Taylor Swift says diss track is ‘love letter to someone who hates me’
Noor Nanji & Ian YoungsCulture reporters
PA Media
Since the release of Taylor Swift’s new album on Friday, fans have been falling over themselves to try to work out who she is referring to in one track in particular.
The song, Actually Romantic, is about an unnamed fellow popstar – and social media has blown up with speculation that it’s a Charli XCX diss track.
In a cinema screening to accompany the new album, Swift has now revealed that the track is “a love letter to someone who hates you”.
The pop star, 35, didn’t say who she was singing about, but she sarcastically thanked them for paying her attention, saying: “It’s flattering.”
Watch: Did Taylor Swift write a Charli XCX diss track?
Actually Romantic is the seventh track on Swift’s much anticipated new album, The Life of A Showgirl.
It refers to another singer, who calls Swift a “boring Barbie” and writes songs about how much they hate her.
Fans on social media are convinced this is a response to Charli XCX’s song, Sympathy is a Knife, from her Brat album, which the 33-year-old allegedly wrote about Swift.
Getty Images
Charli XCX scored her second UK number 1 album with Brat, which was released in June 2024
In that song, Charli writes about feeling insecure about a woman who shows up backstage at her boyfriend’s gig.
“Don’t know if it’s real or if I’m spiralling. One voice tells me that they laugh, George says, “I’m just paranoid”, she sings.
She adds: “Fingers crossed behind my back. I hope they break up real quick”.
Charli’s then boyfriend, now husband, George Daniel, is the drummer in the band The 1975. Swift briefly dated the band’s frontman Matty Healy.
In her new track, Swift sings it’s “actually romantic” how much time another popstar devotes to her.
