When Charli XCX dropped her glitchy club highlight “Sympathy is a knife” in her 2024 album Brat, fans immediately started dissecting its lyrics. “Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show / Fingers crossed behind my back / I hope they break up quick.” Many listeners thought Charli was taking shots at Taylor Swift, drawing a line between Charli’s relationship with English pop-rock group The 1975’s drummer George Daniel and Swift’s brief 2023 involvement with the band’s vocalist Matty Healy.
The narrative of a feud took hold online almost instantly. Charli’s fans, known as Angels, accused Swifties of tanking “Sympathy is a knife” on streaming charts after it coincided with the special edition of Swift’s 2024 special digital release of The Tortured Poets Department. The idea of their alleged rivalry wasn’t new. Charli had previously opened for Taylor on the reputation tour in 2018 but later criticized the setup, saying that playing to stadiums of pop fans felt like she was “getting up on stage and waving to five-year-olds.” The comment sparked backlash from Swifties who viewed it as a slight against Taylor. Since then, online debates around their perceived differences in artistry and ambition have only grown louder.
Charli denied those claims in Entertainment Weekly, explaining that the song came from a place of anxiety and self-doubt rather than rivalry. “People are gonna think what they want to think,” she said, when asked if there is a connection. “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.”
More than a year later, the speculation returned when Swift released The Life of a Showgirl, released on October 3. The album’s track “Actually Romantic” reignited the debate. From its first line — “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave / High-fived my ex … said you’re glad he ghosted me” — fans heard a response to Charli’s Brat. The references felt too specific to ignore: insults, shared exes, and the idea of rivalry masked as admiration.
No Beef?
Swift, however, framed the song differently. Speaking to NME, she described it as a reflection on how fixation can blur into affection. “The song presents itself as resentment,” she said, “but if you really think about it, it’s love. Someone has made you a big part of their world without you realizing it. That can be flattering.”
Charli has not publicly commented on Swift’s new song, though she has maintained her position that “Sympathy is a knife” was about insecurity, not necessarily a dig towards anyone in particular in a deleted TikTok video explaining Brat’s tracks from the first song to the last back in 2024.
The alleged back-and-forth between Swift and Charli says less about either artist and more about how pop audiences now read lyrics. In the streaming era, fandom culture thrives on constant interpretation. Every lyric, social media post, or setlist choice becomes potential evidence in an imagined feud. Internet discourse rewards speculation; clarity between both parties hardly trends.
This type of lyrical decoding isn’t new in the pop landscape. In the early 2000s, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears fans treated their tracks — “Dirrty” and “Overprotected” respectively — as competing manifestos. Around the same time, Eminem and Mariah Carey’s alleged feud dominated radio gossip, with songs like “The Warning” and “Obsessed” fueling theories long after their release. The difference now is scale. Online fandoms can magnify rumors overnight, and artists, knowingly or not, use that dynamic to sustain conversation around their work.
Good or Bad Publicity
Swift has long mastered ambiguity as a storytelling tool in her albums over the years from reputation in 2017 to Midnights in 2022. Her lyrics often leave room for multiple readings, allowing listeners to fill in the blanks. Charli operates similarly, though from a more self-aware and postmodern space, acknowledging that pop itself thrives on reinvention and reinvention often needs friction. When two artists who understand that dynamic collide, fans find endless material to unpack.
What makes the supposed Charli-Swift tension compelling is how both artists mirror each other’s approach to fame and storytelling. Both write about image, control, and vulnerability. Both play with persona. Their alleged exchange could just as easily be coincidence, or it could be two artists writing about the same cultural weather system from different corners of the sky.
Whether “Actually Romantic” is a pointed reply or an unrelated reflection, the debate reveals how pop has evolved into a participatory sport. Listeners are not just consuming music; they are building worlds around it. The thrill of connection — real or imagined — has become part of the listening spectacle. In that sense, the “feud” between Taylor and Charli may not matter as much as what it represents: the blurring of art, audience, and interpretation. Pop has always fed on tension, but in 2025, the tension itself has become the hook.
