CHARLI XCX admitted that a Brat song was about being envious of her fiance – The 1975 drummer George Daniel – but not Taylor Swift in a splashy interview on Monday.
The Brat singer opened up in a highly-discussed cover story for New York Magazine.
Charli, 32, shared the inspiration for the particularly pointed Brat song “Sympathy Is A Knife” during the interview.
She shared that, in part, the cryptic tune is about her struggle with her success as an artist compared to The 1975’s.
“Sometimes I’d look onstage and be like, ‘Oh my God … I’m never going to play these rooms, ever.’ That made me feel jealous,” she said.
“I told Matty [Healy] that. And George. They were both like, ‘Shut up. What are you talking about?'”
Charli dated The 1975 drummer George Daniel for a year before they announced their engagement in November 2023.
Meanwhile, there’s a thruline to Taylor Swift here, as Taylor dated The 1975’s frontman Matty Healy last year.
Rumors of a feud between the pop stars were reignited by the release of Charli’s massive summer album – and were discussed in the interview.
NO BAD BLOOD
However, Charli shut down the notion that “Sympathy is a Knife” had anything to do with the “Karma” singer.
“People are gonna think what they want to think,” she said when asked if there is a connection.
“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.”
As for Swift, she shared positive words about the “Guess” singer in her own rare comments.
“I’ve been blown away by Charli’s melodic sensibilities since I first heard ‘Stay Away’ in 2011,” Taylor told the outlet.
“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.”
CRYPTIC LYRICS
Fans suspected “Sympathy is a Knife” was about Taylor since the song was about Charli spiraling over self-doubt while comparing herself to another woman.
“I couldn’t even be her if I tried,” she sings in the chorus.
In the second verse, she says: ” I don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show.”
“Fingers crossed behind my back / I hope they break up quick.”
Given Swift’s brief relationship with The 1975’s Healy – the same time she began dating George – internet sleuths theorized that Taylor was the female backstage in question.
Taylor and Charli’s alleged feud also goes back much deeper than that.
Matty is now engaged to Charli’s friend, Gabbriette Bechtel. In addition, Charli was one of Swift’s Reputation Tour openers in 2018.
A year later, Charli was slammed by Swifties across the internet when she shared she didn’t enjoy being on tour with Taylor.
“As an artist, it kind of felt like I was getting up onstage and waving to 5-year-olds,” Charli told Pitchfork.
Charli later clarified her comment on X (formerly Twitter), writing, “It was brilliant opening for Taylor, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity.”
Despite neither artist escalating a potential feud, fans certainly did so at a Charli show earlier this year.
Charli XCX’s Brat Tracklist
Charli XCX released her sixth studio album, Brat, on June 7, 2025. Here’s a list of songs from her new album:
- 360
- Club classics
- Sympathy is a knife
- I might say something stupid
- Talk talk
- Von dutch
- Everything is romantic
- Rewind
- So I
- Girl, so confusing
- Apple
- B2b
- Mean girls
- I think about it all the time
- 365
A crowd chanted “Taylor is dead” at a June performance to indicate Brat’s rise and its overtaking of Taylor’s album The Tortured Poet’s Department in the zeitgeist.
Charli immediately asked fans to shut down the “toxic behavior.”
In an Instagram Story, she 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.”
There are now rumors that the feud has gone the opposite direction and that the pair could “work it out on the remix.”
Fans have speculated that following Billie Eilish and Lorde, Taylor could be on the final remix in Charli’s Brat rollout.
CHARLI’S ANGEL
Charli and George began dating after connecting on a collaboration in 2021.
Charli confirmed their relationship by sharing vacation photos of the pair on Instagram in May 2022.
The pair publicly announced their engagement with an Instagram post of them embracing, captioned “Charli XCX and George Daniel f******g for life!!!” and including a photo of the engagement ring.
According to People, Charli “first quietly shared the news” via “a post of her engagement ring on her private Instagram intended for her fans” a day before announcing the engagement on her public account.
George is a founding member of 1975, an English pop-rock band that has played huge venues compared to Charli’s more club-based ethos.
He replaced Matty Healy as the drummer, who had become the group’s lead singer.
Charli was previously with her ex-boyfriend Huck Kwong for over seven years.
