Charli xcx is “deep” into her follow-up to Brat amid her alleged “feud” with Taylor Swift.
Taylor seemingly took aim at Charli on the track Actually Romantic from her latest LP The Life of a Showgirl.
The pop megastar set tongues wagging that the song – the title of which is eyebrow-raisingly similar to Charli’s Brat song Everything is Romantic – is aimed at the 360 hitmaker.
Taylor dated The 1975 frontman Matty Healy, who is the bandmate of Charli’s husband George Daniel, and fans believe Actually Romantic takes shots at her Reputation Tour support act.
Charli’s Brat song Sympathy is a Knife came first and is rumoured to be a Taylor diss song, with the British star seemingly wishing that Taylor and Matty split up on the line: “Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show / Fingers crossed behind my back / I hope they break up quick.”
And, many fans believe Taylor has retaliated on the new song.
She sings on Actually Romantic: “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave / High-fived my ex and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me / Wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face / Some people might be offended…”
In the chorus, she fires off “…But it’s actually sweet, all the time you’ve spent on me / It’s honestly wild, all the effort you’ve put in / It’s actually romantic, I really got to hand it to you / No man has ever loved me like you do.”
Taylor opened up about the song’s lyrics in the album’s film The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, saying: ‘[It’s] a love letter to someone who hates you …
“There can be this moment where it’s unveiled to you, through things that they do that are very overt. And, 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.”
Actually Romantic features the lyrics: “I heard you call me Boring Barbie when the coke’s got you brave / 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/ Some people might be offended/ But it’s actually sweet.”
On Sympathy is a Knife, Charli said: “Don’t know if I’m spiralling/ One voice tells me that they laugh/ George says I’m just paranoid/
“Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show/ Fingers crossed behind my back/ I hope they break up real quick.”
Taylor gave further clues about Actually Romantic’s subject in an audio track-by-track breakdown of the new album for Amazon Music, in which she said: “[It’s] a song about realising that someone else has kind of had a one-sided, adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about.
“And all of a sudden they start doing too much and they start letting you know that actually, you’ve been living in their head rent-free and you had no idea.”
Taylor has left fans guessing by not naming the person the song is about.
However, with the timing of Charli’s return to the studio, having shared a picture of her producer at the mixing desk on her Instagram Story on Sunday (05.10.25), there is every chance Charli could respond on a song.
Confirming Charli’s next album is underway, one of her Brat producers, Finn Keane, recently told MusicNews.com at the BMI London Awards: “We’re kinda deep in it now, and I think it’s gonna be really amazing… It feels really different and fresh at the moment.”