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Ever since the lyrics to Taylor Swift‘s The Life Of A Showgirl song “Actually Romantic” leaked last week, fans have been busy speculating that the song was written about Charli xcx.
The evidence is pretty convincing; Charli’s song brat song “Sympathy Is A Knife,” written about a woman who made her feel insecure, was strongly believed to be about Swift. The pair have toured together in the past and came back into contact when they were briefly both dating members of The 1975.
In that context it could be seen that “Actually Romantic,” which includes the line “High-fived my ex and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me,” could be Swift’s response. The argument against all of this, of course, is that neither Charli nor Swift have explicitly stated that their songs are written about each other.
Swift, in fairness, hasn’t had much time to respond. She did roll out an album release event in theaters to accompany the release of The Life Of A Showgirl on Friday October 3), though. Along with the premiere of the “Life Of Ophelia” music video, the visual accompaniment contains behind-the-scenes footage and Swift’s thoughts on select songs.
BBC News reports that in a short intro to “Actually Romantic,” Swift says she wrote the song after realizing she had unwittingly become part of somebody else’s story, describing her words as “a love letter to someone who hates you.”
Swift said the album track is “about realizing 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.”
She added: “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.”
Following its release on October 3, The Life Of A Showgirl became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in 2025 reaching the milestone in less than 11 hours. “The Fate Of Ophelia” also became the most streamed song in a single day in Spotify history. The one-day theater event, meanhwile, earned $33 million at the box office.
