Addison Rae has responded to the rumoured feud between Charli XCX and Taylor Swift.
- READ MORE: Addison Rae live in London: effortless euphoria from a pop icon-in-waiting
Rae was asked about the supposed friction between the two pop stars in a new interview with The Los Angeles Times, and whether she feels she can avoid being pulled into discourse about “pop-girl rivalries”.
She began by saying, “I guess we’ll have to see,” before adding, “But there’s so much more to all these things. There are people that do weird things, and I try to avoid those people.”
Rae and Charli have been friends for years, with Charli supporting Rae’s earliest music releases and collaborating on numerous occasions, including ‘2 die 4’ on Rae’s debut EP and a remix of ‘Von dutch’ from Charli’s ‘Brat‘ remix album ‘Brat And It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat‘. They performed both tracks live together back in October.
“It doesn’t have to be a thing, but I get it — it’s entertaining,” Rae added of artist rivalries in general. “Historically, there’s always been this friendly or maybe unfriendly competition between people. I think it’s a very natural human thing to want to exceed a standard that someone else has laid out. I’m not really interested it for myself.”
The comments come after the release of Swift’s 12th studio album, ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’, with many fans interpreting the lyrics to the song ‘Actually Romantic’ as a swipe at Charli. “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave,” Swift sings. “High-fived my ex and then said you’re glad he ghosted me / Wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face / Some people might be offended / But it’s actually sweet.”
Many considered this a rebuttal to Charli’s ‘Sympathy Is A Knife’ from ‘Brat’, on which she sang: “Don’t know if I’m spiralling / One voice tells me that they laugh / George says I’m just paranoid / Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show / Fingers crossed behind my back / I hope they break up real quick.”
This line stuck out to fans upon the track’s release, as Charli is now married to The 1975 drummer George Daniel, while Swift was in a brief relationship with that band’s frontman Matty Healy in 2023.
Swift has since said ‘Actually Romantic’ is “a song about realising that someone else has kind of had a one-sided, adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about. And all of a sudden they start doing too much and they start letting you know that actually, you’ve been living in their head rent-free and you had no idea.”
Swift (via BBC News) then shed further light on the song’s meaning, saying it is “a love letter to someone who hates you”. But she still didn’t reveal who she was singing about.
When asked about the track in an interview, Charli also refused to comment on the speculation.
Neither artist has previously confirmed whether their songs are about each other but they have both publicly defended each other since the release of ‘Sympathy Is A Knife’ last year.
At a concert in Brazil in June last year, a fan shouted “Taylor Swift is dead”, prompting Charli to criticise the fan: “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.”
In August last year, Swift said: “I’ve been blown away by Charli’s melodic sensibilities since I first heard ‘Stay Away’ in 2011. 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 other news, Rae released her debut album ‘Addison‘ this year, which landed at Number Two in NME‘s 50 Best Albums of 2025 list.
“Addison Rae dreamt ‘Addison’ into existence, working from a mood board of colours and vague feelings rather than specific sonic references,” the entry read. “What emerged from this vibes-based approach is one of the best pop debuts in recent memory: starry-eyed, enigmatic observations on love, fame and money for an era in need of its hedonistic ethos.”
Her single ‘Headphones On’ also came in at Number Eight in our 50 Best Songs of 2025 list, with an entry reading: “With notes of dreamy ’90s R&B and Madonna’s ‘Ray Of Light’ era, pop’s brightest new star gives us plenty of reason to tune in.”
