’s drug use, which she has admitted to in her own songs by leaning heavily into the party-drug culture aesthetic with Brat.
‘High-fived my ex, and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me’, Taylor then sings, which fans believe is a reference to her 2023 fling with Matty Healy, who is now engaged to model Gabriette, another of Charli’s long-time pals.
The 1975 frontman is, of course, bandmates and best friends with George Daniel, Charli’s husband, and Taylor has made no secret of her version of events when it comes to their romance, also singing about being ‘ghosted’ on her The Tortured Poets Department song The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.
Other lines in Taylor’s new song include: ‘But it’s actually sweet / All the time you’ve spent on me’, and ‘How many times has your boyfriend said, “Why are we always talking ’bout her?”‘
So, after scrutinising Taylor’s new tune with a fine-tooth comb, fans noticed the connection between Actually Romantic and Charli’s 2024 song Sympathy Is a Knife.
In the dance anthem, Charli sings about her insecurities as a female artist, with lines like, ‘I couldn’t even be her if I tried’, leading to people theorising she’s singing about comparing herself to Taylor, especially given that Charli tweeted the song name on the same day Taylor dropped her last album.
Other lines in the track include, ‘Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show’, again in a nod to the Matty Healy connection.
At the time, fans praised Charli for the honesty in her lyricism, as she sang openly about questioning her worthiness for success.
Therefore, when Taylor’s alleged response song dropped, not everyone was on board with how it was approached.
‘The entire song, charli admits that taylor makes her insecure, that she’s spiraling, paranoid and sometimes feels so uncontrollably envious of taylor that she thinks of shooting herself dead. It’s not a diss, it’s just charli talking about her feelings. Immature of taylor’, wrote@SlayingShaymin on X.
‘the more i think about it, the more icky i feel about the charli diss track like taylor at her big age knows how awful other female artists are treated and she’s dunking on charli just because she interpreted sympathy is a knife wrong like’, said @stonelovebot.
However, others argued that fans don’t have the full story.
‘wait so people are claiming that taylor misinterpreted charli’s song, even tho taylor says in actually romantic that charli was talking behind her back… bring back media literacy PLEASE!!’, wrote @seductivefaces, to which @Azakaynn agreed: ‘Exactly like this is not about sympathy is a knife at all OBVIOUSLY THERE’S MORE TO IT’.
‘It’s almost like Taylor actually knows these people in real life and has various mutual friends with Charli. It’s almost like she has context that a bunch of twitter stans don’t have’, suggested @sarahyeser.
‘everyone loves diss tracks until taylor does it then suddenly everyone has morals’, defended @enchantingloml.
As for what Taylor has said about the meaning behind Actually Romantic, she’s described it as ‘a love letter to someone who hates you’.
‘Sometimes, you don’t know that you’re a part of someone else’s story, but you are, and there can be this moment where it’s unveiled to you through things they do,’ she told fans, proceeding to call it ‘flattering’ for someone to ‘think about [you] this much’.
Taylor and Charli were once pretty close, as the Boom Clap vocalist joined her as a special guest on the 1989 World Tour before opening up 50 of her Reputation shows with fellow support act Camila Cabello.
However, fans got a sense of some bad blood when Charli made a confession about how playing those concerts made her feel.
She revealed: ‘I’m really grateful that [Taylor] asked me on that tour.
‘But as an artist, it kind of felt like I was getting up on stage and waving to five-year-olds.’
Charli then said she no longer wanted to be an opener for another artist: ‘I’ve done so much of it, and it really cemented my status as this underdog character. I need to just own my own f***ing s**t finally.’
After receiving backlash for her comments, Charli took to social media to explain that her response had been taken out of context.
‘As I say in the article and have said many times before, I am extremely grateful to Taylor for inviting me to open for her,’ she wrote.
‘She’s one of the biggest artists of my generation and the Reputation tour was one of the biggest tours in history.’
Charli said that, prior to the gigs, she had been playing ’18+ club shows’, so performing for ‘all ages’ had been a ‘new’ thing for her.
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