Artist
Charli XCX urges fans to stop anti-Taylor chants
Charli XCX has urged fans to stop chanting “Taylor Swift is dead” at her gigs.
There were reports of crowds at her Sunday show in São Paulo, Brazil, joining in with the attacks on the megastar.
Posting on Instagram, the Brat singer said she “will not tolerate” it any more.
“Can the people who do this please stop,” Charli wrote on Instagram. “Online or at my shows.
It is the opposite of what I want and it disturbs me that anyone would think there is room for this in this community.”
Charli and Taylor have both released albums recently and Charli’s Brat has been held off the top spot in the charts by Taylor’s The Tortured Poets Department.
There’s been speculation, stemming from both being linked to members of band The 1975, that one of Charli’s songs – Sympathy is a Knife – includes a reference to Taylor.
Charli is engaged to drummer George Daniel and Taylor was reportedly entangled with frontman Matty Healy.
In the song, Charli, 31, references a girl who “taps into my insecurities” saying: “I don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show”.
Charli’s previous comments about being the opening act for Taylor’s Reputation Tour in 2018 have drawn criticism from Swifties.
Charli suggested in an interview with Pitchfork that she hadn’t particularly loved the stadium shows, saying: “It kind of felt like I was getting up on stage and waving to 5-year-olds”.
Although she said she was “really grateful that [Taylor] asked me on that tour” and later clarified there was “only love” between them.
One of the themes of Brat is relationships between women in the music industry and Charli has been speaking in interviews about how singers can be pitted against each other.
“We’ve got past the point of the media always pitting women against one another,” she told The Guardian in an interview, speaking about her track Girl, So Confusing.
“Relationships between women are super-complex and multi-layered.
“You can like someone and dislike them at the same time; you can feel jealous of somebody but they can still be your friend.”
On Sunday, Taylor performed the second of her Wembley shows for her current Eras tour where she was joined on-stage by her boyfriend Travis Kelce.
The singer will return to Wembley in August for six more shows.
Charli’s Brat tour continues in Europe next week and she’ll be heading to the UK from November after performing in the US over the summer.