Taylor Swift’s Actually Romantic Lyrics, Decoded: Are They Really Aimed at Charli XCX?

It would not be a Taylor Swift album rollout without a leak, a mystery, and a fandom detective board. A track reportedly titled 'Actually Romantic' from her next record, 'The Life of a Showgirl', hit the internet early, and fans have already decided it is a Charli XCX diss. Here is why people think that, the actual history between the two, and why this whole thing is messier than a simple feud.

What is in the leaked song, and why fans are pointing at Charli

The title is the first wink: 'Actually Romantic' sounds a lot like Charli XCX's 'Everything Is Romantic'. But it is the lyrics doing the heavy lifting. Full verses are floating around on lyric sites, and several lines read like Swift is addressing a not-so-secret rival.

• The line that set everything off: "I heard you call me Boring Barbie, when the coke's got you brave." Fans note Charli has openly referenced drug use in her own music, which is why many think this is a jab aimed her way.
• Two more eyebrow-raisers: "You said you're glad he ghosted me" and "Wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face." They play like receipts aimed at one person rather than a composite villain.
• Swift reportedly flips the dynamic by calling this person's fixation on her "actually romantic" and says she finds it flattering. Yes, it is a petty compliment. Yes, it is extremely Swift-coded.
• Fans are also connecting an alleged 'reply lyric' to Charli's 'Brat' era. Charli sings "George says, 'I'm just paranoid'" on 'Sympathy Is a Knife'. Swift's leaked line goes, "How many times has your boyfriend said, 'Why are we always talking 'bout her?'" Put those next to each other and you can see why people are drawing a line between the two.

The backstory: why these dots connect so easily

Swift and Charli have real history. Charli opened for Swift on the Reputation Stadium Tour in 2018, and they performed 'Shake It Off' together on stage. Fast forward, and the social map gets... complicated. Charli married The 1975 drummer George Daniel, and she has spent a lot of time around the band. Matty Healy, The 1975's frontman and one of Swift's most talked-about exes, is part of that circle. It has been widely reported that Charli is the one who introduced Healy (36) to model Gabbriette Bechtel, his now-fiancee. If you are tracking perceived allegiances, that is the kind of detail fans never forget.

Wait, didn’t Swift praise Charli last year?

She did, and this is where the story zigzags. In August 2024, Swift publicly gushed about Charli's songwriting in an interview.

"I've been blown away by Charli's melodic sensibilities since I first heard 'Stay Away' in 2011. Her writing is surreal and inventive, always. She just takes a song to places you wouldn't expect it to go, and she's been doing it consistently for over a decade. I love to see hard work like that pay off."

Also worth noting: at the 2025 Grammys, Swift was caught on camera dancing along to a performance that featured Gabbriette on stage. Not exactly the behavior of someone ducking anything Charli-adjacent.

The 'Sympathy Is a Knife' rumor, and Charli's response

Before this leak, some fans were convinced Charli's 'Sympathy Is a Knife' took aim at Swift, zeroing in on lines like "This one girl taps my insecurities / Don't know if it's real or if I'm spiraling." Charli shut that down on TikTok back in May 2024, saying the album wasn't a subtweet fest.

"I'm seeing online that some people think there are diss tracks on 'Brat' and I just wanted to come on here and clarify that there aren't - apart from maybe 'Von Dutch,' which kind of is - but the other tracks in question aren't diss tracks. They're really just about how 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, constantly."

Fans are split, loud, and very online

The reaction on X and Reddit is all over the map. Some fans are cheering the alleged clapback and calling out what they see as hypocrisy after a year of Charli's 'Brat' memes. Others think Swift crossed a line with the "coke" lyric. There are jokes about the wildness of Swift getting, uh, extremely racy while potentially shading Charli, and a vocal group arguing that 'Sympathy Is a Knife' was about insecurity, not a specific person, so this whole back-and-forth misses the point. In other words: classic pop-stan internet discourse.

So... is 'Actually Romantic' about Charli?

Maybe. The title echo, the specific lines, and the very tangled Healy-Daniel-Gabbriette web make the theory feel plausible, and Swift loves an Easter egg. But neither artist has confirmed any feud, and Charli has already pushed back on the idea that she was firing at Swift last year. Until the album lands and Swift says something on the record (pun not intended), this is still fan forensics.

'The Life of a Showgirl' is scheduled to drop Friday, October 3, 2025.