Taylor Swift is clearing the air after one of Charli XCX‘s recent songs led fans to think 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 (“I couldn’t even be her if I tried”), and how said 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 the other woman, instead looking inward, internet sleuths figured out it was likely Swift, given that she was dating lead singer Matty Healy when Charli likely wrote the lyrics (including, “Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show / Fingers crossed behind my back / I hope they break up quick”).
In a new feature in New York Magazine, Swift is asked about Charli and showers her with praise.
“I’ve been blown away by Charli’s melodic sensibilities since I first heard ‘Stay Away’ in 2011,” Swift says. “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.”
In the interview, Charli declines to get more specific about the song.
“People are gonna think what they want to think,” she says. “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.”
Before “Knife,” Charli opened for Swift on her 2018 Reputation stadium tour, which she said in a 2019 interview with Pitchfork that “As an artist, it kind of felt like I was getting up onstage and waving to 5-year-olds,” before apologizing to Swift’s fanbase.
