Charli XCX hits back as fans chant “Taylor Swift is dead” at her show

Charli XCX has issued a stark warning to her fans after some chanted “Taylor Swift is dead” at a show in Brazil.

The singer-songwriter, also known as Charlotte Aitchison, recently performed her party girl DJ set at a nightclub in São Paulo.

Footage uploaded by participants appears to show some people shouting the phrase “Taylor Swift is dead” in Portuguese.

In response to the fans’ behavior, 31-year-old Charli posted a message on social media, which she posted over the screenshot of a video that alerted her to the tasteless singing.

“Can the people who do this please stop,” she wrote in her Instagram story on Sunday (June 23). “Online or at my shows. It’s the opposite of what I want and it bothers me that anyone thinks there’s a place for it in this community. I will not tolerate it.”

Since the release of Charli’s sixth album bratEarlier this month, fans of the “360” artist analyzed songs and theorized whether certain lyrics were aimed at some of her contemporaries.

While rumors (and later confirmation) suggested that the title of the song “Girl, so confused” was about Lorde, many suspect that the song “Sympathy is a knife” is a reference to Swift.

The lyrics include: “I don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show / Behind my back I’m crossing my fingers / I hope they break up quick.”

Charli is engaged to George Daniel, the drummer of indie pop band The 1975, whose frontman Matty Healy briefly dated Swift in 2023.

In 2018, the “Boom Clap” singer opened for Swift’s Reputation Tour alongside Camila Cabello.

Her opening act brought Charli to a wider audience, but the singer later said that the experience made her realize she no longer wanted to open for other artists.

“I’m really grateful that (Taylor) invited me on this tour. But as an artist, it kind of felt like I was going on stage and waving to five-year-olds,” she said in a pitchfork Profile in 2019. “I need to finally belong to my own damn shit.”

In their four-star rating of brat, The IndependentThe album’s critic Helen Brown praised Charli’s open nature throughout the album, quoting the lyrics “I’m famous, but not quite.”

“The admission is as brave, blunt, challenging and vulnerable as the album it appears on,” she writes.BRAT is a hedonistic, ultraviolet collection of songs whose thumping – slightly disorienting – club beats more than achieve their goal of ‘capturing a sense of chaos.'”