Global megastar Taylor Swift released her 12th studio album The Life of A Showgirl on Oct. 3.
It’s a 12-track album of pop melodies with lyrics about anything from Shakespeare characters to her NFL star fiancé Travis Kelce’s “Wood.”
Also notably featured is “Actually Romantic,” a song widely regarded by Swifties to be a response to Charli XCX’s “Sympathy is a Knife” off her 2024 hit album Brat.
Though neither of the artists have confirmed that the tracks are about the other, lyrics from both read almost like a conversation — and a spiteful one at that.
In 2018, Charli XCX joined the pop star as an opener on her Reputation world tour and was previously a guest during her 1989 world tour. Since then, the relationship between the two has seen its fair share of drama, brought on especially by their roles as influential artists in pop culture.
On The Life of a Showgirl (Track by Track Version) — one of more than 30 variants of the album — Swift says “Actually Romantic” is about finding out someone has “a one-sided adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about,” someone who starts “doing too much … letting you know that, actually, you’ve been living in their head rent-free.”
Swift adds how flattering it is that “somebody has made you such a big part of their reality,” and how she sees their ongoing resentment as an act of love.
But with lyrics like, “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave” and “Like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse, that’s how much it hurts,” the track is nothing more than a disproportionate anthem for punching down.
Swift is no stranger to penning diss tracks, and has arguably spent her 20-year-long career perfecting the art of calling out antagonists in her life. (See: “Better Than Revenge,” “Bad Blood” and “Look What You Made Me Do.”)
Most affecting is “All Too Well” from Red, particularly the 10-minute version, which weaves a careful, painstaking assessment of her relationship with actor Jake Gyllenhaal who dated 20-year-old Swift when he was 29.
Swift holds nothing back, displaying his deficiencies for everyone to hear, and most importantly, announcing her triumph over him and her heartbreak in 10 minutes of pure catharsis.
“You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath”? “I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age”? “I’m a soldier who’s returning half her weight”?
Devastating.
But 13 years have passed since the release of Red, and Taylor Swift is now an industry titan arguably at the height of her career.
The release of The Life of a Showgirl comes after her monumental Eras Tour (the highest grossing tour in history), the re-recording of four out of her first six albums, the reclamation of her masters and now engagement to an NFL superstar.
It’s more than most pop artists could ever even dream of living up to.
Charli XCX told Vulture in an August 2024 interview that “Sympathy is a Knife” is about the way her own “brain creates narratives and stories” when she feels self-doubt.
“People are gonna think what they want to think,” she said when asked if it was about Taylor Swift.
“That song is about me and my feelings and my anxiety […] when I feel insecure and how I don’t want to be in those situations.”
“One voice tells me that they laugh / I feel all these feelings I can’t control / Volatile at war with my dialogue, I’d say that there was a God if they could stop this,” Charli XCX sings, underscored by electro percussion, before explicitly delving into her suicidal thoughts.
The production and lyrics culminate in a musical explosion of bombastic vulnerability, showcasing Charli XCX’s struggles with her place in life.
“Sympathy is a Knife” is a nerve wracking exploration of private thoughts transitioning to material daily happenings that now impact every facet of life: mind, body and soul.
If Swift’s response is in fact a diss track, it misses the entire thesis of “Sympathy is a Knife” and lacks her usual poetic and cleansing writing style. She instead focuses on the notion of being mentioned at all — and unfavourably at that.
Lyrics like: “This one girl taps my insecurities / Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show / Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick,” from “Sympathy is a Knife,” seem to be answered with lyrics like: “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,” on “Actually Romantic.”
The “boyfriend” in question likely refers to Charli XCX’s now husband, George Daniel of The 1975. And the “ex” in “Actually Romantic” is likely The 1975 frontman Matty Healy, to whom Swift was briefly romantically connected to in 2023.
“Sympathy is a Knife,” feels less like a song not dissing Swift as a person, but rather who and what she represents: the pinnacle of success in the music industry, something Swift has also criticized. (See: “The Lucky One,” “Clara Bow” and “Nothing New.”)
“I hope they break up quick,” is certainly mean — but more telling of an irrational state of mind than anything else, making the cruelty of “Actually Romantic” that much more obvious.
In a TikTok from May 2024, Charli XCX says aside from “Von Dutch,” there are no diss tracks on Brat, asking fans not to read too much into the lyrics.
“It’s so complicated being an artist, especially a female artist, where you are pitted against your peers and also expected to be best friends with every single person constantly,” she explained in the video. “If you’re not, you’re deemed a bad feminist.”
If “Sympathy is a Knife,” is about how hard it is to be a woman in the music industry, “Actually Romantic” and its petty lyrics enshrine it as truth.
No one likes a mad woman.
You made her like that.
Featured image by Alexa MacKie/the Charlatan
