Taylor Swift. Charli XCX. Matty Healy. George Daniel.
These are all names you’re going to have to know if you want to have any hope of understanding why The Life of a Showgirl listeners are theorizing that the seventh song off Swift’s new album, “Actually Romantic,” is a diss track about Charli XCX.
“Actually Romantic” appears to be a pretty direct response to “Sympathy is a knife,” a song off Charli’s hit 2024 album BRAT in which she sang about how the presence of a fellow pop star sent her into a spiral of self-doubt. Given that Swift was dating the 1975 front man Matty Healy, a bandmate of Charli’s now-husband George Daniel, while the 1975 was on tour the year prior, it’s been widely rumored that “Sympathy is a knife” was about Taylor.
“I don’t wanna share this space. I don’t wanna force a smile. This one girl taps my insecurities,” Charli sang on the track. “Don’t know if it’s real or if I’m spiraling. One voice tells me that they laugh. George says I’m just paranoid. Says he just don’t see it, he’s so naive. I’m embarrassed to have it, but need the sympathy. ‘Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried.”
While Swift and Healy were first linked in 2014, nearly a decade—and a six-year relationship between Swift and Joe Alwyn—would pass before the pair rekindled their fling in the spring of 2023. However, the romance would last just a little over a month before reports broke that they had split amid public controversy surrounding Healy’s past remarks and behavior. Many fans believe Swift chronicled their breakup in the song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” from her 2024 album THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Swift, of course, is now engaged to her Kansas City Chiefs fiancé Travis Kelce while Healy is engaged to model/actor Gabbriette Bechtel, a close friend of Charli’s.
In “Actually Romantic,” Swift seems to reference Charli’s apparent reaction to what went down between her and Healy as part of the inspiration for the diss track. “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave,” she sings in the opening lines. “High-fived my ex and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me. Wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face.”
Taylor and Charli’s relationship seemingly wasn’t always contentious. Back in 2018, Charli was one of the opening acts for Swift on the Reputation Stadium Tour. However, the earliest signs of trouble began the following year when Charli gave an interview to Pitchfork in which she spoke about her desire to headline her own tour.
“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 5-year-olds,” she said. “I’ve done so much [opening for other artists], and it really cemented my status as this underdog character, which I like now. But I need to just own my own f-cking sh-t finally.”
In response to Swiftie backlash, Charli later took to social media to clarify that “no shade” was intended and she had “only love” for Taylor. “In the printed version of this much wider conversation my answers about this tour were boiled down into one kind of weird sentence,” she wrote. “Leading up to that tour I’d been playing a [ton] of 18+ club shows and so to be on a stage in front of all ages was new to me and made me approach my performances with a whole new kind of energy—more so I talked about how it was brilliant opening for Taylor, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity I was given and how much fun it was to perform to a new audience!”
Five years later, in the lead-up to BRAT, Charli issued a statement on TikTok in which she explained that, with the exception of “Von Dutch,” none of the songs on the album were intended as diss tracks.
“They’re really just about how it’s so complicated being an artist, especially a female artist, where you are pitted against your peers but also expected to be best friends with every single person constantly. And if you’re not, you’re like deemed a bad feminist,” she said. “That, to me, is such like an unrealistic expectation. So, yeah, these songs are kind of about how as a woman, as an artist, some days you can feel on top of the world, some days you can feel unbelievably insecure, other days you can feel highly competitive. Sometimes you can feel like literal trash. And it’s really emotional and it’s complicated to deal with, and we’re not supposed to talk about it. But these songs do talk about it. And I’ll probably be chastised for it, but whatever, it’s reality.”
A few months later, in an interview with New York Magazine, Charli directly denied that “Sympathy is a knife” was about Swift. “That song is about me and my feelings and my anxiety and the way my brain creates narratives and stories in my head when I feel insecure” she said. “And how I don’t want to be in those situations physically when I feel self-doubt.”
Swift also gave a comment for the story in which she praised Charli’s progression as an artist. “I’ve been blown away by Charli’s melodic sensibilities since I first heard ‘Stay Away’ in 2011,” she said. “Her writing is surreal and inventive, always. She just takes a song to places you wouldn’t expect it to go, and she’s been doing it consistently for over a decade. I love to see hard work like that pay off.”
But while Swift may respect Charli professionally, the new song, if it is indeed about her, seems to suggests she may not think so highly of her personally. “Hadn’t thought of you in a long time, but you keep sending me funny valentines,” she sings on “Actually Romantic.” “And I know you think it comes off vicious, but it’s precious, adorable. Like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse, that’s how much it hurts. How many times has your boyfriend said, ‘Why are we always talking ’bout her?’”
In an introduction to the track, Swift said “Actually Romantic” was about “realizing that someone else has kind of had a one-sided adversarial relationship with you”—which has been taken by many as an apparent thinly-veiled jab at Charli.
“All of a sudden they start, like, doing too much and they start letting you know that actually you’ve been living in their head rent free and you had no idea,” she said. “And it’s presenting itself as them sort of resenting you or having a problem with you. But taking that and you just accepting that as love and you accepting it as attention and affection and how flattering that someone has made you such a big part of their reality when you didn’t even think about this. It’s actually pretty romantic if you really think about it.”
The apparent beef has caused quite the stir on social media, with some fans of the two artists coming to Charli’s defense while others insist she set herself up for Swift’s clapback.
The post Why Fans Think Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl Diss Track ‘Actually Romantic’ Is About Charli XCX appeared first on TIME.
