Originally appeared on E! Online.
Blake Lively is leaving an XOXO for Taylor Swift.
Despite rumors that the duo’s best friendship was cooling off amid the “Gossip Girl” alum’s legal battle with her “It Ends With Us” director and costar Justin Baldoni, Lively helped to shut down the speculation while supporting Swift’s new album “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Lively, 38, was among those to react to the 35-year-old’s Oct. 3 Instagram post celebrating the release of the album, tapping the like button to show her love, alongside fellow friends Brittany Mahomes and Kylie Kelce.
And Swift herself may have slyly given her own update on her friendship with Lively, with many fans theorizing that her new song “Cancelled!” is about the actress.
The 10th track on the album proclaims that Swift likes her “friends cancelled,” and goes on to note that they can always count on her friendship, regardless of what happens to them in the public eye.
READ Taylor Swift’s “Ruin the Friendship” Lyrics Explained: Why Fans Think She’s Honoring Jeff Lang
“Did you girlboss too close to the sun? / Did they catch you having far too much fun?” she sang on the pre-chorus. “Come with me, when they see us, they’ll run / Something wicked this way comes.”
And as Swift added in the chorus, “I like ‘em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal / Like my whiskey sour / And poison thorny flowers,” she sings on the track. “Welcome to my underworld / Where it gets quite dark / At least you know exactly who your friends are.”
Fans were quick to point out that many of the references in “Cancelled!” match up with Lively — whose children with Ryan Reynolds, James, 10, Inez, 8, Betty, 5, and Olin, 2, Swift has name checked on previous albums.
“Girl was the face of Gucci,” one fan wrote on X, pointing out Lively’s relationship with the brand and also referencing her Betty Buzz liquor, adding, “did the flower movie and had her own brand of sours. Might as well name drop come on now.”
However, Swift hasn’t shared who she wrote “Cancelled!” about — and it seems unlikely to be about the “It Ends With Us” legal saga, seeing as she wrote “The Life of a Showgirl” during her Eras Tour, which wrapped in December 2024, a couple weeks before Lively first accused her director of sexual harassment (a claim he’s denied).
As Swift explained during an Amazon Music intro to “Cancelled!”, the takeaway is really about how she sees people differently having gone through her own public scandals.
“Having had my own experiences with mass judgment and being at the center of many dramatic, sort of scandalous moments in my career,” the Grammy winner shared, “it makes me move through the world a little bit differently and when other people go through it find yourself thinking about how they’re probably gonna get smarter because of this. If they can get through it, if they can be tough enough, they can actually learn some things through this process.”
As she added she doesn’t “naturally cast people aside just because other people decide they don’t like them.”
“I make my own decisions about people,” Swift continued, “based on how they treat me within my life and their actions.”
PHOTOS: Taylor Swift, the life of a showgirl easter eggs
Taylor Swift’s rep is speaking out after Justin Baldoni’s lawyers reportedly subpoenaed the music superstar in his and Blake Lively’s ongoing legal saga.
