Taylor Swift Explains What ‘Actually Romantic’ Is Really About Amid Charli xcx Theories
Taylor Swift has tossed us another one of her signature Easter eggs, and this time it’s hidden smack-bang in the middle of “Actually Romantic”. Is it Charli xcx? Is it someone else?
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Look, the tinfoil hats aren’t coming off any time soon — but Taylor’s just offered a bit more insight on The Life of a Showgirl for all the over-caffeinated theorists out there, without putting any feuds to bed just yet.
Speaking in an Amazon Music intro, Taylor describes the song as discovering that someone has been carrying a torch, waving it around, maybe lighting a few things on fire… all while thinking there’s some big, dramatic rivalry going on.
“[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,” she said.
“It’s presenting itself as them sort of resenting you or having a problem with you but you take that and just accept it as love and you accept it as attention and affection, and how flattering that somebody has made you such a big part of their reality when you didn’t even think about this.
“It’s actually pretty romantic if you really think about it.”
Move over, Shakespeare — we’ve got petty beef as the new love language.
Why do fans think “Actually Romantic” is about Charli xcx?
When The Life of a Showgirl dropped yesterday, “Actually Romantic” stood out for its choice lyrics about an unnamed singer who does “coke” and “wrote me a song sayin’ it makes you sick to see my face” and “high-fived my ex”.
It didn’t take long for Swifties and Angels (Charli’s fandom) to start connecting the dots back to Charli xcx and her 2024 brat era, even comparing Taylor’s song to Charli’s track “Sympathy is a Knife” — which fans linked to Swift at the time — contained lines about envy and insecurity. But Charli told New York Magazine that it was “about my own anxiety… not about any one person.”
Still, between the Matty Healy crossover (Swift’s 2023 ex, Charli’s now-husband’s bandmate) and a few cheeky lyrical parallels about late-night gossip and drugs, the conspiracy boards basically built themselves.
The two pop girlies performed together in 2014, and Charli opened for Taylor in 2018, later telling Pitchfork it felt like “waving to five-year-olds” (awkward, but she clarified on X that there was no shade intended — just a big ol’ generational gap). Still, Taylor has sung Charli’s praises, calling her writing “surreal and inventive” to New York Magazine during the brat hysteria.
The verdict (for now)
So, is “Actually Romantic” about Charli xcx? Swift is doing what she does best: keeping it coy, giving us enough bread crumbs to host a bakery but never quite serving up the whole loaf. She isn’t naming names, but she’s also not closing the door on any theory boards. Fans are welcome to keep their detective hats on — and honestly, Taylor probably loves it that way.
Whatever the specific inspiration, Swift has perfectly bottled that strange cocktail of rivalry, obsession, and reluctant admiration — proving once again there’s nothing more intoxicating than a pop song with a splash of mystery. It’s all a bit romantic, if you squint hard enough, I guess?
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