Taylor Swift’s “Cancelled” perhaps has a new meaning amid her friend Blake Lively’s legal battle with It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni.
“I think this bitch knows something is coming because he’s gotten out his tiny violin,” Swift allegedly wrote to Lively in a December 2024 text message, presumably referring to Baldoni.
Swift then used a similar phrase in her song “Cancelled” from her 2025 album, The Life of the Showgirl.
Baldoni directed and starred in 2024’s It Ends With Us, based on Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel of the same name. Less than a year after the film’s release, Lively sued her costar Baldoni for sexual harassment and trying to destroy her reputation. While denying the accusations, Baldoni claimed that Swift attempted to help Lively seize control of the production.
Swift, for her part, publicly refuted having any involvement in the movie despite Baldoni sending her a subpoena regarding the case.
“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,” Swift’s rep told Us Weekly in a May 2025 statement. “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.”
The statement continued, “The connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, ‘My Tears Ricochet.’ Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
Keep scrolling for more on how Swift’s song “Cancelled” seemingly connects to Lively and Baldoni’s lawsuit:
How Taylor Swift’s ‘Cancelled’ Connect to the ‘It Ends With Us’ Lawsuit
Swift released The Life of a Showgirl, which was written and recorded during the European leg of her Eras Tour, in October 2025.
“Did you make a joke only a man could? / Were you just too smug for your own good?” Swift sings before the chorus. “Or bring a tiny violin to a knife fight? Baby, that all ends tonight.”
She continues, “Good thing I like my friends cancelled / I like ’em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal.”
While many fans initially presumed the song was a nod to Swift’s pals Brittany Mahomes or Sophie Turner, the lyrics got a fresh interpretation in January 2026 when the pop star’s texts to Lively were unsealed by a judge.
What Did Taylor Swift Text Blake Lively?
In one text from December 2024, Swift allegedly called Baldoni a “bitch” who got out his “tiny violin.”
In another lyric from “Cancelled,” she sings, “It’s easy to love you when you’re popular /The optics click, everyone prospers / But one single drop, you’re off the roster / ‘Tone-deaf and hot, let’s all just off her.’”
Lively was publicly branded as “tone-deaf” for rarely discussing It Ends With Us’ themes of domestic violence while promoting the film. She later shared a list of domestic violence resources via her social media page.
What Taylor Swift Has Said About ‘Cancelled?’
While Swift famously doesn’t name her lyrical inspirations, she did offer insight into the message behind “Cancelled.”
“It’s sort of a tongue in cheek glimpse at social outrage that everybody goes through now,” Swift in a lyrical explanation included in The Official Release Party of a Showgirl. “You can feel cancelled by any sort of social backlash that you get. I’ve been through a lot of discussion about everything that happens in my life and everything that I do and everything I say. So, anytime that people get backlash, I tend to be the person they reach out to.”
She added, “I wanted to write a song about how you can become wiser for it and you can become sharper, and I definitely judge people a lot less 1769055628 that I’ve been under the microscope for so long. I just judge people based on who I know them to be [and] their actions, not some general consensus where people are like, ‘Step away, they’re radioactive!’ I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do that if someone proves they’re not a good person.”
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