Taylor Swift has shed new light on the inspiration behind her song “Actually Romantic,” a track from her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, which fans immediately speculated was a response to fellow pop star Charli XCX, bbc.com reported.
Speaking at a cinema screening to accompany the album’s release, Swift, 35, called the song “a love letter to someone who hates you,” and sarcastically thanked the unnamed person for their attention, saying: “It’s flattering.”
Since the album dropped on Friday, social media has been consumed with speculation that the seventh track, “Actually Romantic,” is aimed at Charli XCX, 33.
The lyrics in Swift’s track refer to another singer who calls her a “boring Barbie” and “writes songs about how much they hate her.” Swift, in turn, sings that the rival’s intense focus on her is “actually romantic.”
“It sounded nasty but it feels like you’re flirting with me,” she sings. “All the effort you’ve put in, it’s actually romantic.”
Fans are convinced this track is a retort to Charli XCX’s song “Sympathy is a Knife” from her latest UK number-one album, Brat (released in June 2024).
In the Charli XCX song, she writes about feeling insecure about a woman who shows up backstage at her boyfriend’s gig, singing: “Fingers crossed behind my back. I hope they break up real quick.”
Charli XCX’s then-boyfriend (now husband), George Daniel, is the drummer in The 1975, a band whose frontman, Matty Healy, Swift briefly dated.
Neither star has confirmed if their songs are about each other. Swift even showered Charli with compliments in an interview last year, saying, “I’ve been blown away by Charli’s melodic sensibilities.”
In a short intro to “Actually Romantic” featured in the launch event film, Swift offered a deeper explanation of the song’s meaning, saying it’s about realising you are unexpectedly a part of someone else’s story.
“There can be this moment where it’s unveiled to you, through things that they do that are very overt,” she said.
She continued by reframing the negative attention as a compliment.
“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve just started to be like, ‘Oh my God, you did so much with this. It’s flattering,’… That is, wow, that is very, very sweet of you to think about me this much, even if it’s negative. In my industry, attention is affection, and you’ve given me a whole lot of it.”
