Almost two decades into her career, Taylor Swift has proven time and again that she knows how to write a good love song.
So when it turned out that the track Actually Romantic from her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, is anything but what the title suggests, it came as a surprise to many listeners.
“Like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse / That’s how much it hurts,” Swift sings, over an arrangement of electric guitars and drums.
Critics and fans believe the song is a diss track aimed at fellow pop star Charli XCX, best known for her smash 2024 album Brat.
On The Life of a Showgirl (Track by Track Version), Swift explains the song is about “realizing that someone else has kind of had a one-sided, adversarial relationship with you … and you just accepting it as love.”
WATCH | Lyric video for Actually Romantic by Taylor Swift (explicit):
As people continue to pore over Swift’s songs for “Easter eggs” — or clues she leaves in her music for fans to decode — some industry observers are wondering what this biting track from one of the world’s most influential artists says about female solidarity in pop music.
“Outside of die-hard Swifties, I would say … It’s not being received very well by the general community,” said Jason P. Frank, a writer for U.S. pop culture site Vulture.
What Swift is doing here is “in the grand tradition of Regina George [from Mean Girls].”
Swift and Charli XCX’s history
The two pop stars have been professionally linked since 2015, when Swift invited Charli XCX out as a surprise guest on the second night of the Toronto stop of the world tour for her album 1989. Three years later, the British singer joined Swift on her tour for Reputation as an opening act alongside Camila Cabello.
In a 2019 interview with Pitchfork, Charli XCX said while she was grateful to be on that tour, it felt like “getting up on stage and waving to five-year-olds.” When Swift fans took offence to the remark, Charli XCX clarified she meant no harm.
It wasn’t until Brat, however, that fans began to suspect the two pop stars had a complicated relationship. When the album dropped, many listeners guessed that the song Sympathy Is a Knife was about how Charli XCX felt while in Swift’s orbit.
“This one girl taps my insecurities,” Charli XCX sings. “I couldn’t even be her if I tried / I’m opposite, I’m on the other side / I feel all these feelings I can’t control.”
“Within the experiences that Sympathy Is a Knife is pointing to, you see Taylor reflected multiple times,” said Liz Duff, host of the pop culture podcast Late Night Scrolling.
WATCH | Lyric video for Sympathy Is a Knife (explicit):
She also says the song is “really the heart” of Brat.
“It’s very true that it’s easy to be intimidated, and being a pop girl and trying to make it in pop culture spaces means you’re constantly comparing and looking around at who else is creating art around you,” Duff said.
‘There is nowhere for Taylor Swift to punch up’
On Actually Romantic, Swift sings about someone who talks badly about her after doing cocaine, praises Swift’s ex for ghosting her and talks about Swift ad nauseum to their boyfriend.
There has been a wide range of reactions to Actually Romantic, ranging from love to hate to derision to disappointment.
“The response to this song specifically feels nuclear,” Duff said.
The criticism of Actually Romantic, however, goes beyond just warring fanbases, says Xtra magazine senior editor Mel Woods.
“I think, like a lot of other people, [I] really connected to [Brat] and that era, because it is not only musically interesting, innovative, engaging, but lyrically and thematically,” Woods said. “It is both confessional and honest, but also … carefree, uninhibited.”
Woods said “the gays are validated, because we’ve been riding [for Charli XCX] for a long time, and it’s nice to see these kind of gay club songs be in the mainstream.”
On the highly touted remix album Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat, Charli XCX collaborated with some of the most influential women in modern pop, including Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and Robyn. The album also allowed Charli XCX to resolve a standing conflict with fellow artist Lorde, who appeared on a remix of the track Girl, So Confusing, which became one of the biggest tracks of the Brat era.
WATCH | Charli XCX and Lorde perform Girl, So Confusing live:
“You could argue that Girl, So Confusing remix was the exception that proved the rule, right?” Frank said. “That narrative was so thrilling, because we had never seen it before — these people who are trading barbs come together and work on something, and produce great art in the face of it.”
Woods says the broader culture hasn’t responded to Actually Romantic in the same way as Brat, because the intention behind it isn’t thought to be as authentic.
“It’s not coming from that same confessional, honest place. It’s punching down, because when you’re Taylor Swift, it’s always going to be punching down. There is nowhere for Taylor Swift to punch up.”
Is there still a sisterhood in pop music?
This is not the first time Swift has used her music to take aim at those who have crossed her. She has famously sung about disputes with industry contemporaries such as Katy Perry, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.
In fact, Actually Romantic may not be the only diss track on The Life of a Showgirl. Father Figure is speculated to be about, in part, Olivia Rodrigo. Many fans think the two stars had a falling out over songwriting credits and royalties on Rodrigo’s debut album, Sour.
Frank says Actually Romantic isn’t really “a catfight” so much as “a song about, ‘You’re just not popular enough for me to pay attention to you,’ which is a strong thing to say. In that way, I think that it is potentially regressive.”
Woods adds that the undertone of the song — Swift’s implication that the subject is so obsessed with her, they might as well be in love with her — feels like a tactic straight out of the 2004 film Mean Girls.
“Being like, ‘It’s kind of gay,’ is not really the way to do [a diss track] in the year 2025. It just feels outdated and a bit cringe, to be honest,” Woods said.
At the same time, Frank says he wants to “leave space for Taylor Swift to have messy emotions.”
“Do I think that Taylor is sending a good message to her fanbase with this one? No, no. But also, I can’t ask that Taylor be primarily a moral figure,” he said. “She’s a singer.”
Duff sees this potential feud as a chance to reflect on why we as a culture are so drawn to narratives like this in the first place.
“The pop girls have been pitted together for as long as pop music has existed,” she said. “There’s no era of the greats of pop music that are creating albums like Taylor is creating, that dominate the charts and streaming and sales, that don’t come without conflict with others, and specifically other women.”
Duff says “it feels like we’re watching this spectacle of WWE proportions, and really, it’s two really, really great pop songwriters that are just writing about their own experiences in their own art.”
