No, Charli XCX Wasn't Giving Taylor Swift Side-Eye At The VMAs

A clip of Charli XCX in the audience of this year’s VMAs has been doing the rounds since Sunday night’s ceremony.

In the brief clip, Charli can be seen looking decidedly unenthused while Taylor Swift accepts her much-debated Artist Director Honour prize.

At the time of writing, the clip had been viewed on X alone more than 4.5 million times, fuelling more conversation about the supposed beef between the two chart-topping artists.

There’s just one thing… it isn’t actually real.

Yes, while the footage of Charli is genuine, the clip in question was cut from another part of the evening and edited into Taylor’s speech, to make it look like the British star was unenthused with the I Knew You Were Trouble singer’s win.

In fact, the original clip was delivered during the surviving members of Nirvana’s acceptance speech for their Video Vanguard win.

Although the relationship between Charli and Taylor was previously thought to have been amicable, this all changed last year, when the American star unveiled her album The Life Of A Showgirl, featuring the track Actually Romantic, widely considered to be a diss track at the 360 star.

While Actually Romantic is seemingly a response to Charli’s own song inspired by Taylor, Sympathy Is A Knife, this is not any kind of diss track, and instead sees Charli confessing about how hanging out with Taylor when they were both dating members of The 1975 fuelled her own feelings of insecurity and self-doubt.

Taylor picked up two prizes during this year’s VMAs, extending her lead as the performer with the most Video Of The Year wins thanks to her self-directed The Fate Of Ophelia clip.

Charli, meanwhile, delivered one of the night’s stand-out moments when she joined Madonna on stage during the Queen of Pop’s opening performance.

Later in the night, Charli and Madonna were reunited when the former joined Troye Sivan to present the latter with her Best Dance Video win.