In yet another example of stan-ufactured beef, fans are convinced that Taylor Swift is intentionally trying to block Charli XCX’s new album BRAT from scaling the UK music charts.
The hullabaloo around the pop stars arose on X, formerly Twitter, and various Reddit threads on Friday, following Swift’s decision to release new, UK-specific variants of her latest album The Tortured Poets Department.
That move — which saw Swift issue a restock of TTPD CDs and vinyl specifically on her UK online store — has put the “Shake It Off” singer in contention to claim the number one spot on The Official Chart in the UK.
Prior to the re-release, Charli XCX was on track to debut atop the chart with BRAT, but Swift’s re-entry into the race at the eleventh hour looked to dethrone the hyperpop star from achieving the feat.
Naturally, given our collective fascination with supposed celebrity feuds (they’re just so fun!), fans have flocked to Charli’s defence, labelling Swift’s manoeuvre as “a deliberate attempt to block brat”.
Whether or not this is true — or is simply how an album rollout works — remains unknown, but internet sleuths have pointed to a specific song from BRAT that gives weight to a potential beef with Swift. On “Sympathy is a knife”, Charli references an unnamed singer who she doesn’t “wanna… see backstage at my boyfriend’s show.”
For those unfamiliar (where have you been?), Charli is engaged to The 1975 drummer George Daniel, a band that’s also home to Swift’s ex and bonafide rat boyfriend Matty Healy. Fans have theorised that Charli’s vague nod to Swift is the reason behind the TTPD re-release, but all of this speculative lore-making (which is extremely fun, but ultimately unconfirmed).
It doesn’t help Swift’s case that fans have uncovered a history of similar tactics. Just last month, the singer was accused of timing the re-release of yet more TTPD variants (you’d think there’d be some kind of limit?) to block Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft. It worked, with Eilish’s latest album becoming the first in her career to not debut atop the Billboard Hot 100.
Add in the supposedly fraught history between Swift and Eilish — the latter of whom has traded some thinly-veiled barbs at the former in recent months — and you begin to see a pattern as clear as Swift’s love for NFL players.
Whether you buy into Swift’s re-releases as deliberate sabotage depends on how deeply you read into celebrity beefs, and all of it might be for nought if BRAT maintains it’s lead in the charts. So heck, maybe we should all just take a page from Charli’s book a cry intensely (but also hotly) in the club.
Image source: David Becker/GC Images, Neil Mockford/GC Images and X.
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