Did Taylor Swift Release a Diss Track About Charli XCX?

When it comes to Taylor Swift, I am decidedly agnostic. I’ve liked the odd song of hers, but Swift’s music is largely not for me, and that’s okay. I’m much more interested in the machinery around her, the personae she performs, the gossip, the ways she responds to cultural trends, and the way the culture responds to her. In Swift’s newest release, The Life of a Showgirl, there’s one song that has gotten a more critical response, particularly in the queerer corners of the internet. The question typed on many keyboards: Is ‘Actually Romantic’ actually a diss track aimed at Brat queen Charli XCX?

To answer this, we’ll have to go back to the summer of 2024, when Brat was released and the whole hot season was named after it. Charli XCX was already well-known and well-loved, but Brat propelled her into a stratosphere of popularity. Popular enough that a song about doing coke every day made it onto Barack Obama’s summer playlist. One of the notable songs on the album was ‘Sympathy is a Knife.’ This is likely the start of this potential pop feud.

The song mentions another much more successful pop star whom Charli resents, not out of anything to do with that more successful star but because of Charli’s own toxic cocktail of jealousy, anxiety, and insecurity. Charli laments how she compares herself to the bigger star and wishes fervently that she doesn’t run into her backstage at her boyfriend’s shows. The “boyfriend” referenced is Charli’s now-husband, George Daniel, who is a member of the band The 1975. The lead singer of the band is Matty Healy, one of the more odious and divisive of the men Swift has dated. Even though Taylor Swift isn’t mentioned by name in the song, the details make it exceptionally clear. It’s notable that Charli doesn’t slander Swift in the song, but holds herself to account for the ugly emotions she’s feeling.

Zip forward to our current fall of 2025. In The Life of a Showgirl, Swift’s ‘Actually Romantic’ addresses itself to a hater who is heavily implied to be of a lower station. The hater is belittled as a “toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse.” ‘Sympathy is a Knife’ appears to be referenced by lyrics like “wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face.” The Matty Healy connection seems to be referenced by the lyric, “high-fived my ex and then said you’re glad he ghosted me.” Even Charli’s penchant for a bump or two gets a mention with “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave.”

Whether this becomes an actual feud remains to be seen, but this exchange seems so lopsided and mismatched. ‘Sympathy is a Knife’ isn’t really about Swift; it’s about Charli’s painful emotional cycles. Swift is the person who inspires these emotions, but she’s not the villain. She just happens to be the bigger fish that Charli feels inferior to. On the other hand, ‘Actually Romantic’ launches all the missiles, as if Swift has been attacked. The angle of the song suggests that Charli is obsessed with Swift, to the point that the attention feels actually romantic. It might as well be responding to an entirely different song, one that openly lambasts Swift. So, did Taylor Swift make a diss track about Charli XCX? It definitely seems that way. The next question is why?

No one, let alone this humble gadfly, can tell you what’s going on in Swift’s heart or mind, so we may never get a clear or direct answer to that question. That said, there is a possible contributor to this diss track at play. Swift knows from feuds. She feuded with Scooter Braun when he bought her masters, and she turned it into big business by re-releasing her songs. She famously feuded with Kanye West after he interrupted her moment at the MTV Music Awards, and then with West’s wife, Kim Kardashian. The song ‘thanK you aIMee’ from The Tortured Poets Department is a salvo fired against Kardashian, portraying her as a high school bully.

The thread connecting these past feuds is that there was initial aggression that Swift responded to. This isn’t the case here. ‘Sympathy is a Knife’ is a self-critical lament, whereas ‘Actually Romantic’ is a barbed, teasing shot. It makes it seem like Swift is punching downward, and unnecessarily at that.