The race to dissect the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, is on. And there’s one track in particular that has listeners raising their eyebrows.
In the song Actually Romantic, Swift sends a pointed message to someone who has spent a lot of time talking badly about her behind her back. Many fans have speculated the track is aimed at her former tour mate, pop star Charli XCX.
Today on Commotion, music journalists Emilie Hanskamp, Reanna Cruz and Suzy Exposito join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to weigh in on Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated new album, The Life of a Showgirl, and what it tells us about this moment in her life and career.
We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, including a conversation about the reaction to Bad Bunny’s upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today’s episode on YouTube:
Elamin: We should say, I was like, “Hey, what songs do you guys want to talk about?” All of you selected this song…. Look, when you’re Taylor Swift and you write a song called Actually Romantic about another pop star who’s perhaps writing a lot of songs about you, people are bound to come for you. Emilie, do you wanna quickly explain what’s going on here?
Emilie: Yeah, so from where Taylor is sitting, Charli XCX on Brat, I guess, came for her. I think that’s debatable. I think you could read the song that Charli wrote about her being intimidated around Taylor, and not really knowing how to act. And then of course, we saw with Lorde, they made up on the remix. And so we have that happening in the pop world in terms of feud between pop stars.
So, to have Taylor come in at this moment and so specifically go for Charli for her drug habits, for things that are really under the belt — on one hand I was disappointed, because I actually think pop-wise this is maybe my favourite structured song on the album and I like the concept of the chorus. I think it could have been a great opportunity for us to have a great anthem of, you know, “stick it to your enemies” in a general way. I think the specificity is where we see her sort of isolating herself, and not really being able to read the moment. This is simultaneously my favourite song, and a song that so well illustrates my frustration with Taylor for having so many great ingredients and never quite executing in the way that I want her to. This is not the moment, but it’s so close to what could have been the moment. She’s just lagging behind the discourse a little bit here.
WATCH | Official visualizer for Actually Romantic:
Elamin: You could say it’s a knife, actually. That’s what you might say, when Taylor Swift does something like this.
Emilie: She brought a knife to a, what is it? A small violin to a knife fight? She did the opposite of what she said….
Elamin: Suzy, the discourse is that this is not a good look for Taylor, right? Charli’s song is a pretty vulnerable song about being like, “I’m finally a big enough star, and I’m really intimidated when I’m in the room with somebody as big as Taylor Swift.” There’s vulnerability in it, but also there’s a bit of discomfort in that song. And then the opening line of Actually Romantic, just sort of directly calling Charli a cokehead — it’s unpleasant. Is this a good look for Taylor, do you think?
Suzy: I listened to Sympathy is a knife — which is an excellent karaoke song, I should say. I think that was really vulnerable songwriting because Charli XCX, there’s nothing to sniff at about her career. She’s a powerful pop star. Brat was a massive moment for her. And here comes Taylor— Taylor hates when people come in to rain on her parade, you know? She takes it quite personally. I think listening to Actually Romantic, it just made me think she’s feeding into the drama. I mean, whatever, that’s why we all tune in, right? Taylor loves it; she lives for this stuff. This could have been a really bratty rock-taunt song, but it doesn’t go as hard as it should. I think it’s all bark, but the sound—
Elamin: Wait, you want it to go harder?
Suzy: I want it go harder, musically. It’s all bark, not enough bite, for what she’s trying to give. I think the guitars need to be cranked all the way up — like, really stand behind business…. I think she holds back sonically. And that’s how I felt with a lot of her records, is she’s still keeping it a little too tame because she’s still got to maintain this sort of girl-next-door persona who just happened to stumble into stardom. I would have loved for them to work it out on the remix. Maybe this is all theatre, and maybe they will.
You can listen to the full discussion from today’s show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Panel produced by Stuart Berman.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.cbc.ca ’
