Taylor Swift rarely fights in public. Instead, she takes shots via her music. On “Actually Romantic,” the seventh track from Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, the biggest pop star in the world seemingly takes a dig at none other than Charli XCX.
Many outlets, including The Guardian and the Los Angeles Times, believe that Swift’s song, co-written with Max Martin and Shellback, is a diss track aimed at the Brat songwriter. The song’s title, “Actually Romantic,” seems to be referencing the Charli XCX song “Everything Is Romantic” off her critically acclaimed and Grammy-winning album Brat. But while both titles share a word, other believe Swift’s track is a direct response to Charli’s song “Sympathy Is a Knife,” rumored to have been partially inspired by Swift.
“Actually Romantic” directly addresses a hater of Swift’s who calls her “boring Barbie when the coke’s got you brave.” Charli played with the party-drug culture aesthetic throughout her Brat era. Swift goes on to sing that the same friend high-fived an ex of hers after they found out that Swift and her boyfriend broke up. Many fans read that as a reference to Matty Healy, frontman of the band The 1975, with whom Taylor briefly dated and often seemingly wrote about in her last studio album The Tortured Poet’s Department. This is where the Charli XCX connection becomes more prominent. George Daniel, Charli’s husband, is the drummer for The 1975. Healy and his mother, Denise Welch, attended Charli and George’s wedding in Sicily last month.
Charli and Taylor weren’t always enemies. In 2018, the British pop star opened for Swift on her Reputation stadium tour alongside Camila Cabello. The following year, however, she said in an interview with Pitchfork that performing in front of Swift’s audience left her cold. “I’m really grateful that (Taylor) asked me on that tour,” said Charli. “But as an artist, it kind of felt like I was getting up onstage and waving to five-year-olds.”
Taylor goes on to describe her anonymous hater in “Actually Romantic” as a “toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse,” accusing her target of writing a song about how much it sucked to see her face. But in the chorus, Swift turns the polemic into something of a compliment. “It’s actually sweet all the time you’ve spent on me / It’s honestly wild all the effort you’ve spent on me/ It’s actually romantic I really gotta hand it to you / No man has ever loved me like you do.” So, is “Actually Romantic” a diss track or a love letter? You decide.
Original story appeared in VF Italia.
