Taylor Swift’s “Cancelled!” is a referendum on so-called cancel culture — but fans still don’t know who served as the singer’s inspiration for the song.
“You thought that it would be okay, at first,” Swift, 35, sings on the track, the 10th on her The Life of a Showgirl record. “The situation could be saved, of course / But they’d already picked out your grave and hearse / Beware the wrath of masked crusaders.”
She adds, “Did you girlboss too close to the sun? / Did they catch you having far too much fun? / Come with me, when they see us, they’ll run / Something wicked this way comes / Good thing I like my friends cancelled / I like ’em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal.”
While Swift, 35, famously doesn’t name her lyrical muses, cohorts of fans have debated whether “Cancelled!” refers to friends Brittany Mahomes or Blake Lively. Brittany, 30, the wife of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, bonded with Swift after she started dating her now-fiancé, Travis Kelce. Brittany has also dealt with her fair share of backlash in the public eye, most recently for her perceived political affiliations.
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Lively, 38, meanwhile, has been friends with Swift since 2016, though their bond has recently been strained amid the actress’ ongoing lawsuit with It Ends With Us costar and director, Justin Baldoni. (Swift was briefly subpoenaed in the matter, with Baldoni’s team claiming the pop star was allegedly involved in the production. Swift has denied any involvement whatsoever.)
Several other fans, however, think “Cancelled!” isn’t referring to either Lively or Brittany, but actually Sophie Turner.
“I don’t think ‘Cancelled’ is about Blake Lively, I think [TikTok fans] had the right idea about Sophie Turner, and yeah the times line up,” one X user wrote, pointing out that Swift wrote Showgirl in 2024 around the same time Turner, 29, was navigating her divorce from Joe Jonas.
Jonas, 36, filed for divorce from Turner in fall 2023 after four years of marriage, which started a back-and-forth custody battle over the pair’s two young daughters.
“The concept of Taylor’s ‘Cancelled!’ being about Sophie Turner and how the media turned on her after her divorce with Joe Jonas and he is their ‘matching scar,’” another fan wrote via X.
Swift also dated Jonas for a few months back in the early 2000s until he broke up with her in a now-infamous 27-second voicemail.
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“Welcome to my underworld where it gets quite dark / At least you know exactly who your friends are,” Swift adds in the song. “Welcome to my underworld where it gets quite dark / At least you know exactly who your friends are / They’re the ones with matching scars.”
She continues, “It’s easy to love you when you’re popular / The optics click, everyone prospers / But one single drop, you’re off the roster.”
Other fans pointed out that the song title is spelled with two letter “L’s,” which is how the word canceled is spelled in British English. Turner, for her part, hails from England.
Swift also leapt into action to support Turner amid her divorce, even offering the Game of Thrones alum a place to stay.
“Taylor was more than happy to lend Sophie one of her investment properties in NYC while she works everything out with her divorce,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly in September 2023. “Taylor doesn’t know all the details of their separation because she doesn’t feel like it’s her place. All she is concerned with is being there to support her friend. She’s letting Sophie stay there as long as she needs and is supporting her however she can.”
Turner later called Swift an “absolute hero” for her tireless support.
“I’ve always said that my girlfriends are the loves of my life,” Turner told British Vogue in a June 2024 profile. “The support I had from the women in my life during that time was the most amazing thing to see. I felt so held and so protected. … I’ve never been more grateful to anyone than I am for her because she took my children and me, and provided us with a home and a safe space. She really has a heart of gold.”
Swift still has yet to confirm who “Cancelled!” was based upon.
“It’s sort of a tongue in cheek glimpse at social outrage that everybody goes through now,” Swift said of the song during her “Release Party of a Showgirl” theatrical event. “You can feel cancelled by any sort of social backlash that you get. I’ve been through a lot of discussion about everything that happens in my life and everything that I do and everything I say. So, anytime that people get backlash, I tend to be the person they reach out to.”
The Grammy winner continued, “I wanted to write a song about how you can become wiser for it and you can become sharper, and I definitely judge people a lot less [now] that I’ve been under the microscope for so long. I just judge people based on who I know them to be [and] their actions, not some general consensus where people are like, ‘Step away, they’re radioactive!’ I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do that if someone proves they’re not a good person.”
The Life of a Showgirl is out now.
