In 2010, Taylor Swift wrote the jaunty diss monitor “Imply,” about, unusually sufficient, Bob Lefsetz, a longtime music business pundit who had viciously panned her efficiency on the 2010 Grammy Awards. For his half, Lefsetz initially hemmed and hawed over the narrative, however ultimately got here to embrace it. “Imply” doesn’t stand amongst the very best songs on Communicate Now, however, because the music YouTuber Todd within the Shadows as soon as identified, it’s profoundly revealing about Swift’s psyche: “Sometime, I’ll be large enough so you’ll be able to’t hit me.”
Flash ahead to 2016. Swift was locked in a feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West over the lyrics to “Well-known,” from West’s album The Lifetime of Pablo. She was on the verge of claiming the ethical excessive floor when Kardashian dropped her ace within the gap: video footage of Swift seeming to approve—and even giggle over—the lyric “I really feel like me and Taylor would possibly nonetheless have intercourse.” Swift went on to launch “Look What You Made Me Do” as the primary single from 2017’s Popularity. The entire affair felt tawdry and camp with out being by any means enjoyable, however at the least she was punching sideways.
It’s 2025 now, Taylor Swift is the largest pop star on the planet—Time’s Particular person of the 12 months large, repeatedly breaking her personal gross sales data with each new launch large—and she or he (allegedly, seemingly) can’t cease eager about Charli XCX. “I heard you name me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s bought you courageous,” she sings on “Completely Romantic,” one of many lowlights off her new album, The Lifetime of a Showgirl. For these in some way mercifully out of the loop, Charli XCX simply married the 1975’s George Daniel, bandmate of Swift’s latest ex Matty Healy; on the Brat lower “Sympathy is a knife,” she grappled with being thrust into the orbit of a feminine pop star a number of instances her stature. “Truly Romantic” is simply, properly, imply. And worse, it’s dumb: “Like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse, that’s how a lot it hurts.” No working it out on the remix available right here.