In 2010, Taylor Swift wrote the jaunty diss track “Mean,” about, strangely enough, Bob Lefsetz, a longtime music industry pundit who had viciously panned her performance at the 2010 Grammy Awards. For his part, Lefsetz initially hemmed and hawed over the narrative, but eventually came to embrace it. “Mean” does not stand amongst the best songs on Speak Now, but, as the music YouTuber Todd in the Shadows once pointed out, it is profoundly revealing about Swift’s psyche: “Someday, I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me.”

Flash forward to 2016. Swift was locked in a feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West over the lyrics to “Famous,” from West’s album The Life of Pablo. She was on the verge of claiming the moral high ground when Kardashian dropped her ace in the hole: video footage of Swift seeming to approve—and even laugh over—the lyric “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex.” Swift went on to release “Look What You Made Me Do” as the first single from 2017’s Reputation. The whole affair felt tawdry and camp without being whatsoever fun, but at least she was punching sideways.

It’s 2025 now, Taylor Swift is the biggest pop star on the planet—Time’s Person of the Year big, repeatedly breaking her own sales records with every new release big—and she (allegedly, seemingly) can’t stop thinking about Charli XCX. “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave,” she sings on “Absolutely Romantic,” one of the lowlights off her new album, The Life of a Showgirl. For those somehow mercifully out of the loop, Charli XCX just married the 1975’s George Daniel, bandmate of Swift’s recent ex Matty Healy; on the Brat cut “Sympathy is a knife,” she grappled with being thrust into the orbit of a female pop star several times her stature. “Actually Romantic” is just, well, mean. And worse, it’s dumb: “Like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse, that’s how much it hurts.” No working it out on the remix to be had here.