Yet another speculated update about Taylor Swift and Blake Lively’s friendship is making rounds on the internet, and this one, as well, is connected to the billionaire singer’s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl. As it turns out, eagle-eyed fans have found an easter egg in the cover photo of It’s Rapturous, which inevitably supports the claim that she is still supporting Lively.
As per the information found by Swifties and compiled by The Recap with Julie on YouTube, in the alternate CD cover poster for the said track, the 35-year-old singer can be seen wearing what looks like a chunky diamond bangle. On closer inspection, the design of that hand accessory exactly matches the custom pink bracelet by Lorraine Schwartz that Lively was seen sporting at the premiere of her 2024 flick, It Ends with Us (via Us Weekly).
While the fact that she is wearing a bracelet similar to one owned by the Gossip Girl actress in itself is a big thing, what’s making it all even more eyebrow-raising is that the piece of jewelry was actually the one that was made exclusively for Lively, and that too, for the premiere of a movie that landed her in deeply controversial waters.
If anything, the legal drama between Lively and Justin Baldoni, which stemmed from that very movie, was what served as the base for assumptions that there was a rift between longtime besties Swift and Lively due to the muddy legal waters the latter had engulfed herself in.
Thus, this discovery of a new easter egg from Taylor Swift by the Swifties feels like the billionaire singer’s response to the alleged bad blood between her and Lively. In fact, besides this alleged proof pointed out by the fans, what’s further raising speculation about Swift supporting Lively is one of the latest tracks off her new album, CANCELLED!
All the Links Connecting Blake Lively to Taylor Swift’s CANCELLED!
Right when the air was still crisp with reports about Taylor Swift and Blake Lively’s longtime friendship allegedly having exhausted its welcome amidst the latter’s ongoing legal battle with Justin Baldoni, the singer dropped the track CANCELLED! on her twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl.
Now everyone is losing their minds over the same, since all this time, Swift never once addressed her alleged conflict with Lively. Although she never specifically mentioned, of course, that this newest song was about the Green Lantern actress, the wording that Swift has used in the lyrics is more than convincing that she might as well be talking about Lively.
Here are some of the instances, as were further decoded by The Recap with Julie on YouTube. First off, the Enchanted singer sings in the track,
You thought that it would be okay, at first / The situation could be saved, of course / But they’d already picked out your grave and hearse / Beware the wrath of masked crusaders
This could likely refer to Baldoni and Lively on the sets of It Ends with Us, where Lively alleged the actor-director of s*xually harassing her.
As Julie explained, Lively ‘didn’t like how Justin was treating her,’ and she ended up complaining to a number of people. This followed ‘a big all-hands-on-deck meeting’ where ‘they all signed off on it, agreed moving forward, things would change.’ In fact, even Lively felt everything could be okay. But then things changed. As Julie said about the third lyric,
Now, we all know what that is about. We’ve seen the text messages where Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel are talking about the fact [that] Justin wants to believe Blake Lively can be buried. And Melissa Nathan responds, saying, ‘We can bury anyone.’
Of course, a lot of controversies surround this particularly peculiar legal drama between Lively and Baldoni, and the YouTuber was evidently pointing out a part of it. But that’s not all. The lyrics further went on to say,
Did you girl-boss too close to the sun? / Did they catch you having far too much fun? / Come with me, when they see us, they’ll run / Something wicked this way comes
The first two lines of these lyrics can unarguably be connected to the fire that Lively first found herself under during the promotion of It Ends with Us. At the time, she evidently seemed pretty unbothered and relaxed as she laughed and joked with reporters while promoting Colleen Hoover’s book-based movie, whose central theme in itself was domestic abuse and violence.
While everyone initially complained about Lively’s uncaring behavior, what followed only further embroiled the actress in controversies as netizens started digging up old interview clips of her where she sported a similar sarcastic and evidently disrespectful behavior.
Julie explained the next two lines of this verse as:
Come with me, when they see us, they’ll run? Justin Baldoni’s team was writing in their contract about how they were going to go after Blake Lively, about how concerned they were about the Swifties [aka] Taylor Swift’s army of followers.
That further emphasizes how the Trouble singer ended up being pulled at the center of this legal drama between Lively and Baldoni, mostly due to her friendship with the actress.
Then there are the main lines of the song, which go,
Good thing I like my friends cancelled / I like ‘em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal / Like my whiskey sour / And poison thorny flowers
Needless to say, this connects directly to Lively, who was the ambassador for Gucci’s new fragrance in 2012. Not to mention, she also has her own booze company, Betty Booze, where they’re ‘supposed to taste like a whiskey sour,’ and the fact that It Ends with Us was pretty much all about flowers; everything was floral – at least at the promotional and marketing stage.
In the next verse, there come the lines,
‘Tone-deaf and hot, let’s f—-n’ off her’ / Did you make a joke only a man could? / Were you just too smug for your own good?
As Julie pointed out, Lively faced a lot of backlash during the promotions of the 2024 flick, with basically everyone calling her “tone-deaf” for the way she was promoting the movie.
Furthermore, “Misogyny is at the heart of the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni situation,” as well as the fact that Lively was also brutally criticized for her interviews, especially the one with Kjertsti Flaa from 2016, which the reporter herself claimed “made me want to quit my job.”
While these lyrics are more than enough to have anyone convinced that CANCELLED! is, in fact, about Lively, what further raised the speculation about the same were the lines,
They stood by me before my exoneration / They believed I was innocent / So I’m not here for judgment, no, ooh
For those who might not know, during the time Swift was going through the Kanye West and Kim Kardashian situation following the infamous 2009 MTV VMAs incident, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively were reportedly the friends who stuck close to her despite all the controversies.
So this lyric could be about them, though she could also be referring to the rest of her friends as well, including Selena Gomez, who stood up for her during that time.
But, perhaps, the most amusing part of this entire song is the last few lines, which go,
Now they’ve broken you like they’ve broken me / But a shattered glass is a lot more sharp / And now you know exactly who your friends are / You know who we are / We’re the ones with matching scars
All of this, needless to say, has since had fans convinced that Taylor Swift did, in fact, pen down this song as the ultimate response to all those media talks about there allegedly being a rift in her friendship with Blake Lively. Plus, not to mention, Lively even liked Swift’s post that had her officially announcing the release of The Life of a Showgirl, so that’s that too!
Fans Are Convinced CANCELLED! Is About Blake Lively
Amidst their wild reactions to the album as a whole, fans are convinced that CANCELLED!, for one, is about Blake Lively. If anything, there’s a part of the fandom that’s super hyped about the song as they connect the dots to it being Taylor Swift’s update on where her relationship with her longtime bestie currently stands. These fans are reacting on X as:
taylor said fuck you to all the blake lively haters in CANCELLED! oh don’t cry tiktok swifties that only believe men pic.twitter.com/EvajugxwGV
Taylor Swift saying fuck everyone who said she had to drop Blake Lively and “cancelled” basically being a defender song pic.twitter.com/g85fAjPYsp
good thing i like my friends cancelled 😙 pic.twitter.com/sYYMxxjLhI
The grifters were expecting Taylor to make diss songs about Blake Lively and instead she wrote a song about how she loves her “cancelled” friends instead pic.twitter.com/xOCXEvEobe
On the other hand, there are also multiple fans who aren’t exactly happy about this turn of events. In fact, this part of the fandom is criticizing Swift for releasing the track with such lyrics at a time like this, when the current sociopolitical climate is clouded with the MAGA controversy, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the never-ending debate between the zionists and the humanitarians who condemn Israel’s hideous actions.
your ‘cancelled friends’ are zionists and trump supporters and ppl are calling you tone-deaf because you actually are. corny ass song pic.twitter.com/5vyRiVMgYM
Taylor Swift: “I like my friends cancelled”
The friends: pic.twitter.com/OLuv8uMqwB
hearing billionaire @taylorswift13 sing i like my friends cloaked in gucci and CANCELLED!in this sociopolitical climate pic.twitter.com/Jy3GdfLe1a
"I like my friends cancelled" is the most tone deaf lyric a white billionaire with MAGA friends could release in this climate.. pic.twitter.com/91wEohdFM8
While that’s that, it’s worth noting that, although she has yet to confess who exactly she wrote CANCELLED! about, Swift did explain during an Amazon Music intro what the takeaway of her song is. She noted (via Amazon Music),
Having had my own experiences with mass judgment and being at the center of many dramatic, sort of scandalous moments in my career, 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.
She then put due emphasis on the fact that she doesn’t just cast people aside from her life simply because other people decide they don’t like them. Swift said,
If they can get through it, if they can be tough enough, they can actually learn some things through this process. [I don’t] naturally cast people aside just because other people decide they don’t like them. I make my own decisions about people based on how they treat me within my life and their actions.
That certainly leaves an open door for interpretation for the fans, though Taylor Swift’s words appear to mostly point toward the speculation that she and Blake Lively are very much still good friends. Either way, what’s your take on all this? Make sure to let us know in the comments below.
