There are two types of people in this world: those who will spend the weekend furiously replaying The Life of a Showgirl, and those who will dismiss Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album as just the latest set of songs from “Boring Barbie”.
Yes, I’m talking about “Actually Romantic”, the feverishly discussed seventh track that fans have already decided is about Charli xcx. It’s easy to see why. First there’s the fact that the seventh track on Brat is “Everything is Romantic” – Swift famously has a penchant for numerical synchronicity – and second… well, have you listened to the lyrics? “High-fived my ex and then said you’re glad he ghosted me / Wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face,” Swift sings, adding: “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave.”
You don’t have to be a Swiftian scholar to interpret this as a direct riposte to Charli’s song, “Sympathy is a Knife”, on which the Brat singer appears to allude to feeling uncomfortable around Swift when she was dating the 1975’s Matty Healy. Charli’s now husband George Daniel is the band’s drummer.
Some have argued that the fond tone of “Almost Romantic”, which positions its subject as such an obsessed rival it turns Swift on (“it’s kind of making me wet”), is a sign Taylor has taken the high road. Others argue there is no rift at all, pointing to Charli’s comments in New York Magazine last year: “That song is about me and my feelings and my anxiety and the way my brain creates narratives and stories in my head when I feel insecure and how I don’t want to be in those situations physically when I feel self-doubt,” she said of “Sympathy is a Knife”.
Personally, I think whether or not there’s a real rift between these two women is irrelevant. What’s more interesting is that “Almost Romantic” follows an already well-trodden path for Swift, one that tells us more about her than it does any other artist who may have inspired it. Sure, she might have a hard time letting things go (Brat was released more than a year ago), but it seems to me that her fixation is not so much on individual women as it is on internalised misogyny as a whole. It’s a consistent theme.
Take her alleged, almost decade-long feud with Kim Kardashian, whom Swift appeared to reference in The Tortured Poets Department bonus track, “thanK you aIMee” – see what she did there? – after having already dedicated several songs on her 2017 revenge album, Reputation to the rift. Then, also on TTPD, there was “Clara Bow”, which many insist is about Olivia Rodrigo, who some people believe is also the subject of new song “Father Figure”. Before that, there was “Bad Blood”, which is widely believed to be about Katy Perry.
