Taylor Swift is front and centre, with her highly-anticipated 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, officially released today.
The 12-track release is unsurprisingly going viral, with the brand new era featuring a duet with Sabrina Carpenter. And from the track list to the cover art, theories around hidden meanings have been making non-stop headlines.
One of the most popular theories ahead of the album’s release was that Swift had included a song about Blake Lively.
The two A-listers have long been friends, with Swift even being Godmother to Lively’s three daughters. However, 2025 has seen their friendship hit the headlines, as Swift became implicated in the ongoing legal battle between Lively and her It Ends With Us director, Justin Baldoni.
Swift was referenced in Baldoni’s legal complaint as Lively’s “mega celebrity friend” and one of her “most trusted partners”, and was even subpoenaed and summoned to court as a result.
Swift’s representatives criticised her implication and Baldoni’s team for pulling her name in for “tabloid clickbait”. And while her subpoena has since been dropped, Baldoni’s legal team has been granted access to Swift’s personal text messages as part of the ongoing legal battle.
Sources have reported that the legal drama and intense media scrutiny has had a major impact, with reports that the friends were taking some time apart.
Therefore, when Swift announced her new album, it was widely speculated that Lively would be the focus of a ‘diss track’.
Upon release however, fans believe that Swift’s new track ‘Cancelled’ is actually a song written in support of Lively, who has faced an intense online backlash since the 2024 release of It Ends With Us.
“Did you girl-boss too close to the sun?,” reads one lyric from the new song. “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,” the chorus later adds. “At least you know exactly who your friends are. They’re the ones with matching scars.”
We will continue to update this story.
The Life of a Showgirl is available now.