Fandom rivalries are nothing new, but Charli xcx has made it clear she won’t stand to see her diehards coming for Taylor Swift.
Certain factions of both pop stars’ fanbases have been running wild on social media lately, with most of their back-and-forth attacks stemming from a perceived chart battle between Charli and Swift: the former’s latest album BRAT was on track to debut at #1 on the UK Albums Chart after its release on June 7, but it ended up being sniped by The Tortured Poets Department (Swift’s 11th album) after the latter artist released a new edition of it the same week.
In response, some of Charli’s fans have taken to social media with insults and threats – of varying severity – aimed at Swift and her own fans; at some of Charli’s recent concerts and listening parties, too, they’ve begun chanting things like “TAYLOR SWIFT IS DEAD”.
As reported by Rolling Stone, Charli put her foot down after being shown a clip of her crowd chanting that at a show of hers in Brazil. In an update to her Instagram Story (which has since been deleted), she reportedly wrote: “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.”
The drama is especially notable given many of the lyrical themes Charli explores on BRAT, dissecting interpersonal relationships with her peers and other figures in the music industry, both close to her and distant.
She opened up about that more in a recent interview with The Guardian: “We’ve got past the point of the media always pitting women against one another. In the mid to late 00s, it literally sold magazines and papers: ‘Britney versus Christina’, ‘Paris versus Lindsay’. Then feminism became a popular marketing tool. In the music industry, it was distilled into this idea that if you support women, and you like other women, then you’re a good feminist. The reverse of that is, if you don’t like all other women who exist and breathe on this Earth then you’re a bad feminist. If you’re not a girl’s girl then you’re a bad woman.
“That’s just such an unrealistic expectation of women. Relationships between women are super-complex and multi-layered. You can like someone and dislike them at the same time; you can feel jealous of somebody but they can still be your friend; you can have the best time of your life on a night out with someone but not be that close to them at all. You can pose with your arms around a person at an awards show, but in reality you’re feeling not worthy, or small – or really cocky, or confident, or a huge multitude of different emotions.”
In that interview, Charli specifically addressed the BRAT cut Girl, so confusing, which many fans leapt to presume was about Lorde upon its release. That was later confirmed when Lorde herself appeared on a remix of the song, released last Friday (June 21), with a verse directly addressing her and Charli’s perceptions of one another.
