Taylor Swift takes heat as fans slam Charli XCX diss track from The Life of a Showgirl

New York, New York – Taylor Swift has left fans divided after her new album The Life of a Showgirl featured an apparent diss track aimed at fellow pop star Charli XCX.

Rumors had already been swirling about the song before the album dropped on Friday, but now that fans have heard it for themselves, the discourse has gone into overdrive.

Taylor’s song Actually Romantic seems to be a response to Charli’s track Sympathy is a knife from 2024’s Brat.

On her end, Charli sang about feeling insecure and uncomfortable around a more successful female star who had come into her social circles. This was widely believed to be Taylor, as the 35-year-old pop star had dated Matty Healy, the bandmate of Charli’s husband George Daniel.

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But in her seeming clapback, Taylor argues that Charli is so obsessed with her that it’s “actually romantic” and makes it clear she saw the song as more mean-spirited.

“Wrote me a song saying / It makes you sick to see my face / Some people might be offended,” the Karma artist sings.

In another line, Taylor even claims Charli calls her “boring Barbie” and that she was “glad” that Matty ended things with Taylor.

As the Actually Romantic discourse goes viral, everyone’s confident Taylor is indeed taking a shot at Charli – but most think she missed.

Fans and critics alike have taken some issue with Taylor, undoubtedly still reigning as the world’s biggest pop star, punching down.

Pitchfork described the track as “actually embarrassing,” while social media users called the Grammy winner out for misunderstanding Charli’s Brat track in the first place.

“it’s been said to death but can’t overstate how insane this interpretation of sympathy is a knife is,” one X user said.

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“i actually feel genuinely sad for charli. this is just such a hurtful thing to do…to be the biggest pop star in the world & call an industry peer a cokehead bc she wrote a vulnerable & beautiful piece of music abt how she respects u so much that she feels small in a room w/ you,” another wrote.

Taylor shared some insight into the thoughts behind her song, telling Amazon Music that Actually Romantic is about someone who has “a one-sided, adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about.”

“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 added.

“It’s actually pretty romantic if you really think about it.”