Charli XCX Concedes That Not All Taylor Swift Fans Are Five-Year-Olds

The lord giveth, and the lord taketh—which to say that yet another exhausting Taylor Swift-related feud has arisen, just as soon as we’ve finally put another to rest. With Katy Perry is out of the picture, the Swifties have now turned their attention to Charli XCX, who is currently facing the repercussions of failing to praise Swift in exactly one sentence of her lengthy new profile in Pitchfork.

Last year, Swift and Charli XCX played a whopping 50-plus stadiums across the world, after Swift invited the 27-year-old singer to serve as the opening act for her Reputation tour. Charli XCX graciously accepted, and soon saw her platform skyrocket. Naturally, then, the career milestone came up in conversation with Pitchfork. “I’m really grateful that [Taylor] asked me on that tour,” Charli XCX said. And then, much to Swifties’ chagrin, she added: “But as an artist, it kind of felt like I was getting up on stage and waving to 5-year-olds.”

To add insult to injury, the singer also told Pitchfork that touring with Swift made her decide to never open for anyone again. “I’ve done so much of it, and it really cemented my status as this underdog character, which I like now,” she said. “But I need to just own my own fucking shit finally.” After all, even before she embarked on the Reputation tour with Swift, Charli XCX was already established within her own right, with two full-length albums to show for it.

Alas, that detail seems to have escaped a number of Swifties, who quickly admonished Charli XCX for biting the hand that feeds and more generally threw Twitter tantrums over their perceived infantilization. And so, seven hours after Pitchfork published its profile, Charli XCX published a statement of her own, cheerily expressing her desire to “give clarity to what was a great interview!!” via a Notes app screenshot.

“A few people on the internet have taken something I said out of context and I want to clarify there is absolutely no shade and only love here!,” the singer began. “As I say in the article and have said many times before, I am extremely grateful to Taylor for inviting me to open for her. She’s one of the biggest artists of my generation and the reputation tour was one of the biggest tours in history.”

The confusion, she continued, stemmed from how her “much wider conversation” with the writer about how the tour was “boiled down into one kind of weird sentence—leading up to that tour I’d been playing a tonne of 18+ club shows and so to be on stage in front of all ages was new to me and made me approach my performances with a whole new kind of energy.”

Swift herself has yet to jump into Charli XCX’s mentions, but so far, the replies have varied from “yas drag the 5 year olds” to “buy and stream [Swift’s album] lover out august 23!!” With any luck, the drama will all blow over soon—or perhaps even remind the pair to get around to that cover of t.A.T.u.’s “All the Things She Said.”

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