Taylor Swift vs. the world: leave Charli XCX alone!
When all you've got is a hammer, everyone looks like a nail — even when you're the biggest pop star on the planet.
In case you hadn’t heard, Taylor Swift has a new album out. Sigh. I like Swift in many contexts — love you Evermore — but The Life of a Showgirl finds her in my least favorite of her moods: pissed off, self-congratulatory, and petty. I’ve only given the album a cursory listen so far, but my ear kept catching on moments in which she stews in celebrity resentment. Sometimes it doesn’t seem so glamorous to be me she sings on “Elizabeth Taylor.” Hollywood hates me. Ok Taylor: I might be a little bit more apt to express sympathy if you didn’t follow these lyrics up with references to hotel stays at the Plaza Athenee in Paris. Also, let Elizabeth Taylor — a true hero1 — rest in peace, please.
Worst of all, the album has a few moments which reveal that, in general, even after all these years, Swift still sees pop stardom in the most two-dimensional and boring of ways: as a warrior’s slog in which she must fend off enemies left and right. In some ways, her defensive pose is not her fault: she was thrust into conflict by none other than Kanye West, who ran up on that VMA stage back in 2009, and sent the both of them barreling into a years-long feud that eventually included Kim Kardashian and the snake emoji. Swift, has, at various moments, also had unnecessary feuds with Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry, both of which she ultimately squashed, thankfully. Some of her fights are noble —Scooter Braun, I’m thinking of you. But on The Life of a Showgirl, Swift trains her sights on someone she really should have left alone: Charli XCX.
This all traces back to last year’s Brat, where Charli included the song “Sympathy is a Knife,” confessing that she feels insecure and anxious around stars bigger than her — words widely read as a nod to Taylor, especially since both were dating members of The 1975 at around the time she would’ve written it. But Charli isn’t even really being a jerk about it! In fact, the person she seems to be criticizing most of all is herself, for feeling these feelings of insecurity when she knows she should know better: ‘Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried / I’m opposite, I’m on the other side / I feel all these feelings I can’t control / Oh no, don’t know why.
Harmless enough, right? Even brave and kind of sweet? Not to Taylor: on The Life of a Showgirl, she seems to be sniping back with “Actually Romantic,” a track that pointedly takes aim at an unnamed other person — one who, to many listeners, sounds unmistakably like Charli: I heard you call me “Boring Barbie” / when the coke’s got you brave she sings on the track’s opening line. The rest proceeds with the same level of pettiness, including comparing Charli to a toy Chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse.
I, for one, find all of this gross, particularly the coke part. When the planet’s most famous pop star hurls a drug accusation, it doesn’t land as a joke — it’s like a blunt force weapon. It’s the definition of punching down — and dirty.
The real question for Taylor is: why? Girl, you already won. You’re the biggest pop star in the world, the most famous woman on the planet. Congrats — seriously. It’s a feat. You’ve carved out a lane no one else has, with the kind of songwriting that defines an era. Be a little magnanimous, for chrissakes!
Anyway, if, after all these years, Taylor still can’t slip free from the gladiator’s chains — if she remains committed to the vision of herself as forever fighting in the arena — then what, truly, has she gained? With all that’s going on in the world, this is the message she chooses to amplify across the earth? As my favorite music critic, Amanda Petrusich, says in the New Yorker: the woman just sounds “stuck.” Even when her cause is righteous, it’s foundation is a bit uncomfortable: on “Father Figure,” she reimagines George Michael’s beloved and tender hymn to devotion and refashions it into a Godfather-style act of revenge against Scott Borchetta, the former label chief who sold her out — a transformation as audacious as it is uneasy.
Much has been made of how she’s now too big to fail, and it’s true; this album will triumph regardless of its quality. Which is to say: for Taylor Swift, victory no longer requires competition. The only person who can’t seem to see that? The showgirl herself.
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On Reddit, this user articulates incredibly well in an important point in a comment: “The Elizabeth Taylor mentions are so funny considering Liz put herself out there as an LGBTQ ally and HIV/AIDS patient advocate long before it was popular and socially acceptable. Swift still can’t say ‘free Palestine’ or ‘protect the dolls’”
Couldn’t have said it better. Charli’s song read as self-reflective and vulnerable where Taylor’s was petty and took low blows for the sake of taking low blows.
Closing paragraph is chef’s kiss!!! Agree with punching down, but I wouldn’t put the onus of hurling a coke accusation on Taylor. Party drug use is abundantly clear in Charli’s own brand (I.e. concert promo images) and lyrics. Otherwise agree 100% with this piece and with the other comments here! Taylor’s pettiness is regressive and FLAT on this track.