Song of the Evening: "Actually Romantic"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Actually Romantic"

Taylor Swift

from The Life of a Showgirl

2025

I listened to this song once on purpose, and once on accident. I'll probably listen to it for a third time right now, since it's on the blog. But that's it. That's enough. I don't need to listen to any more Taylor Swift this week. I don't need to listen to the new album. Not yet. Not now. Too soon. I was already tired of it before it even dropped.

I did listen to "Actually Romantic" on Friday morning, though, maybe seven hours after it appeared on the internet. The context was just too relevant. "Relevant" because of what it was about. It was a response song to my favorite song of 2024, and probably at this point one of my favorite songs of all time, Charli XCX's "sympathy is a knife."

I've written about this song already, multiple times throughout 2024 on the blog. I don't love the song because it alludes to Taylor Swift; I love the song because of what it does with that subject matter. It's not about Taylor Swift. It's about imposter syndrome, it's about feeling inadequate, it's about hating yourself despite success, it's about feeling so low that you want to shoot yourself in the head. "sympathy is a knife" isn't about Taylor Swift, it's about Charli XCX. You're a fucking moron if you think otherwise.

And so the irony is that Taylor Swift proves in "Actually Romantic" that she is a fucking moron. This is a gross song. So fucking gross, man. This is some Mean Girls shit. Swift hears a song about Charli feeling low and inadequate and says "ew what the fuck why are you OBSESSED with me?" What fucking ego do you have to have to hear such a song and think that it's about you? How fucking crass can you be? And what fucking nerve, to completely misread the lyrics of a song and then call yourself "an English teacher"?

I don't give a fuck about whatever personal beef these two artists have going between them, I'm mostly defending one of my favorite songs here. I love "sympathy is a knife" with every fiber of my being and then some fucking narcissist is gonna come in here and say it's a shitty song because they are too dumb to understand it? Sheesh.

But see, here's the real problem, and it's a problem that I am actively contributing to right now, right here in this blog post. The problem is the idea of "the discourse" surrounding the album. It's just too much. It distracts from the art (or lack thereof). No one, including me, seems to be able to speak about Taylor Swift's music like a normal, rational human being, and so that makes me hate the whole idea of Taylor Swift.

I hate the idea of Taylor Swift talking shit on one of my favorite songs because she's an idiot and an egotistical maniac. I hate the idea of Swifties buying the album and defending it without actually giving a shit about the quality of the music. And I hate the idea of people refusing to listen to the album and then still invading spaces on the internet to say how much the album sucks. There's room to say that Taylor Swift is now a maga wife because her husband cucks our nazi president, but there's no room to say something like "her maga husband has made her art worse" if you haven't listened to the album. If you say something like that without doing your due diligence, then you're disrespecting the art of music in general. Listen to the album 20 times and then come back to me.

I have not listened to the music yet, and that's on purpose. I'm so tired of this chick and I know that if I listened to it now then I'd let the discourse affect my opinion about the music, and then I'd run here after like two listens and write a scathing 2-pukes review solely because Taylor Swift and Swifties annoy the hell out of me. And that's bullshit. That's forgetting about the oath that we as music critics take. That's getting distracted by shit that really just does not matter at all. I would be just as irresponsible as Taylor Swift is in "Actually Romantic." I wouldn't be respecting the art.