Another Taylor Swift era, another round of pre-release speculation about who her new songs could be about.
When the pop icon announced the tracklist to her upcoming 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on the New Heights podcast Wednesday, Swifties immediately did what they do best and started parsing through each song title for possible meaning. One in particular caught their eye: “Ruin the Friendship.”
Fans immediately hit social media with their theories that the song, which is the sixth track on the album, could be about longtime Swift pal Blake Lively and the status of their friendship.
Mert Alas & Marcus Piggot
To recap, Lively’s ongoing and very public legal battle with her It Ends With Us costar and director Justin Baldoni began in December 2024. The pair took legal action against each other, with Lively accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment and launching a smear campaign, and Baldoni launching a countersuit, alleging defamation and extortion. Since then, Swift and Lively’s relationship has been under scrutiny.
The Grammy winner got pulled into the mix when a complaint filed by Baldoni’s legal team (which was later dismissed) alleged that she had pressured him to accept Lively’s script changes on the movie, which Lively’s team called “categorically false.” Baldoni’s countersuit included text messages between Lively and Baldoni, in which the actress seemingly alludes to Swift as “one of her dragons” while likening herself to Game of Thrones‘ Khaleesi (Emilia Clarke).
Then, in May 2025, matters reached a fever pitch when Baldoni’s team attempted to subpoena Swift, which prompted a rep for the pop star to slam the maneuver as a scheme to generate “tabloid clickbait.”
“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history,” a spokesperson for Swift told Entertainment Weekly at the time.
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For their part, Swift and Lively have not publicly commented on how, or if, any of this has affected their friendship, though they haven’t been seen in public together in quite some time. And while Swift never reveals who her songs are about, she has been open about how she uses real-life inspirations in her music (after all, Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ children have had cameos in or served as character name inspiration in tracks such as “Gorgeous” and “Betty”).
A rep for Swift didn’t immediately respond to EW’s request for comment Thursday, but, the singer herself did provide some possible context on the New Heights podcast Wednesday.
Mert Alas & Marcus Piggot
In the conversation, which was between Swift, her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and his brother, Jason, the singer revealed that she (somehow?) found time while she was on her Eras Tour in Europe to record Showgirl. “I just love it a lot. I love music,” Swift shared. “I would be playing shows. I’d do, like, three shows in a row. I’d have three days off. I’d fly to Sweden, go back to the tour — and actually, like, working on this – I was physically exhausted at this point in the tour, but I was so mentally stimulated and so excited to be creating.”
The European leg of Swift’s tour took place between May and August of 2024, so if the album was written and recorded in its entirety during that time, it likely couldn’t be about Lively, given that the It Ends With Us drama began in earnest in December of that year.
But, until Swift or Lively provide more insight, fans are just going to have to wait til The Life of a Showgirl releases on Oct. 3 to find out just who or what the song could be about.
