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Charli XCX gave a full answer about 'diss tracks' on Brat album amid Taylor Swift beef rumors
Charli xcx has given an answer to the rumours around 'diss tracks' on her chart-topping album Brat, following rumours of a beef with pop superstar Taylor Swift.
Today (Friday October 3rd), Taylor Swift ignited the internet with the release of her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, a return to full-bodied bop and her partnership with Swedish pop wizards Max Martin and Shellback.
One song in particular that was a lightning rod for conversation was the album's seventh track, Actually Romantic.
Many fans perceived it as a response to Charli's 2024 song Sympathy Is A Knife, in which she details the extreme anxiety she feels spending time with a musician who makes her feel self-conscious about her own success.
Many have pointed to the identity of the mysterious muse being Taylor, given her short-lived 2023 fling with the 1975 frontman Matty Healy. Charli is married to The 1975 drummer, and Matty's best friend, George Daniel.
What has Charli xcx said about 'diss tracks' on Brat?
Forever loyal, Charli's fans have got one step ahead of the controversy, digging out a video from last year in which the Grammy-winning pop star waxes lyrical about opinions that several tracks on Brat - such as Von dutch and Girl, So Confusing - were actually diss tracks aimed at some of her peers.
'I wanted to clarify that [there are no diss tracks on Brat],' Charli said in the video, which was posted to X (Twitter) last year. 'Except for Von dutch, which kind of is...
'The other tracks in question aren't diss tracks. They're about it's so complicated being an artist, especially a female artist, where you are pitted against your peers but also expected to be best friends with every single person and if you're not, you're deemed a bad feminist.'
She continued: 'That, to me, is such an unrealistic expectation [...] Some days you can feel on top of the world, some days you can feel insecure, other days you can feel highly competitive or like literal trash. We're not supposed to talk about it, but these songs do talk about it.'
Why is Taylor Swift's Actually Romantic ignited beef rumours?
It's undeniable that there are several less-than-subtle hints that Actually Romantic was written by Taylor as a response track to Sympathy Is A Knife. Even the track's name and placement on The Life Of A Showgirl echoes Brat's own seventh track, Everything Is Romantic.
In the scathing track, produced by Taylor, Max Martin and Shellback, the superstar sings: '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.'
Shots fired!
In a commentary track for Amazon Music, Taylor expanded on the meaning behind Actually Romantic, saying it was 'a song about realizing that someone else has kind of had a one-sided adversarial relationship with you that you didn't know about.'
She continued: 'You’ve been living in their head rent-free and you had no idea and it's presenting itself as them sort of resenting you or having a problem with you. flattering that somebody has made you such a big part of their reality when you didn't even think about this.'