Taylor Swift has praised Charli XCX in a new interview despite one of her recent songs leading fans to believe there might be bad blood between the two pop stars.
In Sympathy Is a Knife, the third track on Charli’s most recent album BRAT, the singer describes feeling anxiety about another woman, she sings “I couldn’t even be her if I tried”.
In the lyrics she also says, “Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show / Fingers crossed behind my back / I hope they break up quick” hinting that a woman was hanging around backstage at 1975 shows, along with Charli’s now-fiancé George Daniel, who drums for the band.
Although the song is not critical about anyone, fans started speculating that the song was about Taylor as she briefly dated lead singer Matty Healy when Charli likely wrote the lyrics.
In a new feature in New York Magazine, the Cruel Summer hitmaker was asked about Charli and gushed she is ‘blown away’ by her music.
The Fearless songstress said: ‘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.’
Elsewhere in the interview, Charli declined to get more specific about the song but said it was about herself.
She said: ‘People are gonna think what they want to think. That song is about me and my feelings and my anxiety and the way my brain creates narratives and stories in my head when I feel insecure and how I don’t want to be in those situations physically when I feel self-doubt.’
During Taylor’s 2018 Reputation stadium tour, Charlie opened for the 14-time Grammy Award winner on over 50 nights.
However in 2019, while speaking to Pitchfork, Charli said: ‘As an artist, it kind of felt like I was getting up onstage and waving to 5-year-olds.
She went on to say following the tour she it made her decide to never open for anyone again.
Charli added: ‘I’ve done so much of it, and it really cemented my status as this underdog character, I need to just own my own f***ing s*** finally.’
She later took to her social media to say her comments had been taken out of context, insisting: ‘As I say in the article and have said many times before, I am extremely grateful to Taylor for inviting me to open for her.
‘She’s one of the biggest artists of my generation and the Reputation tour was one of the biggest tours in history.’
Earlier this year, Charli demanded an end to alleged chants of ‘Taylor is dead!’ at her concerts immediately, calling it ‘disturbing’.
The singer took to her Instagram Stories to respond after being informed that some of her fans had been shouting the hateful message about fellow pop star Taylor Swift during her gigs.
Calling for it to stop, she declared that it is ‘the opposite of what I want’ and warned that she would ‘not tolerate it’.
After a concert in São Paulo, Brazil in June, someone shared a number of videos of attendees appearing to chant ‘A Taylor Morreu’, which translates in English to ‘Taylor is dead’.
The fan addressed Charli, saying: ‘Hey @charli_xcx, your Brazilian fans have been showing toxic behaviour by screaming “Taylor is dead!” in your concerts and events related to you.
‘Could you do something about it? We don’t [believe] that’s what music should be about.’
Sharing a screenshot of the tweet, Charli replied on her Instagram, writing: ‘can the people who do this please stop. online or at my shows.
‘it is the opposite of what i want and it disturbs me that anyone would think there is room for this in this community. i will not tolerate it.’
Fans have long speculated that Charli and Taylor have bad blood, with the two singers’ latest albums battling in the charts.
Charli’s sixth studio album has won rave reviews, debuting as the ‘most critically acclaimed record of the year’ over Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Taylor’s latest record, The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD).
Ranking number one on Metacritic, BRAT received ‘universal acclaim’ based on a score of 92 out of 100 from 11 critics scores.
But the hyper pop-electronic record failed to debut at number one on the British charts, after being pipped at the post by Taylor releasing a new limited edition of TTPD with some bonus tracks.
Many fans believe the release to be a strategic move on the part of the Blank Space hitmaker to prevent Charli getting the top spot, a tactic Taylor has been accused of doing several times before.
Commenting on the controversy, The Guardian said: ‘That she seems to reissue TTPD specifically to best smaller artists – and, notably, smaller female artists – creates the image of Swift as Goliath attempting to crush Charli’s hedonistic, gothy David.’
