Review: “Actually Romantic” by Taylor Swift

Last summer, Charli XCX released the song “Sympathy is a knife”, in which she confesses jealous feelings for Taylor Swift. It’s a universal song about resentment, but also works because Charli relates it to her celebrity biography. I wrote for this blog last year that in Charli’s song she purports to be confessing jealousy for Taylor’s traditional beauty and wide commercial success, but is actually taking pride that she’s more artistically pure than Taylor Swift.

This autumn, Taylor Swift responded in her new song “Actually Romantic”. It’s less subtle than “Sympathy is a knife”. In the opening line, she says “I heard you call me Boring Barbie when the coke’s got you feeling brave”, referring to Charli, who is famous for talking about cocaine.

Taylor Swift has legitimate grievances with Charli XCX, to be fair. Not for “Sympathy is a knife”, which is sweet and vulnerable, but for Charli’s attitude about Taylor as an artist. I’m sure the “boring barbie” quote is real, that one of their mutual friends relayed to Taylor that Charli said that about her.

“Boring barbie” is honestly a great summation of Charli’s attitude about Taylor; she thinks Taylor’s a beautiful woman with mass appeal who doesn’t challenge norms. Charli XCX criticized Taylor Swift’s fans after opening for her on the Reputation tour in 2018; Charli was forced to play her more commercially successful music over her experimental pop to Taylor Swift’s screaming npc teenage girl crowd, and Charli publicly spoke about disliking that experience. On her own Brat tour Charli would say “artistry shines through” before performing “Sympathy is a knife”, meaning that her jealous feelings towards Taylor Swift are valid because she’s the better artist.

But even though she has legitimate grievances, “Actually Romantic” is disorganized and distasteful. This song is not as good of art as “Sympathy is a knife”. Had Taylor Swift written a song about the antifeminist undertones of “boring barbie”, how it feels like Charli is hating another successful woman who other women love, I think that could have worked artistically. But instead she devolves into spite.

She follows “boring barbie” with “when the coke’s got you feeling brave”, saying that Charli does a lot of coke, and that she isn’t brave enough to criticize her when she isn’t drugfueled. I don’t know if I care about that, honestly, and it says something about Taylor Swift that she does. In the next line Taylor says “you high-fived my ex and then said you’re glad he ghosted me”, referring to her ex-boyfriend Matty Healy, who Charli is friends with. I’m sure it was hurtful that Charli was cheering on the end of a relationship that Taylor was deeply affected by, but it feels like gushing out interpersonal slights.

What Taylor is trying to do in “Actually Romantic” is compare Charli XCX’s angry obsession with her to the obsession of romantic love. That sort of comparison might resonate with other people? Maybe? I’ve never felt this about another man, but I’m an intrasexual competition pacifist, and women are meaner to each other than men are in these situations.

Regardless of how universal the feeling is, Taylor is trying to declare she has the high ground because she doesn’t care about Charli as much as Charli does about her. That might be true, but it doesn’t matter because when they’re fighting they’re on the same level. Yes, Charli calls her tacky and boring, but I don’t think the answer is to say “you’re so obsessed with me!” And Taylor thought about Charli to write this song, so it’s ironic in that sense. At one point she compares Charli to a tiny chihuahua, saying that she doesn’t feel threatened by her at all, but again that feels incompatible with the action of writing the song.

If Charli never responds, which I don’t think she has to, because the song is distasteful, she wins the argument. Taylor Swift used her larger platform to release a more vitriolic but less interesting song. It’s operating at a lower level than Charli’s, by focusing on her supposed obsession. Charli XCX already admitted she was obsessed in “Sympathy is a knife”. There’s nothing more for her to say.

The sad part is I think Taylor Swift wanted to mimic the unfiltered confessional lyricism of Brat. It’s a compliment to Charli that Taylor thought she could be this candid. But she didn’t execute well. She wrote some wrong words and came off spiteful. Maybe I’m being too generous, but I don’t think Taylor Swift hates Charli XCX as much as her own song makes out. She wanted to shoot back at Charli, but it just wasn’t as good. Unfortunately, in the world of candid and vulnerable art, if you mess up, it makes you look bad. Taylor Swift spilled her own vulnerable resentment back at Charli, but in a way that wasn’t generous or insightful.

Discussing “Sympathy is a Knife” last summer, I ended with “maybe Taylor Swift is the true jealous lonely artist”. I think this song makes that clear. I don’t think I could do better if I were Taylor Swift, so this isn’t a criticism. It must be hard being the most cared about artist in the world, having a life so different from everyone else’s. Not similar to other artists, not similar to other very wealthy people. I imagine that it’s lonely and painful, but she knows she has to keep going because what she does matters to so many normal people. She’ll rest at some point, but she’ll rest when people stop caring. That is a hard burden; I don’t envy it.

It’s interesting how Taylor relates the dynamics of her megafamous life to the social dynamics experienced by normal people. Complaining about her ex, calling someone she doesn’t like a cokehead. The situations are so different, but she mines the shared elements of them to make it feel like they aren’t. That’s the skill of universalizing that got her here.