Taylor Swift Called Out Someone ‘Resenting’ Her Amid Charli xcx ‘Actually Romantic’ Feud Speculation: ‘Stop Talking Dirty’
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It might be the battle of the pop girlies right now. Taylor Swift‘s The Life of a Showgirl is already stirring up some alleged beef between the singer and Charli xcx. Some Swifties are convinced that the song “Actually Romantic” is about the Brat artist.
In track 7 of The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor sings in the first couple of lines, “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave.” She later disses the subject by saying “you said you’re glad he ghosted me,” and “Wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face,” “How many times has your boyfriend said ‘Why are we always talking about her?” The song takes a turn with Taylor saying she finds the thoughts “sweet” since the subject is talking about “all the time you’ve spent on me.”
Related: Charli XCX & Lorde’s Feud Timeline Explained & How They ‘Worked It Out’ on a Remix
So what spurred this alleged beef between the icons?
What happened between Taylor Swift & Charli xcx?
2019: Charli talks about opening for Taylor on the Reputation Tour
Taylor and Charli actually go way back. The “365” singer opened for Taylor during her 2018 Reputation tour. She told Pitchfork she felt like she “was getting up onstage and waving to 5-year-olds” during her experiences with Taylor. She later apologized for that statement.
2023: Taylor gets into a relationship with Matty Healy
Shortly before the release of Brat, Taylor Swift had a two-month long fling with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy. Charli, meanwhile, is now married to the band’s drummer George Daniel.
2024: Charli xcx releases Brat
When the Grammy award-winning album Brat by Charli xcx was released, many fans speculated that the song “Sympathy is a Knife” had lyrics that were alluding to Taylor Swift. In the first verse, she sings, “This one girl taps my insecurities / Don’t know if it’s real or if I’m spiraling” and the alleged beef becomes more obvious in the next couple of verses. “Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show
/ Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick.”
Not to mention, Charli has a track on Brat called “Everything is Romantic,” while Taylor’s song seemingly plays along with the theme with it being called “Actually Romantic.”
October 2024: Charli xcx addresses who “Sympathy Is a Knife Is Written For
As for the true meaning of “Sympathy is a Knife,” the singer is still keeping mum about the subject. “People are gonna think what they want to think,” she told New York Magazine. “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 and how I don’t want to be in those situations physically when I feel self-doubt.”
In the same profile, Taylor had quite good things to say about her peer. “I’ve been blown away by Charli’s melodic sensibilities since I first heard ‘Stay Away’ in 2011. Her writing is surreal and inventive, always.” She added that Charli “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.”
After Charli collaborated with Lorde on her track “Girl, so confusing,” she talked to The Guardian about how the media pits women against each other. “Relationships between women are super-complex and multi-layered,” she said. “You can like someone and dislike them at the same time; you can feel jealous of somebody but they can still be your friend.”
October 2025: Taylor releases The Life of a Showgirl
While Taylor hasn’t named names about who the track could possibly be about, she talked about the song in a track by track breakdown with Amazon Music. She explained that “Actually Romantic” is “a song about realizing that someone else has kind of had a one-sided, adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about. And all of a sudden they start 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.”
“It’s presenting itself as them sort of resenting you or having a problem with you but you take that and just accept it as love and you accept it as attention and affection, and how flattering that somebody has made you such a big part of their reality when you didn’t even think about this,” she continued. “It’s actually pretty romantic if you really think about it.”
