The music industry is currently buzzing over Taylor Swift’s release of The Life of a Showgirl as her album has already “broken the first-week, equivalent-unit sales record long held by Adele for her 2015 album 25, making The Life of a Showgirl the fastest-selling-and-streaming album of the modern era,” Billboard reported, via a Pitchfork story.
But fans are also decoding Swift’s lyrics of “Actually Romantic,” a song on the album that listeners are decoding to see if the singer is dissing fellow pop star Charli XCX, according to PinkNews,a possible reaction to Charli XCX’s “Everything is Romantic.”
The report continues to say, “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave/ 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.”
Since the release of Swift’s album, Charli XCX has not spoken publicly until she posted an ambiguous video on Instagram of a producer at a mixing desk with some haunting music in the background. PinkNews theorizes that the video could be unrelated to the supposed feud.
Bazar outlines the history between the two pop stars as Charli XCX previously opened for Swift during her Reputation World Tour and also appeared on Swift’s 1989 World Tour shows. But the rift between the two was reported to have happened in 2024, with Charli’s release of her album Brat. On her track “Sympathy Is a Knife,” she talks about their relationship, claiming she felt insecure being around the pop star.
Public sentiment seems to be leaning into “Actually Romantic” being written about Charli XCX. Her Campus outlines Swift opening up during her Track-by-Track Version on Amazon Prime Video that the song references, “someone with a one-sided hate for her and that it’s ‘actually pretty romantic when you think about it.’”
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