Taylor Swift made a statement on her new song “Cancelled!” from her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl — and fans think it could be connected to her friendship with Brittany Mahomes.
The pop superstar, 35, stylized the title for track 10 in all caps on the back cover of her album, which was released Friday, October 3.
The capitalization makes sense; Swift sends a strong message in her lyrics, declaring that she “loves” when her friends get “canceled,” a term that often refers to a widespread decision by the public to ostracize a person from society due to a perceived misstep. (Swift faced such backlash in 2016 after Kim Kardashian leaked a recording of the singer and Kanye West discussing the lyrics of his song “Famous.”)
“You thought that it would be OK at first / The situation could be saved, of course / But they’d already picked out your grave and hearse,” Swift begins on the grunge-inspired track. “Beware the wrath of masked crusaders / Did you girlboss too close to the sun? / Did they catch you having far too much fun?”
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Swift then asks the subject of her lyrics to come “with” her, because “when they see you coming they’ll run.”
“Something wicked this way comes,” she teases.
She voices her unwavering support for her friends in the chorus before mentioning how she likes her inner circle “cooked in Gucci and in scandal.” The lyric caused some fans to believe Swift may be pointing to Brittany after she and Swift — along with Swift’s fiancé, Travis Kelce, and Brittany’s husband, Patrick Mahomes — hit the US Open last year dressed in the designer brand.
Brittany, 30, has faced her fair share of criticism over the years as she’s supported Patrick, also 30, in his career as the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback. She’s seen backlash over things including social media posts about gameplay and spraying champagne over fans during a cold winter game in 2022.
Swift, for her part, saw pushback from her own fans when she began to spend time with the Mahomes in 2023 after sparking a romance with Patrick’s teammate Kelce, 35. Some Swifties claimed that the pop star shouldn’t be spending so much time with someone who appears to be on the other side of the political aisle. (Swift is a confirmed Democrat, while President Donald Trump has claimed that Brittany “loves” him.)
“It’s easy to love you when you’re popular / The optics click, everyone prospers / But one single drop you’re off the roster / Tone-deaf and hot, let’s f***ing off her,” Swift continues in the second verse, with the “roster” sports reference once again potentially pointing to one of the Mahomes.
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The song’s meaning, of course, could spread far beyond just one person. Swift’s bridge references friends who have “stood by me before my exoneration,” seemingly referring to her 2016 drama, which was years before she first stepped out with Brittany.
“They believed I was innocent / So I’m not here for judgement,” she sings, possibly referencing Blake Lively, who has recently come under fire amid her sexual assault lawsuit against It Ends With Us director and costar Justin Baldoni. “But if you can’t be good then just be better at it / Everyone’s got bodies in the attic / Or took somebody’s man / Will take you by the hand / And soon you’ll learn the art of never getting caught.”
Since coming back from her own ordeal nearly a decado ago, Swift has reflected on the difficult period on several occasions, telling Vogue in 2019, “A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience.”
“I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly,” she continued. “When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could be perceived as, ‘Kill yourself.’”
While Swift once questioned whether her career could survive the aftermath, she bounced back with a different perspective.
“I realized I needed to restructure my life because it felt completely out of control,” she explained. “I knew immediately I needed to make music about it because I knew it was the only way I could survive it. It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so humiliating.”
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In 2023, Swift recalled “getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity” years earlier.
“You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” she told TIME. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
Swift returned to public life in a major way with her record-breaking Eras Tour in 2023. That same year, her relationship with Travis Kelce dominated the headlines.
Since then, Swift — who announced her engagement to Kelce, also 35, in August — has been candid about her decision to not hide the couple’s romance like she might have done in past relationships.
“When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she told TIME. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”
