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  • Is Taylor Swift coming to the Cowboys’ Thanksgiving game? Tickets still pricey

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    Fans still don’t know if music superstar Taylor Swift will be at AT&T Stadium on Thursday to watch her fiance, tight end Travis Kelce, and the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Dallas Cowboys.

    But tickets on the resale market reflect high interest in the Thanksgiving showdown.

    Tickets on the team’s website, which were going for $628 last month, are sold out. On StubHub, the cheapest tickets are $534, which translates to $2,136 for a family of four. Some sellers are asking for as much as $2,000 per ticket, and several tickets are priced at $1,000 or more.

    Ticketmaster had two tickets going for $323.68 each on Wednesday afternoon, with the next-cheapest pair at $409.50 each. Ticketmaster also has tickets approaching $2,000.

    Tickets were going for $378 on StubHub last month, with some going for more than $2,000.

    Some of the ticket prices can be attributed to speculation about an appearance by Swift, who also previously released the song “Fortnight” with halftime performer Post Malone.

    Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has previously said he would roll out the red carpet for Swift if she chose to attend.

    Ticket interest could also be driven by the actual football game. The Cowboys (5-5-1) and Chiefs (6-5) are fighting for their playoff lives and are both coming off comeback wins Sunday.

    This story was originally published November 26, 2025 at 2:10 PM.

    Related Stories from Fort Worth Star-Telegram

    Lawrence Dow

    Fort Worth Star-Telegram

    Lawrence Dow is a digital sports reporter from Philadelphia. He graduated with a master’s degree in journalism from USC. He’s passionate about movies and is always looking for a great book. He covers the Texas Rangers and other sports.

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    Lawrence Dow

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  • Just Like the Song, “The Fate of Ophelia” Video Has Little to Do With Shakespeare’s Character in Hamlet

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    Because Taylor Swift has increasingly decided to cast herself in the role of “English teacher” to the masses, maybe it should come as no surprise that she opted to not only write a song called “The Fate of Ophelia” for The Life of a Showgirl, but to make it the first track on the album and the lead single. Even though, to be quite honest, of all the schlock on this record, the title track featuring Sabrina Carpenter probably would have been her best bet for “first single” material. But it’s obvious that Swift wants to style herself as some kind of literary authority with this track, even if, for the most part, what comes across is the fact that Swift kind of just likes all the imagery surrounding Ophelia, including plenty of water-related scenes, as well as the famed painting of her by Sir John Everett Millais. Finding it “actually romantic,” Swift delivers her own “Pre-Raphaelite” take on the image by opening the video on a scene of a rather generic-looking rich person’s house (think: the “Blank Space” video) before panning over to a painting off to the side that features Swift in a white dress in “Ophelia pose.”

    Naturally, the painting “comes to life,” with Swift rising up as though now on a set. And oh, turns out she is, with the backdrops behind her suddenly lifting as she walks along the sound stage and sings, “I heard you calling on the megaphone” as the presumed director of the “production” does just that (though, needless to say, “megaphone,” within the context of the lyrics, is all about the cheerleader connotation as it relates to football). Swift continues the literalism of the lyrics by taking an oversized matchstick from someone else on the set, miraculously igniting it against her chest and then tossing it casually toward someone else (conveniently, a fire breather) while singing, “As legend has it, you are quite the pyro/You light the match to watch it blow.”

    From there, Swift does another costume change into something decidedly more “showgirl”: a sequined red leotard, rounded out by platinum blonde hair. This as she joins her fellow “Eras Tour family” in the dressing room. Commenting on the reunion with her dancers (who appear in various other scenes as well), Swift gushed, “Writing, rehearsing, directing and shooting the music video for ‘The Fate of Ophelia’ was the thrill of a lifetime because I got to be reunited with my Eras Tour family!! I wanted each one-take scene to feel like a live performance and remind us all of how it felt to be at those shows together. Making every moment count. It’s a journey through the chaotic world of show business.” Though, if that was the intent, it certainly doesn’t come across—at least not even one iota as effectively as the chaotic world of show business displayed in, what else, Showgirls. Nor does it have much to do with Ophelia in Hamlet.

    Then again, nothing Swift yammers on about in this song really does, least of all the shudder-inducing chorus (which is the part of the song that sounds most like Demi Lovato’s 2011 hit, “Give Your Heart a Break”), “All that time I sat alone in my tower/You were just honing your powers/Now I can see it all/Late one night/You dug me out of my grave and/Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia.” Never mind that likening Travis Kelce to Hamlet is in extremely inaccurate taste (for intelligence level alone), but, lest anyone forget, he was no Prince Charming positioned in any way to “save” Ophelia from her “fate”: death. What’s more, even if Kelce isn’t the Hamlet to her Ophelia, per se, that Swift likens a fairy-tale romance to being saved (while repurposing Shakespeare in the process) isn’t exactly a “cute look” for 2025. Though it does certainly fortify the long-standing speculation that she’s fundamentally Republican, ergo right at home with the MAGA crowd despite her “bad blood” with the Orange Creature.

    In any case, to heighten the cornball factor of it all, Swift gets into the weeds as usual with her special breed of arithmomania by having chosen to release the video on Kelce’s birthday, October 5th. Worse still, she urges, “Keep it one hundred on the land, thе sea, the sky.” This being a reference to his jersey number, eighty-seven, and her favorite/lucky number in general, thirteen, adding up to one hundred.

    The video isn’t always quite so precise, coming off like a, that’s right, kaleidoscope of random scenes as one of the showgirls backstage pulls back the curtain to reveal yet another iteration of Swift, who is now dancing onstage (this time with a brunette wig) in something more akin to a 1960s-era getup. Here, too, the intent appears less about promoting an awareness of Shakespearean plays, and more about announcing all the ways in which no one works harder than Swift. During a portion of this performance, Swift and her backup dancers (wearing the same wigs and dresses as her) are presented as though through a kaleidoscope—this tying into how her visualizers for each song on The Life of a Showgirl are also presented in a kaleidoscopic way.

    From there, Swift (who obviously directed) cuts to another stage backdrop that features her on a ship as she strums a mark tree (you know, that wind chime-looking instrument) and remembers that this song is supposed to be, at least somewhat, about Ophelia, singing, “The eldest daughter of a nobleman/Ophelia lived in fantasy/But love was a cold bed full of scorpions/The venom stole her sanity.” Naturally, there are some listeners who won’t bother to read that “scorpions” line as a metaphor, and take it to mean that there was, in fact, a scene of Ophelia lying in bed and suddenly getting stung by scorpions. But no, there is no mention of scorpions at any point in Hamlet, with that “symbol” being more prominent in Macbeth (specifically, when Macbeth says, “O full of scorpions is my mind”). Nor did “venom” steal her sanity, men did. Most especially Hamlet, who killed her father, Polonius. Thus, for Swift to liken her Prince Charming to being the proverbial Hamlet to her Ophelia is a bit…ill-advised.

    As the camera pans out to show that the ship is part of a more theatrical kind of production than a film one (perhaps another attempt at “paying homage” to Shakespeare), Swift continues to prattle on about how Kelce “saved her” from, for all intents and purposes, suicide. Or rather, emotional suicide. She thus persists in thanking him for “rescuing” her, praising, “And if you’d never come for me/I might’ve lingered in purgatory/You wrap around me like a chain, a crown, a vine/Pulling me into the fire.” And yes, Swift clearly thinks she’s endlessly clever for referencing fire instead of water here, seeing as how Ophelia drowned. But what she’s really indicating is that Kelce is pulling her into the depths of hell. If for no other reason than to co-sign some Faustian pact with the NFL.

    Funnily enough, Swift then kind of does “commit suicide” by jumping into the fake water that then transitions into her starring in some kind of 1930s/1940s Busby Berkeley-inspired production (and, by the way, Jennifer Lopez already tread that ground pretty thoroughly with the “Medicine” video) called Sequins Are Forever (they definitely aren’t, but one supposes that was the best “riff” that Taylor could come up with for Elizabeth Taylor’s famed documentary/general philosophy, Diamonds Are Forever). The camera then pans out to once again reveal that this is just a big-budget film production, with the clapperboard informing viewers that the “film” is “featuring” Kitty Finlay (a nod to the “character” that “The Life of a Showgirl” mentions in the first verse, as well as to her grandmother’s last name) and that it is “Take 100” (because Swift splooges every time she self-references, here reminding that she says, “Keep it one hundred on the land, thе sea, the sky”).

    The “spectacle” keeps going in the next scene as Swift, now in a brown-haired wig again, sports a “rope dress” to match with the piles of ropes around her as she’s then lifted into the air. This followed by a cut to her doing her Las Vegas showgirl cosplay because she remembered she didn’t play up the showgirl aesthetic enough.

    By the final scene, Swift seems to have lost the plot completely with what whatever “meaning” this video was supposed to have by showing Swift being pushed on a cart in a getup that harkens back to her “Lavender Haze” look as she again sings, oh so “eloquently,” “Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes.” However, this time when it’s said, Swift ramps up the cringe factor by having someone offscreen pass a football to her to catch. As if the viewer/listener wasn’t already well-aware that the track is all about Travis being a hero/“knight in shining armor” (or rather, in a shining football uniform).

    The cart leads Swift through some 1920s-looking hotel, complete with the aesthetic of the bellhops (maybe she had recently rewatched AHS: Hotel and took notes). And, evidently, these bellhops are having a party (one that looks decidedly New Year’s Eve-y, which would make sense considering Swift’s song, “New Year’s Day”). While Swift feigns getting down with “the help” for a minute, she soon steals away to the bathroom where the final shot is of her lying in the bathtub (from the same photoshoot featured on the standard edition of her album cover). Driving home the point that she’s been spared from the fate of Ophelia in that she’s just taking a bath in her showgirl-wear, not drowning. All because some big, strong meathead saved her! Shakespeare would be so proud.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Taylor Swift Increasingly Loses Touch with “The Commoner” on The Life of a Showgirl

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    Although Taylor Swift has been famous for most of her life, one of the biggest keys to her success has always been “relatability.” Or at least the illusion of it. This has been done, more often than not, with lovelorn lyrics about being some “dowdy” girl who can’t ever quite get the guy/find love (most famously on “You Belong With Me”). With her twelfth album, The Life of a Showgirl, Swift loses some of that already dwindling “everywoman” cachet for the sake of a concept that’s centered on, essentially, living in a gilded cage. But it isn’t just the “poor me, I’m so rich” aura that makes The Life of a Showgirl frequently eye-rolling, it’s also the bathetic displays toward, unmistakably, Travis Kelce—whose podcast, New Heights, she appeared on to announce the album in the first place. Never mind that said podcast is aimed at discussing sports, not pop music.

    And yet, such “flouting of the rules” has been going on a lot during the “crossover potential” of Taylor and Travis’ (or “Traylor,” if you must) relationship. One that has even prompted the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, to gush about how she’s responsible for bringing in a younger audience to the games/generally drumming up interest in the sport ever since she started dating the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback.

    The very quarterback she does her best to wield within a Shakespearean context with The Life of a Showgirl’s first track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” with an effect that could very well have Shakespeare turning in his grave as Swift rewrites, you guessed it, the fate of Ophelia, by making it a “happy ending” for the erstwhile suicidal wreck. And who else should save her but the Hamlet stand-in of the song, “Prince” Travis? A man that Swift has the gall to sing of, “Late one night, you dug me out of my grave and/Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia/Keep it one hundrеd on the land, the sea, thе sky/Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes/Don’t care where the hell you been, ‘cause now you’re mine.”

    Cornball songwriting aside, “The Fate of Ophelia” is an insult to hallowed literature itself in that Swift would dare to touch Shakespearean scripture for the sake “Hollywoodizing” the ending—this further manifest in the lyrics, “No longer drowning and deceived/All because you came for me.” Mixing metaphors a bit, Taylor also talks of being rescued from a tower (hardly the first time she’s used that image in a song, with The Tortured Poets Department also mentioning it on “The Albatross” and “Cassandra”), in addition to the water in which Ophelia drowned. So clearly, she’s confusing Big O with Rapunzel, but no matter, Swift simply has a penchant for referencing other famous women.

    As she does on the second track, “Elizabeth Taylor.” And no, it’s not the first time Swift has mentioned this “fellow Taylor” in a song. She also name-checked the icon during 2017’s “…Ready For It?” (“He can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor”), co-produced by Max Martin, Shellback and Ali Payami. It’s the former two that Swift reteams with for the entirety of The Life of a Showgirl, further distinguishing it from Reputation, which incorporated other producers apart from Martin and Shellback into the mix, including Jack Antonoff. The reteaming of Swift with just Martin and Shellback is, in fact, a primary gimmick of this album, and perhaps a subtle way to make amends for never getting around to Reputation (Taylor’s Version) after engaging fans in one of the biggest trolls in recent music history.

    Perhaps one of the peak examples on the record of “losing touch” with “the commoner,” Swift does her best to embody Elizabeth T. when she sings, “That view of Portofino was on my mind when you called me at the Plaza Athénée [said in a very non-French way]/Ooh, oftentimes it doesn’t feel so glamorous to be me/All the right guys/Promised they’d stay/Under bright lights/They withered away/But you bloom.” For a start, most of the football fans on “Team Travis” in this relationship would have no idea what the fuck she’s talking about, their limited sense of geography extending, at best, to what lies just beyond Kansas. What’s more, most Midwesterners are well over the constant favoritism given to New York and Los Angeles, yet Swift appears to have her own limited sense of geography when she says, “Be my NY whеn Hollywood hates me.” This statement feeling less like a nod to E. Taylor and more like one to Marilyn Monroe, who famously fled Hollywood for New York after getting into a contract dispute with Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of 20th Century Fox, at the end of 1954. No matter, Swift, like Lindsay Lohan before her, can be attracted to both legends’ stories—their tragic tales and love lives, intermixed with glitz and glamor.

    And, as if to highlight the cliches of “how lonely it is at the top,” Swift adds, “Hey, what could you possibly get for the girl who has everything and nothing all at once?” In many regards, this track is a “sequel,” of sorts,” to the question posed on 2019’s “The Archer”: “Who could ever leave me, darling?/But who could stay?” The answer, for the moment, is Kelce, who at least knows something about the pressure behind a sentiment like, “You’re only as hot as your last hit, baby.” If that’s the case, Swift might be in trouble with a song like “Opalite,” which trots out the same old color-related tropes she’s already overused in the past (though probably not nearly as much as Lana Del Rey mentions “blue”). In this case, the “onyx night” represents the darkness before the arrival of Kelce into her life, who provides the “opalite sky” in the wake of “the lightning strikes”—presumably a metaphor for Swift’s previous botched relationships and media scrutiny.

    Commencing the song with the verse, “I had a bad habit/Of missing lovers past/My brother used to call it/‘Eating out of the trash,’ it’s never gonna last/I thought my house was haunted/I used to live with ghosts/And all the perfect couples/Said, ‘When you know, you know and when you don’t, you don’t,’” it’s evident Swift is alluding to Jack Antonoff, Margaret Qualley and Lana Del Rey. The latter of whom wrote a song about Antonoff and Qualley’s relationship called, what else, “Margaret,” during which she sings, “When you know, you know” of the kind of true love that Antonoff found with Qualley. Later in the song, however, she does Swift one better by saying, “‘Cause when you know, you know/And when you’re old, you’re old/Like Hollywood and me.” Swift, of course, isn’t quite ready to refer to herself in such a way. For being an “aging showgirl,” as The Last Showgirl recently reminded, doesn’t generally bode well for one’s career.

    Even though Swift has made amply certain that she has plenty of other parachutes, as it were, should she need a graceful “out” from pop stardom. For she has her hands in numerous pies (many of which people probably won’t know about for years), as she’s keen to circuitously boast about via the mafioso theme of “Father Figure,” which dares to sample from George Michael, a big risk for anyone, but especially Swift. This because, when compared to the great pop musicians that came before her, particularly in the 80s, the ways in which Swift falls short become even more glaringly obvious. In other words, she has never “ate” the way that, say, Madonna, Prince, George Michael, Grace Jones or David Bowie have.

    Regardless, Swift does what she can with the interpolation of Michael’s 1987 hit (and, let’s just say that it works better than the interpolation of Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” on “Look What You Made Me Do”), wielding it to throw shade at all of the male executives who thought they could manipulate and control her over the years. Indeed, in a sense, it acts as The Life of a Showgirl’s “The Man,” with Swift getting into the persona of a big dick-swinging executive (or mafia boss) herself, with many speculating that Scott Borchetta is the source of inspiration. After all, he signed her as his first artist on his then new label, Big Machine Records, when she was just fourteen years old. So it is that Swift sardonically flexes, as though channeling Borchetta, “When I found you, you were young, wayward, lost in the cold/Pulled up to you in the Jag, turned your rags into gold/The winding road leads to the chateau/‘You remind me of a younger me’/I saw potential.”

    The chorus then goes for the jugular with, “I’ll be your father figure/I drink that brown liquor/I can make deals with the devil because my dick’s bigger/This love is pure profit/Just step into my office.” The mafia motif is also peppered in throughout (as if The Godfather needs any more play in terms of fortifying a grotesque Italian stereotype), with Swift asserting, “Leave it with me/I protect the family” and “I got the place surrounded/You’ll be sleeping with the fishes before you know you’re drowning.” Elsewhere, another light Del Rey nod is made with, “Mistake my kindness for weakness and find your card canceled” (on 2019’s “Mariners Apartment Complex,” Del Rey sings, “They mistook my kindness for weakness”). As for another “unintentional” nod, it bears noting that Michael’s “Father Figure” has been having a moment this past year, with Harris Dickinson as Samuel offering a kinky dance in a hotel room to said track in Babygirl while Nicole Kidman as Romy watches before joining in (side note: Swift was sure to mention that she wrote this song before this movie came out).

    A title like “Father Figure” leads naturally into “Eldest Daughter” (which, yes, Swift is, with only one younger brother, Austin). A track that, incidentally, has a lot in common with Lorde’s “Favourite Daughter” from Virgin. Except that, unlike the catchiness of “Favourite Daughter,” which is something of a millennial anthem in terms of how said generation was conditioned to always achieve and strive for more, “Eldest Daughter” is a cheesy ballad that few Gen Z listeners could handle. After all, Swift is a millennial through and through (in case “as the 50 Cent song played…” didn’t also give it away on “Ruin the Friendship”) in part because of being fearless when it comes to being cringe. So it is that she addresses the current chicness of being callous and aloof in the first verse, “Everybody’s so punk on the internet/Everyone’s unbothered ‘til they’re not/Every joke’s just trolling and memes/Sad as it seems, apathy is hot/Everybody’s cutthroat in the comments/Every single hot take is cold as ice.” Apart from referencing some of her lyrics in “You Need to Calm Down” (e.g., “You are somebody that I don’t know/But you’re taking shots at me like it’s Patrón/And I’m just like, ‘Damn, it’s seven a.m.’/Say it in the street, that’s a knockout/But you say it in a tweet, that’s a copout”), the “hot take” line also seems to allude to that time she felt obliged to tell Damon Albarn off.

    The incident occurred in early 2022, when a written interview between The Los Angeles Times and Albarn went as follows:

    LAT: “She may not be to your taste, but Taylor Swift is an excellent songwriter.

    DA: “She doesn’t write her own songs.”

    LAT: “Of course she does. Co-writes some of them.”

    DA: “That doesn’t count. I know what co-writing is. Co-writing is very different to writing. I’m not hating on anybody, I’m just saying there’s a big difference between a songwriter and a songwriter who co-writes. Doesn’t mean that the outcome can’t be really great.”

    Swift was very quick to respond via Twitter, slamming Albarn about his “hot take” with the reply: “I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this. I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really fucked up to try and discredit my writing. WOW.” But, to be fair, Albarn isn’t wrong. Swift does co-write most of her songs, with The Life of a Showgirl being no exception in that Martin and Shellback are her fellow collaborators. But it’s apparent that she is in total control of all themes, as unrelatable as they are. Granted, Swift pulls what Olivia Rodrigo and Addison Rae did with “vampire” and “Fame Is a Gun” respectively in that she insists everyone can relate to having a “public life” now thanks to the advent of the online persona. This being her inspiration behind “Eldest Daughter,” of which she commented,

    “[It’s] about kind of the roles that we play in our public life, because nowadays everyone has a public life. You have a life that you portray to other people or what you portray on social media, and then you have the you that everyone gets to know who has earned the right to be closest to you. And it’s really hard to be sincere publicly because that’s not really what our culture rewards. People reward you for being like tough and unbothered and like too busy to care. And you may be that about some things, but everyone has things that matter to them and people that matter to them.”

    For Swift, it’s always been apparent that being “the best” is what matters to her. This in addition to finding and securing her Prince Charming. It’s a variation on the latter theme that occurs in “Ruin the Friendship.” Yet another track that proves she’s sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel for “relatable material” in that she once again feels obliged to speak as though she’s still in high school. To be sure, Swift appears mentally stuck in that “era” in many ways, often writing from the perspective of an ostracized and/or lovestruck teenager (as she also does on TTPD’s “So High School”). And while that might have been her “core audience” once upon a time, many have been forced to leave such “childish things” behind.

    Nonetheless, Swift takes listeners back to a moment in time when she was friends with someone in high school (reportedly Jeff Lang, a man that died in his early twenties) who she had more than “just friendly” feelings for. Filled with regret over having never made a move, especially since that person later died (“When I left school, I lost track of you/Abigail called me with the bad news/Goodbye, and we’ll never know why”—apart from the “why” being, you know, drugs), Swift advocates for “ruining the friendship.” Or, more to the point, ruining a male/female friendship by breaking the “cardinal rule” and turning it romantic. For, as Vickie Miner (Janeane Garofalo) from Reality Bites once said, “Sex is the quickest way to ruin a friendship.” Looking back on her cautiousness now, however, Swift would have been only too willing to ruin it. Though probably not with sex. In fact, she is more inclined to mention a “kiss.” That’s the “sex act” she’s most willing to get on board with as she sings, “My advice is to always ruin the friendship/Better that than regret it for all time/Should’ve kissed you anyway.” Perhaps Joey Potter and Pacey Witter would tend to agree. Though Dawson Leery, not so much.

    Apart from discussing being “the best,” finding “Prince Charming” and dissecting “love lost,” Swift’s indisputable other favorite songwriting topic is her haters. Of which, of course, she has many. Though not nearly as many as she does lovers—that is, of her work. Even so, for Swift, it’s as Gaga (loosely quoting Madonna with, “If there are a hundred people in a room and ninety-nine say they liked it, I only remember the one person who didn’t”) once said: “There can be a hundred people in a room and ninety-nine don’t believe in you, but all it takes is one and it just changes your whole life.” For Swift, that person who “changes her whole life” by not believing in her is usually her hater (hear also: “Bad Blood,” one of her biggest hits inspired by none other than erstwhile “enemy” Katy Perry). If the “Easter eggs” of “Actually Romantic” are anything to go by, the latest hater that Swift is “taking down by taking to task” is Charli XCX. The shade is in the song title alone, which features “romantic” in it the way Charli’s “Everything is romantic” does. One of the many beloved songs that appeared on Brat last year. Along with “Sympathy is a knife,” which was speculated to be about Swift when Charli mentioned, among other things, “Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show/Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick.”

    If Charli was, in fact, referring to Swift, she definitely got her wish about Matty Healy and Swift breaking up quick. As for the boyfriend Charli refers to, George Daniel, he’s since become her husband. A fellow “365 party girl,” though probably not nearly at Charli’s level. Something Swift shades when she opens the track with, “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave/High-fived my ex [Matty Healy] and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me/Wrote me a song [“Everything is romantic”] sayin’ it makes you sick to see my face/Some people might be offended.” Swift, though, not so much. Or so she claims in the chorus, “But it’s actually sweet/All the time you’ve spent on me/It’s honestly wild/All the effort you’ve put in/It’s actually romantic/I really gotta hand it to you/No man has ever loved me like you do.” In effect, Swift speaks on the fine line between love and hate, and how Charli (or any other chanteuse, really) might technically be showing her the former by fixating on her so much. So it is that Swift keeps ribbing, “Hadn’t thought of you in a long time [this channeling Lover’s “I Forgot That You Existed”]/But you keep sending me funny valentines [the song, one supposes?]/And I know you think it comes off vicious/But it’s precious, adorable/Like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse/That’s how much it hurts.”

    Of course, Swift is lying to herself when she says it doesn’t hurt, otherwise she wouldn’t have written a song about it, digging the (unsympathetic) knife in as much as she can with other lyrics like, “How many times has your boyfriend said/‘Why are we always talkin’ ‘bout her?’” And yes, XCX does mention talking about “her” in “Sympathy is a knife” when she says, “George says I’m just paranoid/Says he just don’t see it, he’s so naïve.”

    What George—and just about everyone else—might see, however, is that The Life of a Showgirl is less about a girl who “puts on a show” and more about a girl who is obsessed with her boyfriend in the same way that she has been with every boyfriend before (as each album has evidenced). And when that meme of one of Taylor and Travis’ first dates came out with the caption, “Taylor taking her new album for a walk,” it was entirely accurate. For while the intent behind it was to emphasize that Swift always explores her breakups on her records (with Red and TTPD being a primary example), it turns out that the meme was right in a different way, because Kelce is the crux of her new album far more than being a performer is.

    “Wi$h Li$t” (which bears a similarity to Midnights’ “Glitch” in terms of Swift’s intonation and the sound of the track itself) is just such a beacon of that. During it, Swift details the different kinds of wishes that people have for themselves, many of them materially-oriented (e.g., “They want that yacht life, under chopper blades/They want those bright lights and Balenci shades/And a fat ass with a baby face [this somehow sounding like a jibe being made at one of Swift’s longtime nemeses, Kim Kardashian]).” Swift, on the other hand, claims, “I just want you/Have a couple kids, got the whole block lookin’ like you/We tell the world to leave us the fuck alone, and they do, wow/Got me dreamin’ ‘bout a driveway with a basketball hoop/Boss up, settle down, got a wish list.” A wish list, evidently, that not only one-ups Swift’s usual cringe factor, but also proves XCX “or whoever” right in calling her Boring Barbie.

    Try as she might to mitigate that nickname with the song that follows, “Wood.” An innuendo-laden ditty that makes all previous songs on The Life of a Showgirl come across as far less uncomfortable. And it’s not just because this marks the first time that Swift tries her hand at something like being “raunchy” (“Girls, I don’t need to catch the bouquet/To know a hard rock is on the way”), but because, well, she’s quite bad at it. Though, at the very least, she spared listeners from not being euphemistic (“The curse on me was broken by your magic wand”—oof). Because to hear her try her hand at something as sexually explicit as “WAP” would be so much worse.

    Nay, it might even get her “CANCELLED!” (spelled the British way, perhaps a residual side effect of being with Alwyn). A phenomenon that Swift insists she’s no stranger to, telling Time in 2023 that she was “canceled within an inch of my life and sanity” because of the “fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar.” Histrionic recounting aside, Swift was so affected by the backlash of that leaked phone call she didn’t bother releasing an album in 2016, let alone commenting on the election that year, even when her input would have been potentially invaluable, what with her influence on mass culture, right down to voting predilections. And, although she was never really at risk of “being put out to pasture” because of the incident, Swift commented that the experience made her have a new empathy for others who went through the same thing after her. As she stated via Amazon Track by Track, “I don’t naturally just 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. And so, this is a song about all those themes.” Of course, such a comment leads one to wonder what her “hot take” on Woody Allen might be (especially since her bestie, Selena Gomez, once worked with him on the atrocious A Rainy Day in New York). And if there are others who have been “canceled” that she might side with sans publicly having the courage to say so.

    For the time being, however, she’ll have to leave listeners guessing on which canceled celebrities she’s still friends with (certainly not Blake Lively) by way of the generic chorus, “Good thing I like my friends cancelled/I like ‘em cloaked in Gucci [so much designer brand name-checking on this record] and in scandal/Like my whiskey sour/And poison thorny flowers/Welcome to my underworld [yes, it feels very deliberately Reputation]/It’ll break your heart/At least you know exactly who your friends are/They’re the ones with matching scars.”

    As are those who have been called “terms of endearment” in a condescending manner before. In this regard, “Honey,” the second to last song on the record (and not to be confused with Mariah’s iconic single of the same name), is probably the most “relatable” song on The Life of a Showgirl. Mainly because Swift, once again, taps into her rage against the patriarchy by recalling the times when people would call her “honey” or “sweetheart” in a derogatory sort of way. But, ever since she met her “Prince Charming,” the word has taken on a more positive connotation, prompting her to urge, “You can call me ‘honey’ if you want/Because I’m the one you want/I’m the one you want/You give it different meaning/‘Cause you mean it when you talk/Sweetie, it’s yours, kicking in doors, take it to the floor, gimme more/Buy the paint in the color of your eyes/And graffiti my whole damn life.”

    Unfortunately, that’s not even as saccharine as it gets on “Honey,” with Swift also singing, “Honey, I’m home, we could play house/We can bed down, pick me up, who’s the baddest in the land? What’s the plan?/You could be my forever-night stand/Honey.” This bearing certain correlations to Swift’s well-documented “nesting phase” on “Lover,” during which she also saw fit to make listeners nearly retch with the lines, “We could leave the Christmas lights up ‘til January/And this is our place, we make the rules [a.k.a. “playing house”],” along with, “All’s well that ends well to end up with you/Swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover.” These lyrics now no longer applying to Joe Alwyn, but to Kelce. Easily repurposed “in a pinch.” Not just in general, but when such sentiments are refunneled into other songs with similar “gushings” aimed at Kelce, with this particular one serving as something like the “Sweet Nothing” (one of many Midnights tracks directed at Alwyn) of the album.

    And for the grand, “show-stopping” finale, Swift pivots away from romantic love in favor of the love she has for performance (though, needless to say, her expression of this love comes nowhere near what JADE achieves on “Angel of My Dreams”—and, honestly, to gain insight into the life of a real-ass showgirl, it’s That’s Showbiz Baby for the win). Thus, she concludes with the eponymous “The Life of a Showgirl” featuring Sabrina Carpenter. And yes, tapping Carpenter to collaborate has a “full-circle” meaning in that Carpenter was one of the opening acts during The Eras Tour. In the time since, obviously, Carpenter has blown up to a level that might very nearly match Swift’s in due time—in fact, she now almost has as many albums, with Man’s Best Friend marking her seventh one (and arguably more listenable as “pop perfection” than The Life of a Showgirl).

    While the album is primarily a love letter to Kelce (whereas TTPD was a vinegar valentine to Matty Healy), there’s a telling line in “The Life of a Showgirl” wherein Swift declares herself to be “married to the hustle” (even if through a “character”). All while warning others aspiring to the life of a showgirl, through the lens of this famous broad named “Kitty,” “Hеy, thank you for the lovely bouquet/You’re sweeter than a peach/But you don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe/And you’re never, ever gonna/Wait, the more you play, the more that you pay/You’re softer than a kitten, so/You don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe/And you’re never gonna wanna.” But naturally, in both Swift and Carpenter’s case, they definitely wanna. And probably will “till the end of time” (as a more reluctant showgirl, Lana Del Rey, would put it). But while Carpenter is in an “era” that allows for more creative inspiration to flow, Swift seems to be indicating that her own “muse” is in the midst of some kind of “last gasp.” At least when it comes to being relatable to anyone other than tradwives.

    To that end, like the also Max Martin-infused Reputation before it, The Life of a Showgirl arrives at a time when things have never been more politically fraught. And yet, Swift has chosen to release one of her “fluffiest” records yet. For never has “glitz and glam” been more of an “in poor taste” sell than it is now (which is why Doja Cat had to feign going back to the 80s with Vie in order to do it). Further indicating that Swift seems to be more out of touch with reality/the common person than ever before.

    At the bare minimum, though, she seems to understand that she needed to keep this record breezy (read: short). Way more pared down than The Tortured Poets Department. This perhaps being a testament both to the critical feedback she encountered about that album’s length and the fact that, ultimately, she knows that froth isn’t something that can be explored too in-depth without really annoying people. And yes, if The Life of a Showgirl, as “superfluous” as it is, is an indication of where Swift is at now, it doesn’t bode well for where she’s going to be “artistically” once she’s actually married. If she gets divorced, however, well, that’s another story…

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • He Did That?! Taylor Swift Flaunts STUNNING Engagement Ring From Travis Kelce In Surprise Announcement Photos

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    It’s a love story, and roommates, Taylor Swift said YES to Travis Kelce! The couple is engaged after two years of courtship in front of her eager fans, a.k.a the Swifties! In a social media post, the superstar singer and football player revealed their major life update. Now, the engagement is the talk of the internet!

    RELATED: Pop Out, Then! Taylor Swift Brings Out Her Boo Travis Kelce During Latest Eras Tour Stop In London (VIDEOS)

    Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce Share Engagement Photos

    When they met, Travis Kelce was a famous football player — a star tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs and a Super Bowl champion — but Taylor Swift’s level of fame is like no other. Their relationship truly made him global, thanks to the Swifties. Fans and media have documented plenty of public gestures in the last two years, from Taylor celebrating at Chiefs games to fan videos of Travis Kelce dancing at her Eras concert tour. Still, there’s been some trolling and doubts about the relationship’s authenticity. In the end, though, the couple paid it dust and kept publicly dating. Most recently, she appeared on her future brother-in-law’s podcast and talked about how hard she ignores the critics of their relationship.

    “We don’t, really. I don’t see a lot of things,” Taylor told Jason Kelce. “My name can be in the actual headline, and it’s none of my business.”

    After two years of moving like THAT, Taylor Swift is rocking an engagement ring that could compete with her fiancé’s three Super Bowl rings. As mentioned, the newly engaged couple shared their big news in a five-photo joint Instagram post on Tuesday (August 26). She showed off her stunning ring while standing in a garden with her fiancé. The superstar wore a striped Ralph Lauren dress and a Cartier diamond-encrusted watch on her left wrist.

    “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” the caption read, accompanied by an emoji of a dynamite stick.

    It’s unclear when and where the two 35-year-olds got engaged, but it’s a first for them both. According to the Associated Press, an hour after hearing from their publicists about the engagement, Kelce was stretching for practice in Kansas City, Missouri.

    What To Know About Taylor Swift’s ROCK

    One thing Taylor Swift’s fans know about her, sis loves her vintage style! So, it’s no surprise that her now-fiancé took notes and executed the vision with her engagement ring. The cut of the diamond reportedly dates back to the 18th century and is known as an old mine brilliant cut. Old mine brilliant cuts are often boxy shaped with rounded corners and soft curved edges. Taylor Swift’s diamond is in a yellow gold bezel setting. Such diamonds usually have 58 large facets. Additionally, the bulky nature of the cut is meant to sparkle by candlelight.

    According to BRIDES, experts estimate the ring could cost upwards of $500,000. Meanwhile, several experts who spoke to PEOPLE estimated the price would be between $250,000 and up to $1.5 million.

    Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine, said Kindred Lubeck crafted the unique piece. According to her website bio, Lubeck is a goldsmith who specializes in hand engraving and collects vintage jewelry. She is based in New York and operates Artifex Fine Jewelry. She is the daughter of Jay Lubeck, a well-known goldsmith in Neptune Beach, Florida.

    Daddy Kelce Approves Of Taylor BTW 

    Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s relationship featured prominently in the six-part ESPN documentary The Kingdom. The project chronicles the Chiefs’ failed pursuit of an unprecedented third consecutive Super Bowl title last season. Kelce’s parents, Donna and Ed Kelce, joined him on the red carpet for the premiere last Sunday. The event took place at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City. While there, Ed didn’t hold back on what he thinks of Taylor.

    “She’s very good for him. I don’t hesitate in saying that,” Ed said of his future daughter-in-law. “They are two people that truly deserve each other.”

    RELATED: Locked In? Travis Kelce Says His Friends & Family Spoke ‘Good Things’ About Taylor Swift After Bears vs Chiefs Game

    Associated Press writers Jocelyn Noveck, Dave Skretta, Maria Sherman and Mallika Sen contributed to this report via AP Newsroom. 

    What Do You Think Roomies?

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    Cassandra S

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  • Travis Kelce’s Dad Ed Kelce Gushes About Taylor Swift: ‘They’re Obviously Very Much in Love’

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    Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are one of the beloved couples of the industry. While the two recently made headlines for their appearance on the New Heights podcast, the NFL star’s father gushed about his son’s girlfriend. Ed Kelce, while attending The Kingdom premiere, revealed to People Magazine that the Bad Karma crooner brings happiness into his son’s life. 

    When asked if he tuned into Travis and Jason Kelce’s episode of the podcast featuring Swift, Kelce claimed it was “so good.”

    Ed Kelce talks about Taylor Swift

    While in conversation with the media portal, Kelce revealed that “Taylor” is the cause of Travis Kelce’s happiness. He added, “There’s no question about it.” Furthermore, speaking of Swift’s episode of New Heights, the father of the NFL star said, “I think it was awesome.” He continued,  “It was great to see them go back and forth. They’re two people obviously very much in love.”

    Meanwhile, the Kansas City Chiefs star has been dating the pop culture icon since 2023. The duo went on to meet at the Eras Tour concert; soon, the sparks flew, and the couple’s relationship took off. 

    The pair went public with their romance in October 2023, after they stepped into the Saturday Night Live afterparty, holding hands. 

    Meanwhile, Kelce and Swift went Instagram official after the NFL star shared pictures of himself and the singer in June 2024. 

    Moreover, after spending the summer together, Taylor Swift is “really looking forward” to supporting Kelce in the upcoming Super Bowl season. Travis will play his 13th game, which coincides with the Love Story crooner’s lucky number. 

    There are rumors that Swift might also perform at the Super Bowl halftime ceremony of 2026. The fans picked up on the singer’s Sourdough obsession and linked it to the mascot of the San Francisco 49ers.

    ALSO READ: Taylor Swift Buys USD 13K Giant Friendship Bracelet From Eras Tour: Here’s Why It’s Big Deal for Swifties

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  • Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce in attendance for Game 1 of ALCS

    Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce in attendance for Game 1 of ALCS

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    Thanks, welcome.

    Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce in attendance for Game 1 of Yankees-Guardians series

    Turns out, Taylor and Travis like to watch a little baseball, too.Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and his girlfriend, Taylor Swift, are attending Game 1 of the American League Championship Series.Video above: Taylor Swift ‘shimmers’ in her signature red lip in arrival at Arrowhead StadiumThe New York Yankees, who defeated the Kansas City Royals in the American League Division Series, are hosting the Cleveland Guardians to begin the best-of-seven series. The famous couple sat together in a suite down the right-field line, in the second row above postseason bunting and a flag commemorating the Yankees’ 1932 World Series championship.Kelce, a Westlake, Ohio, native who went to high school in Cleveland Heights, sported a dark baseball cap with the words Midnight Rodeo on it. Swift also wore a hat on a 50-degree night in the Bronx.Kelce, who turned 35 on Oct. 5, grew up rooting for Kenny Lofton and Cleveland in the 1990s. Kelce threw a wild ceremonial first pitch before the Guardians’ season opener last year.Swift was also in attendance at last Monday night’s Chiefs game against the New Orleans Saints.It was the second major sporting event for Swift and Kelce in New York City over the past five-plus weeks. The couple also sat in a box to watch the men’s final at the U.S. Open tennis tournament on Sept. 8 in Queens.Kelce and the Chiefs, the two-time defending Super Bowl champions, had a bye this weekend after opening the season 5-0. Their next game is Sunday at San Francisco, a rematch of last season’s Super Bowl.

    Turns out, Taylor and Travis like to watch a little baseball, too.

    Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and his girlfriend, Taylor Swift, are attending Game 1 of the American League Championship Series.

    Video above: Taylor Swift ‘shimmers’ in her signature red lip in arrival at Arrowhead Stadium

    The New York Yankees, who defeated the Kansas City Royals in the American League Division Series, are hosting the Cleveland Guardians to begin the best-of-seven series.

    The famous couple sat together in a suite down the right-field line, in the second row above postseason bunting and a flag commemorating the Yankees’ 1932 World Series championship.

    Kelce, a Westlake, Ohio, native who went to high school in Cleveland Heights, sported a dark baseball cap with the words Midnight Rodeo on it. Swift also wore a hat on a 50-degree night in the Bronx.

    Kelce, who turned 35 on Oct. 5, grew up rooting for Kenny Lofton and Cleveland in the 1990s. Kelce threw a wild ceremonial first pitch before the Guardians’ season opener last year.

    Swift was also in attendance at last Monday night’s Chiefs game against the New Orleans Saints.

    It was the second major sporting event for Swift and Kelce in New York City over the past five-plus weeks. The couple also sat in a box to watch the men’s final at the U.S. Open tennis tournament on Sept. 8 in Queens.

    Kelce and the Chiefs, the two-time defending Super Bowl champions, had a bye this weekend after opening the season 5-0. Their next game is Sunday at San Francisco, a rematch of last season’s Super Bowl.

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  • Just Who Is Taylor Swift Really Torturing on The Tortured Poets Department? Anyone She Can (Herself Included).

    Just Who Is Taylor Swift Really Torturing on The Tortured Poets Department? Anyone She Can (Herself Included).

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    Pulling close to the same rate of album releases—one a year—that Rihanna once did starting in 2005 (with some rare breaks in 2008 and between the years 2012 and 2016) before she effectively retired to become a beauty mogul, Taylor Swift has always had a seemingly strategic release rate of every two years for studio albums (and no, the re-recordings aren’t being factored in). The Tortured Poets Department, her eleventh record, proves no exception to the every two year pattern (though Reputation did, with Swift waiting three years after 1989 to release it—but then, she had been “bullied” into sequestering herself by Kimye). And in the two years that have gone by since Midnights came out, Swift has only become more of a mythical figure to her worshippers. The ones who now despise Joe Alwyn for breaking her heart, throwing her away, etc. They’re likely to feel even less kindly about him (and several others) after hearing what Swift has to say on this record.

    Starting with “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone (though he’s featured in a similarly faded manner as Lana Del Rey on the original recording of “Snow on the Beach”), Swift brings her listeners into the pseudo-intellectual world of The Tortured Poets Department. Whether or not that’s meant to be a mirror of Alwyn’s own pseudo-intellectual, faux pretentious nature is at one’s own discretion. Though one imagines Swift is trolling him more than she’s actually taking herself too seriously when she says things like, “Your wife waters flowers/I wanna kill her,” there’s plenty of gravity in her admissions, “And I love you, it’s ruining my life” and “For a fortnight there, we for forever.” The idea of “I touched you for only a fortnight” also speaks to where she stands now with this person, who has been lost to a parallel existence that no longer aligns with hers. In this way, Swift channels Ariana Grande on Eternal Sunshine’s “i wish i hated you.” Specifically, when she resignedly laments, “Our shadows dance in a parallel plane/Just two different endings, you learn to repair/And I learn to keep me in one place.” Swift hasn’t really learned that, it would appear (not just literally, with her constant jet-setting, but figuratively as well). And, in contrast to Grande’s latest breakup album (nay, divorce album), Swift doesn’t come across in a manner that exudes “let bygones be bygones” vibes (and actually, at one point on “imgonnagetyouback,” she quips, “Bygones will be bygone”). No, instead, she fulfills many women’s fantasies of being able to publicly dig the knife into an ex who did her wrong by emotionally abusing her. So she abuses right back, as usual, with all the receipts.

    This includes highly specific references like the title track itself, said to be a riff on the name of a WhatsApp group (created by Andrew Scott) that Alwyn was a part of called “The Tortured Man Club.” And yet, ironically, “The Tortured Poets Department” is more directly aimed at Matty Healy than Alwyn. Particularly with lyrics like, “I think some things I never say, like, ‘Who uses typewriters anyway?,’” “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate/We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” (he probably will be now after the streaming bump that comes with a “Taylor plug”), “I scratch your head, you fall asleep/Like a tattooed golden retriever” and “Sometimes I wonder if you’re gonna screw this up with me/But you told Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave.” Elsewhere, Swift notes, “But I’ve read this one/Where you come undone,” which sounds a lot like “I think I’ve seen this film before/And I didn’t like the ending” on folklore’s “exile.”

    Nor does she seem to like the ending on “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” Yes, that means her. What’s more, she also uses the trick of dual applicability to either Alwyn or Healy. For verses such as, “My boy only breaks his favorite toys, toys, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh/I’m queen of sandcastles he destroys, oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh/‘Cause I knew too much, there was danger in the heat of my touch/He saw forever so he smashed it up” could work for both of them. Clearly, Swift has a thing for cads. Though that’s not hard to do when taking into account the selection of “straight” men available. And even though it’s the men of this world who are too damaged for long-term relationships, Swift insists that, “Once I fix me/You’re gonna miss me.” A line that channels the old internet chestnut that goes, “Once I do such-and-such, it’s over for you bitches.” As for the outro, it feels more, er, tailored to Alwyn when she says, “Just say when, I’d play again/He was my best friend/Down at the sandlot/I felt more when we played pretend/Than with all the Kens [guess that means Swift admits she’s Barbie]/‘Cause he took me out of my box/Stole my tortured heart/Left all these broken parts/Told me I’m better off/But I’m not.” Because surely, she can’t really think she’s not better off sans Healy.

    After being discarded like a broken toy by Alwyn, it’s only natural that Swift should be “Down Bad,” an uptempo song that betrays Swift’s heartbroken state as she sings, “Now I’m down bad, crying at the gym/Everything comes out teenage petulance/‘Fuck it if I can’t have him’/‘I might just die, it would make no difference.’” In point of fact, the majority of Swift’s work remains resonant to so many “aging” women precisely because the teen girl inside never really dies. And that’s where many women get frozen in their minds due to the traumas and insecurities suffered during said “era.” Swift also compares the high of her relationship to being abducted by an alien, only to endure the low of being cast out of his spaceship and back into dull, ordinary life. Which can never feel ordinary again to her. This, too, has applicability potential to Healy, much to fans’ chagrin.

    For those who were craving more specificity about Alwyn instead, “So Long London” is able to deliver. A contrasting companion piece to Lover’s “London Boy,” Swift details her loathing of Alwyn not only for breaking her heart, but also making her hate London as a result (“I’m just mad as hell ‘cause I loved this place”). The sentiment echoes Billie Eilish’s on “Happier Than Ever” when she says, “I don’t relate to you, no/‘Cause I’d never treat me this shitty/You made me hate this city.” Except that, while Eilish insists, “I don’t talk shit about you on the internet/Never told anyone anything bad/‘Cause that shit’s embarrassing…” Swift is perfectly willing to embarrass her own self with the details of this botched, and yes, tortured relationship—in addition to the rebound one with Healy.

    The closest Swift might ever hope to get to as far as her version of “Papa Don’t Preach,” “But Daddy I Love Him” offers country song vibes (sorry Beyoncé, Swift isn’t ready to hand over the genre entirely) not just in musical tone, but narrative one as well. As a song that seems to be less about Alwyn and more about her pair of romantic choices after Alwyn (A.A., if you will—which works on another level in that he seemed akin to a drug), Swift derides the critical, judgmental eyes of a small town watching her every move. A clear allegory for the media at large. When she sings, “Now I’m running with my dress unbuttoned/Scrеamin’, ‘But, daddy, I love him’/I’m having his baby/No, I’m not, but you should see your faces/I’m telling him to floor it through thе fences/No, I’m not coming to my senses I know it’s crazy/But he’s the one I want,” it could be as much about Matty Healy as it is Travis Kelce. Both men being more than somewhat “unrefined” choices for a “poetess” like Taylor.

    No stranger to getting off on dating “bad boys” (by Swift’s white bread standards), the theme of running away with a man/“forbidden love” is nothing new in Swift’s oeuvre, with songs like “Love Story” and “Getaway Car” urging the protagonist (Taylor, of course) to just say, “Fuck it” and make the “bad choice” by fleeing into the sunset with her bloke of choice. For a while, that was Alwyn, who might also be considered as being referenced here in that, “But Daddy I love him” is also a line Ariel from The Little Mermaid shouts in defiance. And what did Ariel have to do in order to be with basic-ass Eric? Lose her voice, ergo herself—obviously. Something Swift feels she did by catering to Alwyn’s privacy “needs.”

    On the track that follows, it would seem all her recent time with Lana Del Rey is rubbing off on Swift (complete with a song title like “But Daddy I Love Him”) in terms of being sure to mention the same color palettes repeatedly in songs. While in “But Daddy I Love Him,” those colors were gray and white (as in: “If all you want is gray for me/Then it’s just white noise, and it’s my choice”), “Fresh Out The Slammer” offers ​“gray and blue and fights and tunnels.” As the song’s name suggests, it’s not nearly as glamorous as Rihanna’s “Phresh Out the Runway.” No, instead Swift is wielding a prison sentence as an allegory for the “relationship time served” with Alwyn. So it is that the first verse consists of her declaring, “Fresh out the slammer, I know who my first call will be to.” Here, it’s apparent she’s referring to calling Matty Healy the moment she was free from Alwyn’s ostensibly dark cloud. Like Florida, Healy seemed to be a sunny and fun (even if trashy and humiliating) escape. And yes, Florida also happened to be the first stop on The Eras Tour after the breakup between Swift and Alwyn was announced.

    As for the mention of “work[ing] your life away just to pay/For a timeshare down in Destin,” it sounds weirdly coded as a message of support for Britney Spears, who did work her life away in a conservatorship to pay for her sister, Jamie Lynn, to have a million-dollar condo in Destin. Of course, it’s probably alluding more to sharing space inside a man’s heart (*cough cough* Alwyn’s), even though he was once the king of hers.

    Unlike other artists that have collaborated with Swift, Florence + the Machine isn’t one to “fade into the background.” And she certainly doesn’t on “Florida!!!,” a song that feels stadium-ready as the duo extols the non-virtues of a “drug” like Florida (initially mentioned in “Fortnight” when Swift sings, “Move to Florida/Buy the car you want”). Indeed, the motif of addiction (as well as mental illness) runs rampant throughout The Tortured Poets Department—begging the question of whether or not Swift should attend some SLAA meetings. In any case, Camila Cabello knows all about being seduced by Florida—it seems it’s the place to be seduced by again (despite its horrifying political policies), its light no longer dimmed after reaching a peak in the 90s (enough to compel Madonna to buy a house there). One that crested in the aftermath of the assassination of Gianni Versace in 1997.

    While there’s no question mark to Andrew Cunanan being guilty as sin of that crime, Swift puts that very punctuation after “Guilty As Sin?” Among the most generic-sounding tracks on the record, it could perhaps be because hearing little “Easter eggs” about Healy has already started to grow a bit stale (at only nine of thirty-one songs in). Yet that’s precisely how Swift opens the “poem,” making a pointed allusion to Healy with the lines, “​​Drowning in The Blue Nile/He sent me ‘Downtown Lights’/I hadn’t heard it in a while.” Cue the “Downtown Blues” streaming bump as well. In the same breath, Swift still makes time to refer to Alwyn by noting, “My boredom’s bone deep/This cage was once just fine/Am I allowed to cry?” At the same time, the “cage” she mentions could be just as much fame itself as it is her overly private relationship.

    A seeming nod to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” is less about the men who have been in Taylor’s bed and more about her increasingly fraught relationship to and with “fans,” the media and, as some are speculating, Olivia Rodrigo. After all, if “vampire” and “the grudge” really were about Swift, it’s only fair for her to weigh in with, “The scandal was contained/The bullet had just grazed/At all costs, keep your good name” and “I’m always drunk on my own tears, isn’t that what they all said?/That I’ll sue you if you step on my lawn/That I’m fearsome, and I’m wretched and I’m wrong.” Her contempt for losing her innocence as the years have gone by is also manifest in the analogy, “I was tame, I was gentle ‘til the circus life made me mean/Don’t you worry folks, we took out all her teeth.” As for the unique blend of narcissism and self-loathing that celebrities can have, Swift speaks to it (or Rodrigo claiming “vampire” isn’t about her) with the bridge, “So tell me everything is not about me, but what if it is?/Then say they didn’t do it to hurt me, but what if they did?/I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me.”

    More subtle digs at Rodrigo seem to manifest with a title like “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can).” For, not only does Rodrigo sing, “But I am my father’s daughter, so maybe I could fix him” on “get him back!,” she also sells a sweatshirt with the phrase, “Maybe I can fix him!” as part of her collection of merch for Guts. But Swift seems keen to adopt the phrase for her own canon as she, needless to say, applies it to Matty Healy. Addressing how embarrassed everyone felt for her by describing a “character” whose “jokes” “were revolting and far too loud,” Swift eventually pronounces, “They shook their heads saying, ‘God, help her’ when I told ’em he’s my man/But your good lord didn’t need to lift a finger I can fix him, no, really, I can/Whoa, maybe I can’t.” Set against the backdrop of some country milieu and painting Healy as some kind of villainous cowboy, Swift again makes it overt that she’s not content to lose her erstwhile crown as Country Queen.

    The slowed-down piano ballad that is “loml” plays with the phrase “love of my life” (for which the song is abbreviated) until Swift delivers the dramatic subversion of it by the end as she rues, “And I’ll still see, until the day I die/You’re the loss of my life.” This one being among the few that more implicitly points to Alwyn, Swift paints her poetic images with verses such as, “Talking rings and talking cradles I wish I could unrecall/How we almost had it all/Dancing phantoms on the terrace/Are they second-hand embarrassed/That I can’t get out of bed?/‘Cause something counterfeit’s dead.” At the same time, Healy could still figure into the lyrics, “It was legendary/It was momentary/It was unnecessary/Should’ve let it stay buried.” In fact, “loml,” in its twisted way, can apply to all the many “great loves” of Swift’s life who have already inspired albums past. And maybe some part of her doesn’t want any one man to think he could be the true “loml.” That it actually takes many for her to get to the point of even singing a song like this.

    As for the emotional wreckage that occurred just in time for The Eras Tour to start, “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” acknowledges, “All the piеces of me shatterеd as the crowd was chanting ‘more’/I was grinnin’ like I’m winnin’/I was hitting my marks/‘Cause I can do it with a broken heart.” Seeing Swift at her most braggadocious and unafraid to take a bow for her skills and accomplishments, she also mentions that it often comes at the cost of being “miserable.” Particularly during the emotional aftermath of the Alwyn “affair.” So it is that Swift says with chirpy sarcasm, “Lights, camera, bitch, smile/Even when you wanna die,” adding, “He said he’d love me all his life/But that life was too short.”

    Her career’s life, however, is not, with Swift appearing to aim for the kind of longevity that some can only dream of. This is perhaps why she uses the tactic of “pretending it’s her birthday” every day when she’s depressed, so as to remind herself why it’s worthwhile to “power through the pain” and channel it into her music instead. So it is that she sings, “I’m so obsessed with him, but he avoids me, like the plague/I cry a lot, but I am so productive, it’s an art/You know you’re good when you can even do it with a broken heart.” For her “coup de grâce” line she concludes, “Try and come for my job.” This being a foreshadowing for another song on the album that speaks on a certain beef she can’t let go of with Kim K.

    In the meantime, she’ll keep coming for Matty Healy, as “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” indicates. That much is immediately given away with the descriptor, “Gazing at me starry-eyed/In your Jehovah’s Witness suit.” Swift then goes on to talk about Healy’s penchant for drugs and being disappointing, complete with the shade-drenched dig, “You didn’t measure up/In any measure of a man.” By verse three, the music starts crescendoing as Swift belts out her barrage of questions about why and how he could do this to her. Ruin her “sparkling summer” by rusting it.

    Swift then switches gears quite quickly on “The Alchemy,” marking her first unmistakable “homage” to Kelce with football metaphors that include, “So when I touch down/Call the amateurs and cut ’em from the team” and “These blokes warm the benches/We’ve been on a winning streak/He jokes that it’s heroin, but this time with an ‘e.’” Talk about hitting below the belt. But Swift, evidently, has been playing much too nice all this time in her lyrics, and is proving, once and for all, that the pen is mightier than the…British penis.

    Although, track order-wise, Clara Bow doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near a song that glorifies Kelce, “Clara Bow” is the song that succeeds “The Alchemy.” Swift undoubtedly homed in on Bow as a prime example of someone who was chewed up and spit out by the Hollywood machine after being one of its prized cash cows before the transition from silent movies to “the talkies.” In an alternate universe, Swift can seem to see her own path taking that “spit-out” route as she starts to realize the pressure of a revelation like, “You’re the new god we’re worshiping/Promise to be dazzling.” Of course, Swift also seems to be anticipating what happens as women in the entertainment industry get older and they end up being cast aside by the public in favor of a younger, shinier “model.” Hence, the bridge, “Beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours demanding more/Only when your girlish glow flickers just so/Do they let you know/It’s hell on earth to be heavenly/Them’s the brakes, they don’t come gently.”

    By the final verse, Swift gets ultra meta by remarking to the next proverbial “it girl,” “You look like Taylor Swift/In this light, we’re loving it/You’ve got the edge, she never did/The future’s bright, dazzling.” These lyrics come at a timely moment in the wake of certain (not inaccurate) comments Courtney Love made about the singer not being “interesting as an artist.”

    She does little to prove Love wrong upon transitioning to “The Black Dog,” yet another song that could be about either one of her two recent British blokes. A fact that’s kind of offensive to Alwyn considering how much of a blip Healy was by comparison. But maybe that’s part of Swift’s stinging intent toward her ex of seven years. Title-wise, the generic nature of it is meant to mirror the typical name of some British pub as Swift condemns, “I just don’t understand/How you don’t miss me/In The Black Dog, when someone plays The Starting Line/And you jump up, but she’s too young to know this song/That was intertwined in the magic fabric of our dreaming.” Again, Swift broaches the unpleasant subject of getting older herself, while exes of her past (Jake Gyllenhaal included) continue to date younger women. As the first track to signal the “second album” in this surprise double album (either putting Beyoncé to shame for passing Cowboy Carter off as one album at twenty-seven tracks or making her look even better for being able to release a non-double album with so many songs on it), little changes in terms of lyrical themes or musical tones.

    That much is also made clear on “imgonnagetyouback,” which, at times, sounds like the sonic sister of “Maroon” from Midnights. There is also some blatant knife-digging into Olivia Rodrigo again, in terms of ripping off the latter’s premise and double meaning conceit for “get him back!” This is done via the chorus, “Whether I’m gonna be your wife, or/Gonna smash up your bike, I haven’t decided yet/But I’m gonna get you back/Whether I’m gonna curse you out, or/Take you back to my house, I haven’t decidеd yet/But I’m gonna get you back.” Seems like she did just that to Rodrigo with this song. So whatever ex it’s “really” supposed to be about, the aim was ultimately taken at this Gen Zer. There’s also a continued element of surrendering to jadedness as Swift states that her “​​eras [are] fading into gray”—that go-to color of hers on this album.

    Another telling sign of Swift losing all sight of any rose-colored glasses in matters of love is “The Albatross.” Painting herself as that “burden to bear” for any man who dares pursue her romantically, Swift asserts, “I’m the life you chose/And all this terrible danger/So cross your thoughtless heart/She’s the albatross/She is here to destroy you.” Yet another instance of Swift’s tongue-in-cheek sarcasm on this record, she doesn’t seem to care anymore about trying to “protect her reputation” or “seem innocent.” Knowing that, no matter what she does, she’s damned if she do and damned if she don’t.

    That much is magnified on “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” another track about, you guessed it, Healy. Once again condemning him for his drug habits (and now, his occasional bisexuality), Swift accuses, “You needed me, but you needed drugs more (a similar line appearing in “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”)/And I couldn’t watch it happen/I changed into goddesses, villains, and fools/Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules/All to outrun my desertion of you.” But, of course, that desertion was inevitable as Swift bowed to public pressure and backlash in the end. Opting for a more all-American boy like Kelce, who is also referenced in another shade-laden line that goes, “And you saw my bones out with somebody new/Who seemed like he would’ve bullied you in school.”

    Swift alternates back to dissecting Alwyn on “How Did It End?,” another melancholic piano ballad akin to “loml.” Her most blatant hint at Alwyn is the line, “He was a hothouse flower to my outdoorsman.” Famously private and averse to being photographed with or interviewed about Swift, it seems telling that she might mention this immediately as a prime reason for why it ended. She then reconciles with the public lust for watching her continue to fail in love with her mimicry of the masses going, “Come one, come all/It’s happ’nin’ again.” Step right up to watch her try to pick up the pieces of her shattered personal life. Among the more gut-wrenching images in the song is Swift subverting the elementary school tease about sitting in a tree and K-I-S-S-I-N-G, changing it instead to, “My beloved ghost and me/Sitting in a tree/D-Y-I-N-G.”

    And talking of elementary school, Swift’s subsequent track is the 90s-sounding “So High School,” one of the only songs that radiates the “old Taylor” in terms of being unapologetically cringe. We’re talking Lover-era uncomfortable. And maybe that, too, is another dig at Alwyn. The most out-of-place offering on TTPD (even “The Alchemy” fits in more seamlessly), Swift gets unabashedly bathetic when she gushes, “I’m watching American Pie with you on a Saturday night/Your friends are around, so be quiet I’m trying to stifle my sighs/‘Cause I feel so high school every time I look at you, but look at you.” Worse still, “Truth, dare, spin bottles/You know how to ball, I know Aristotle/Brand new, full throttle/Teach me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto.” This is Swift settling into her ultimate basic bitch, “I don’t care how uncultured my baby is” era.

    Reverting back to her “depressing diva” era (even though that’s Lana’s thing), “I Hate It Here” is another slow-tempo number that’s all about Swift’s unique ability to travel to the “secret gardens in [her] mind” when she can’t stand a place (e.g., the present). Saving all of her “romanticism for [her] inner life.” Even though, sometimes, that romanticism of the past can be a trap because, as she says herself, “Seems like it was never even fun back then/Nostalgia is a mind’s trick/If I’d been there, I’d hate it.” And when she was there, she actually did hate it. Namely, back in 2009, when her beef with Kanye West first began, and then, in 2016, when Kim Kardashian-formerly-West escalated it. Something Swift keeps thinking about to this day, as recently made evident in Time magazine for her “Person of the Year” interview, wherein she insisted she was “canceled within an inch of [her] life and sanity” thanks to the unnamed Kimye.

    She undoubtedly brought it up to help prepare listeners for the non-at-all-veiled “thanK you aIMee” (my, what a subtle stylization tactic). And yes, let us take pause to pay respect to the original pop princess who barely coded a song with the name Amy in it, the legendary Miss Britney Spears with “If U Seek Amy.” Swift definitely isn’t seeking her though, no matter how her name is spelled. Barely disguising the woman or story in question, Swift still does her “best” to frame the narrative in a more “high school-y” context (high school does, indeed, often seem to be on her brain), opening with the verse, “When I picture my hometown/There’s a bronze spray-tanned statue of you/And a plaque underneath it/That threatens to push me down the stairs, at our school.” Painting (no spray-tan pun intended) Kim as a high school bully throughout, she comes to the point of referring to that time North West danced to “Shake It Off” for a TikTok post and goes for the jugular by saying, “And in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue/I don’t think you’ve changed much/And so I changed your name, and any real defining clues/And one day, your kid comes home singin’/A song that only us two is gonna know is about you.” With “Shake It Off” being expressly about shaking off all the haters’ hate, including Kim’s, who now tries to cozy up for clout. How this song might affect the Lana-Kim alliance via Skims is unclear, but surely there must be a conflict of interest for LDR to try being friends with both.

    While the masses might be obsessed with “studying Taylor,” she has her own voyeuristic tendencies, as explored in “I Look in People’s Windows.” The shortest song on the album at just over two minutes, it would have been ideal, actually, to soundtrack The Woman in the Window. In this case, though, Swift is trying to find her ex among the windows across from her apartment as she admits, “I look in people’s windows/Transfixed by rose golden glows/They have their friends over to drink nice wine/I look in people’s windows/In case you’re at their table/What if your eyes looked up and met mine/One more time.” In another moment, she questions her ex (whichever one she might want to address) directly in the same way she does on “The Black Dog” by asking, “Does it feel alright to not know me?/I’m addicted to the ‘if only’/So I look in people’s windows/Like I’m some deranged weirdo.” At least she can cop to that in a way that few stalker-y men can.

    Rhyming “throttle” with “bottle” again like she does on “So High School,” so begins “The Prophecy” with the verse, “Hand on the throttle/Thought I caught lightning in a bottle.” Alas, she didn’t, “it’s gone again.” Thus, Swift can’t help but victimize herself a little bit by insisting she’s “cursed” as much as she is blessed. Delivering the tragic (for a white billionaire) lines, Swift pleads in earnest, “Change the prophecy/Don’t want money/Just someone who wants my company.” She then gets all Karen-y with the gods by demanding, “Who do I have to speak to/About if they can redo the prophecy?” But, in truth, one imagines she wouldn’t really want it to be redone, even though she laments, “Oh, still I dream of him.” One supposes, in this case, that means Alwyn…mainly because the sonic tone has a similar feel to “invisible string.”

    What else could follow “The Prophecy” but “Cassandra,” the name of the prophetess no one would believe when she delivered the vision that the Trojans didn’t want to hear. As is the case with “thanK you aIMee,” Swift weaves her own feud with West and Kardashian into this song, getting quite brutal by the time the bridge rolls around with the condemnation, “​​They knew, they knew, they knew the whole time/That I was onto something/The family, the pure greed, the Christian chorus line/They all said nothing/Blood’s thick but nothing like a payroll/Bet they never spared a prayer for my soul/You can mark my words that I said it first/In a morning warning, no one heard.” Swift then concludes with the scathing assessment, “When it’s ‘burn the bitch,’ they’re shriekin’/When the truth comes out, it’s quiet/It’s so quiet.”

    Swift switches tack again on “Peter,” not a reference to the apostle, but rather, to Peter Pan. While many have speculated that this song is about Alwyn in lieu of another ex (i.e., Healy)—thanks to the telltale line, “Sometimes it gets me/When crossing your jetstream”—it could easily serve as the anthem for all male millennials, the breed most known for suffering from Peter Pan syndrome.

    Acting in the slighted role of Wendy, Swift bemoans, “You said you were gonna grow up/Then you were gonna come find me/Said you were gonna grow up.” Unfortunately, “Peter” (or whoever she’s really talking about) never did. Even though it doesn’t seem like Travis Kelce is that much of a grown-up either.

    And yet, Swift appears to make note of her own puerile tendencies on “The Bolter.” While some might have assumed such a title would be about Alwyn, it is a self-referential track, with Swift describing, ultimately, how stifling a relationship can be, and, therefore, how liberating it can feel to be free of it. Or, as the chorus goes, “Started with a kiss/‘Oh, we must stop meeting like this’ [very The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside”]/But it always ends up with a town car speeding/Out the drive one evenin’/Ended with the slam of a door/But she’s got the best stories/You can be sure/That as she was leaving/It felt like freedom/All her fuckin’ lives/Flashed before her eyes/And she realized/It feels like the time/She fell through the ice/Then came out alive.” So yes, in the end, there seems to be a sense of relief about her “tenure” with Alwyn reaching a denouement, her “runaway bride steez” paying off yet again. As does her absorption of the LDR canon, with the lyrics, “Off to the races” managing to enter the fray during the bridge.

    Providing listeners with yet another piano ballad, “Robin” is a bittersweet track (yes, another one) that encapsulates the innocence of childhood (or what should be the innocence of childhood). Tying into “Peter” in this regard, Swift is ostensibly obsessing over this “era” of existence as TTPD comes to a close because it’s arguably the last time she can remember being as full of earnest hope unmarred by the crushing weight of fame-related reality (even if fame is a prime example of unreality).

    For the grand finale (also a piano ballad), Swift’s literary-themed (in keeping with the album title) “The Manuscript” is another meta exploration like “Clara Bow.” One that delves into how she can’t help but turn all the pain of each failed relationship into a “story.” One that, eventually, “isn’t [hers] anymore.” Mainly because she serves it up to the world for endless scrutiny and dissection in the name of alchemizing pain into art. One of the lines that might be overly examined in this instance is: “He said that if the sex was half as good as the conversation was/Soon they’d be pushin’ strollers/But soon it was over.” Since it’s often been joked about that maybe the reason Swift can’t “hold onto a man” is a result of her less-than-stellar boudoir skills, this lyric isn’t exactly helpful to kiboshing that theory.

    As for the many other lyrics about many other people well-beyond just Joe Alwyn, they answer the question of who TTPD is really torturing. And that is: anyone and everyone who has ever wronged her in the past decade. Hence, a bit of self-flagellating as well.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • For Taylor Swift, “God I Love the English” No Longer Applies

    For Taylor Swift, “God I Love the English” No Longer Applies

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    Having recently opted for “all-American boy” Travis Kelce, it seems the days of Swift’s fetish for British men are over. Though, for a while there, it was going quite strong, starting with Harry Styles in his One Direction era. Swift then moved on to Calvin Harris (who would probably specify he’s Scottish, not British—but still), then Tom Hiddleston, then Joe Alwyn. The latter British bloke being her longest relationship at approximately six years (though maybe less, if one is to go by “You’re Losing Me” being written in early December of 2021). Even so, Swift didn’t seem to be fully convinced she was entirely “over” British peen, briefly dabbling with The 1975’s Matty Healy before quickly realizing how damaging he was to her “brand.” In fact, Ice Spice’s involvement in the entire dalliance (with comments Healy made about Ice Spice on a podcast quickly resurfacing during their time together) appears to be something Swift is still making up for now (after already giving her a feature on a “remix” of “Karma”), carting her along into the multimillion-dollar box (a.k.a. suite) seats she enjoyed while watching “her man” play in the Super Bowl. 

    And what she’s also apparently making up for is all that lost time without some good old-fashioned American dick in her life. We’re talking the kind of sausage that is as American as they come: an Ohio-born football player for the NFL. As for Kelce’s own recently-ended long-term relationship, it was with sports and fashion influencer Kayla Nicole Brown. Having been with her for five years (albeit on-again, off-again), it seems as though Kelce, too, wanted to make an about-face, “type”-wise. Because yes, Taylor Swift is about as far from a Black woman as you can get. Nonetheless, she’s been doing her best to get as close to one as possible by way of Ice Spice, who is clearly spicing up Taylor’s fucking life more than Travis Kelce. A man that has only served to bland-ify it with his Americanness and general lack of a “cosmopolitan” nature (let’s put it this way: he isn’t going to be putting a dress on or reading aloud from a book of Romantic poetry anytime soon). What her British boyfriends all possessed, even if only by sheer virtue of actually being in the arts as opposed to being football players. And that’s not a trait to be overlooked. For, as Swift saw forever crystallized in a meme of Kelce screaming like a wild animal in his coach’s face, it’s no good when someone has that much sports-driven testosterone coursing through their veins. You never know when it’s going to cause a rage flare-up. Though perhaps Kelce knows better than to fly into one around Swift, lest he risk having his temper tantrum immortalized in a song. 

    Although Swift isn’t a stranger to dating the all-American boy, including Joe Jonas and a Kennedy (Conor), Kelce is arguably the biggest cliche of what that trope represents. And it’s unlikely that, with future boyfriends, Swift will be able to ever top such a stereotype of what it means to “be American.” Unless, of course, she should decide to go the Lana Del Rey route and date a cop. But no, not even Swift could make cops “chic.” Football, on the other hand, is something easy to breathe life into once more (especially through a highly publicized end-of-game kiss, delivered in a Hollywood ending fashion). After all, it’s no secret that, in the U.S., all of life is just an extended metaphor for high school. Where the jock and the thin blonde girl are treated as royalty while the rest of the “student body” merely looks on with the requisite amount of awe and reverence. Thus, although some might have been growing fed up with Swift’s British bloke fetish, at least what could be said for it was that it didn’t reinforce the already barely latent idea that all the world’s a high school, and those with the “objectively” good looks and wealth are the ones who will be perennially rewarded by society’s capitalist values. 

    And yet, what’s also rather ironic about Swift’s sudden one-eighty toward embracing the cheerleader role in her football player boyfriend’s life is that she, at one point, viewed herself as someone who was not “football player’s girlfriend” material. In truth, it was the very song about this “difficulty” of hers that put her on the map beyond just the country music radio scene: “You Belong With Me.” In the accompanying music video, Swift plays the so-called dweeb (mainly because she has giant black-rimmed glasses holding her back from being seen as the “hot” girl) who lives across from her “cute” friend. Who, quel choc, happens to be a football player that she can’t seem to attain. Not only because she’s a “nerd,” but because he already has a cheerleader girlfriend (also played by Swift, in a very bad brunette wig…let’s just say she’s not sporting the same quality hair as Rachel McAdams in her ten-thousand-dollar [some even say twenty-thousand-dollar] wig for Mean Girls). Thus, “Nerd” Swift is relegated to the sidelines in a far crueler way than she is now, forced to watch the object of her affection look out toward Brunette Swift instead of her, all bedecked in her marching band attire. 

    By the end of the video, though, Swift, in the style of a true high school rom-com formula, takes off her glasses, puts on a form-fitting gown and shows up to the prom so that the football player dude can see how “hot” she actually is without her dweeb costume. Naturally, the two end up together. And Swift ostensibly admitted that she was never born for the “unpopular girl” role. Yet she held off for this long on returning to Brunette Taylor status by giving in fully to the high school fantasy/fairytale she conveyed to us long ago in 2008 (though the single and video were released in 2009). One she perhaps tried to stave off for several years with British men, assuring listeners at one point, “God I love the English” on Lover’s “London Boy.” Ultimately, however, Swift has succumbed to her most puerile desires from the Fearless era in seeking out the validating comfort of the all-American jock. And there’s no doubt that Matty Healy helped give her the final push back in that direction. With The Tortured Poets Department slated to be a scathing spotlight on her years spent with Alwyn, listeners will soon know even more about why Swift has returned to preferring her own Uh-muhr-ih-cuhn breed. Cemented by featuring a song on the album called “So Long, London.” De facto “Hello ‘Murica.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Taylor Swift Takes A Joke Too Seriously Again

    Taylor Swift Takes A Joke Too Seriously Again

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    Although no one can really say that Jo Koy’s monologue during the intro to the 2024 Golden Globes was exactly “bangin’”—filled as it was with thud-landing jokes and Koy himself laughing at how bad they were and frequently apologizing—one of the moments that was actually least offending to humor sensibilities was the half-attempt at making fun of Taylor Swift for her constant presence at Travis Kelce’s NFL games. Indeed, were fans not so convinced of her “dutiful girlfriend” tendencies, they might think she was being paid off by the NFL to make football have more appeal to an audience it never previously did before. All of whom are waiting for an inevitable breakup album laden with none too subtle football metaphors (please god, don’t let the album be called Tight End…even though that’s exactly what Swift has when it comes to jokes).

    That said, Koy “went along with” (a.k.a. was paid handsomely for) reciting a joke he would likely attribute to the Golden Globes writers, throwing them under the bus whenever something was met with silence. It went like this: “The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? On the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift. I swear. There’s just more to go to.”

    And, of course, the camera then flashed to Swift’s visual response to that, which was so dripping with contempt it was a wonder she herself didn’t melt to the floor as a result of her barely-concealed hot rage. But what was really to be so upset about? This was hardly on the same level as another joke made about Swift on the first season of Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia back in 2021. With Swift reacting to Ginny’s (Antonia Gentry) dig at her mother, Georgia (Brianne Howey), about going through men faster than Taylor Swift by tweeting, “Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back. How about we stop degrading hard working women by defining this horse shit as FuNnY. Also, @netflix after Miss Americana this outfit doesn’t look cute on you 💔 Happy Women’s History Month I guess.” Her passive aggressive conclusion to the statement is in keeping with her usual brand of white martyrdom. One that has played out nicely over the years since Ye “attacked” her onstage at the 2009 VMAs. And while, yes, Ye (then going by his Christian name, Kanye West) was totally in the wrong for doing what he did, one can’t help but speculate about whether or not the reaction to it would have been just a bit tamer had it been a white man who interrupted Swift. 

    In her latest edition of Being Done Wrong By a Joke, most were quick to side with Swift’s facial reaction that spoke a thousand expletive-filled words. Not just because it was a no-brainer to cite the joke as “bad,” some hardy-har-har, yuk-yuk-yuk fare your uncle might tell at a family function and you’d be forced to laugh along with it. But because it was, “at its core,” sexist (which anything is at its core if we want to dig deep enough…though most don’t). Swift, however, was not at a family function with her uncle, but a very public event where, in truth, she might have expected to be a target. The idea that she wasn’t expecting a joke to be made about her is possibly a sign that she feels she’s become untouchable. Alas, the “joke” in question is the price one pays for attending a ceremony with an opening monologue from a comedian (or someone posing as a comedian). Did anyone come to Robert De Niro’s defense about the joke Koy made regarding becoming a father at seventy-nine? Couldn’t that be interpreted as “ageist”? Not when many were too busy worrying about Swift being able to handle the comment directed at her. Because, once again, people are viewing it as a form of “shaming” Swift for her always active dating life. As a result, the joke has been blown way out of proportion. As though Koy said something directly related, somehow, to her so-called promiscuity. 

    Indeed, considering other jokes that have been about Swift on that front, this one was utterly harmless. For example, back at the 2013 Golden Globes, when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler co-hosted, it was the former who said, “You know what Taylor Swift, you stay away from Michael J. Fox this time!” Swift’s response to that “dig” materialized in a Vanity Fair cover story that came out soon after, when she quoted Katie Couric to Nancy Jo Sales by saying, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” So yeah, Swift isn’t known for handling jokes about her all that well, especially if they relate to her dating history. Which is somewhat ironic because it’s kind of, like, her thing. Fey wasn’t one to back down on making yet another joke about Swift’s over-the-top reaction, hugging Poheler at the Golden Globes a year later when they co-hosted anew and quipping, “I just wanna say congratulations again to my friend Amy Poehler. I love you and there’s a special place in hell for you.” 

    Thus, Taylor has become somewhat notorious for having a stick up her ass every time anyone says even a hint of an unkind word, from Katy Perry to Damon Albarn. The one person she didn’t seem to react to bringing her love life into a joke was Barack Obama at the 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, during which he remarked, “Republicans fell in love with this thing, and now they can’t stop talking about how much they hate it. It’s like we’re trapped in a Taylor Swift album.” Letting that comment slide perhaps proves that there are only certain men of color Swift is willing to stare daggers at, and Jo Koy happened to be one of them. 

    Although Koy is by no means a “gifted” comedian (complete with a voice that utterly grates), the specific backlash against the comment he made about Swift makes one want to remind the world of something Madonna once said: “You know what I have to say to America? Get a fucking sense of humor, okay? Lighten up!” Even when something isn’t particularly funny, a person doesn’t have to act as though someone just took a huge shit all over their head, or as though Kanye West just jumped on the stage and interrupted them.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “Seemingly Ranch” Taps Into Something Larger: Stale Americana, Mistrust In All Things and Gross U.S. Eating Habits

    “Seemingly Ranch” Taps Into Something Larger: Stale Americana, Mistrust In All Things and Gross U.S. Eating Habits

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    The inherent mistrust of our collective society was boiled down to two keywords in a caption on September 25, 2023: “seemingly ranch.” The off-handed comment by one of many die-hard Swifties was made via what will always be called Twitter, through the account, @tswifterastour. Like many accounts, @tswifterastour is run by a fan who takes it upon themself to provide regular updates on the various goings-on (both personal and professional) in Swift’s life. The latest being her apparent transition into the cheerleader she derided on “You Belong With Me” by showing up to Kansas City Chiefs football games to support her current flame, Travis Kelce. In the week since the post went up, Swift has already attended another game (this time with her requisite “squad,” as though to harken us back to her “Bad Blood” era in time for the 1989 [Taylor’s Version] release at the end of October). But it didn’t offer any viral moment on par with what @tswifterastour did by simply writing a “speculative” caption. 

    A caption that, in fact, speaks to the self-imposed role of “sleuth” that every internet and true crime junkie has taken on for themselves in the past several years. This stemming from the rightful sense of suspicion that has arisen over the decades of lies and assorted “massaged truths” presented by some of the world’s most “reputable” institutions, not least among them being the U.S. government. And while, “obviously,” the white substance on Swift’s grossly-presented plate wasn’t cum, for fuck’s sake, the use of “seemingly” made the ranch come across as though it could be something else (as some outlets have posited). Even some kind of coded message from Swift herself, revered by fans for Easter egg-laying as much as anything. Alas, in a time where everything is questioned (no matter how “self-evident” it might have once been), @tswifterastour’s caption not only makes all the sense in the world, but is a reflection of the present, that’s right, era. That is to say, questioning everything we see as digital manipulation not only ramps up, but becomes more sophisticated thanks to AI.

    One thing, however, that has remained “evergreen” in most eras since Adam Smith fucked us all over is the instant swooping in of various corporations (this time, condiment brands) to capitalize on the sudden newfound interest in a product. In this scenario, ranch (which is unfortunate for other condiments if, in reality, it wasn’t ranch at all). From Heinz to Hidden Valley (the OG creator of the dressing), big business has all at once seen the “power of Swifties” yet again. This time in a far more profitable way than Ticketmaster did last year amid the Eras Tour presale fiasco. Even McDonald’s has gotten in on the “craze” with ad copy that reads, “Seemingly Ranch, Definitely McNuggets.” After all, Taylor is the greatest representation of the celebrity-industrial complex since Britney Spears (who has proven she still has quite an effect on product sales if her recent ability to save a fledgling prop shop is any indication). What’s more, businesses are likely relishing (no condiment pun intended) how the word “seemingly” makes it even easier to get away with selling what amounts to artificial food. It’s almost tantamount to the very specific verbiage on beauty labels that say things like, “May reduce dark circles.” Not necessarily, though. Only seemingly. The word is the perfect “asterisk” to defend against any legal blowback. After all, the Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “appearing to be something, especially when it is not true.” That couldn’t describe America itself any better: appearing to be a beacon of freedom when it is anything but. 

    Which brings us to how “Miss Americana” herself is falling even more into that title as she becomes a fried chicken-eating football proponent who dresses in what looks like the Hooters uniform for a cameo at the game. Specifically, the game where she was eating seemingly ranch. All of this ultimately fortifying what can be called “quintessentially American” propaganda. And, unlike Swift’s one-time collaborator, Lana Del Rey, she isn’t dredging up Americana tropes of the 50s and 60s as a larger statement on decay, but rather, reinforcing what Republicans would call “good old-fashioned American values.” The image of a white blonde girl going to support her white football player boyfriend at the “big game” has summed up that cliche for centuries. 

    And then there is the proud display of the nastiest-looking plate to consider. Featuring a piece of fried chicken that’s shaped like the turd emoji, positioned near two foul “plops” of her condiments of choice. Clearly, no one thought food styling might be important for any and all images of Swift at this event. And why would they? Americans really don’t care about how things look or taste; they just want to shove some kind of slop into their mouth and call it “nourishment.” Ranch certainly fits that bill. And it’s not surprising that 1) Hidden Valley Ranch is owned by “renowned” bleach purveyor Clorox and 2) ranch would go on to surpass Italian dressing as “America’s favorite” in 1992. After all, why would Americans want anything so natural (minus the corn syrup, of course) and simple as the contents of that style of dressing? 

    As Swift taps into “American dreams” by way of Abercrombie visions of America (side note: Taylor did model for Abercrombie in 2003, a year she calls “unbearable” [seemingly for the fashion choices] on Midnights’ “Paris”), the enthusiastic reaction to her “football/ranch dressing era” is on par with the reason conservative voters got on board with the “Make America Great Again” slogan. These are the “good, clean” images people, seemingly, want to see. Like Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) in 13 Going On 30 conjuring up yearbook-inspired photos for her magazine’s redesign and announcing of the “clean-cut” images, “I wanna see my best friend’s big sister, and the girls from the soccer team, my next-door neighbor. Real women who are smart and pretty and happy to be who they are… We need to remember what used to be good.” And what used to be “good” was always the football player/cheerleader trope. As tried-and-true as mocking a bald woman. Both Swift and the NFL are catering to this old-hat method for their separate reasons—the commentary on “foodstuffs” in the U.S. just happened to be an added bonus for those on the outside looking in at what Americans willingly choose to consume. Not to mention an added bonus for corporations banking (literally) on how Americans don’t question anything they put into their mouth. They honestly can’t afford to. And hey, since all-American, relatable Swift is such a “seeming” fan of ranch and fried chicken, how bad can it be?

    Yet no one increasing their ranch consumption wants to acknowledge that while they’ll likely notice signs of it on (and inside) their body, Swift will continue to stave off any traces of unhealthy diet habits by frequenting Body by Simone classes in New York. Such is the benefit of peddling “Americana” while being able to pay to erase its effects on you personally. All under the pretense of being just another “relatable queen.”

    But newsflash: there is nothing relatable about the football player/cheerleader (or cheerleader-adjacent) cliche. It only continues to endure precisely because, sadly, people still find it aspirational. Indeed, as Swift has confirmed in many of her lyrics, high school never really ends, having a tendency to, at the bare minimum, rear its ugly head repeatedly in the not-so-coded language of pop culture. And yeah, ranch feels like code for Kelce’s cum in this case, too.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Introducing The American Royal Couple: Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce

    Introducing The American Royal Couple: Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce

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    Well ladies and gentlemen, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Taylor Swift, after almost a decade, is dating someone born in the United States of America. And it’s none other than star Kansas City Chiefs tight end and Super Bowl champion Travis Kelce.

    Rumors about the pairing been circulating for a few weeks. They started when Travis Kelce went on his podcast —
    New Heights, with his brother Jason of the Philadelphia Eagles — and said he made Taylor a friendship bracelet with his number on it at her concert, but could never get it to her.

    Normally, you’d think the story ends there. Tough luck for Travis, but no.
    Then, Jason Kelce went on Philadelphia sports radio WIP and confirmed the two were definitely an item. And finally, Taylor Swift broke the internet when she was spotted at the Chiefs-Chicago Bears game in Kansas City this weekend, next to Travis’s mother, Donna Kelce.

    I’ve been wondering for years how to get women into football…it turns out all you need to do is get Taylor Swift to date one of the players. Easy enough, now Swifties all over my socials are musing what a “tight end” is (he is supposed to both block and score points) and why scoring looks so easy (it isn’t, he’s just that good).

    Who is Travis Kelce?

    Born in 1989 (I’m sure Taylor is aware of the number), Kelce is widely acknowledged as one of the best tight ends of all time — even surpassing former New England Patriot, and Tom Brady’s right-hand-man, Rob Gronkowski.

    Drafted into the NFL in 2013, Travis credits his brother Jason for saving his football career. Travis, on scholarship at the University of Cincinnati, tested positive for marijuana and was kicked off the team before Jason got him back on track and playing football after a one-year suspension.

    Now, Travis plays alongside arguably the new GOAT quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, in Kansas City. The duo have won two Super Bowls together, most recently in 2023 against Jason Kelce and the Philadelphia Eagles…the only brother duo to ever play in the Super Bowl.

    He confirmed that he asked Taylor to come see him by saying he saw how she rocked Arrowhead, and wanted to know if she wanted to come see how he rocks it. Travis scored a touchdown in her honor.

    Travis is known for his style, always pulling up in a lavish gameday fit. Yesterday was a blue and white jacket set that fits Taylor’s upcoming
    1989 (Taylor’s Version) theme…so much so that the Kid Super renamed the set to “1989 Bedroom Painting Set” after spotting Travis wearing it.

    Are Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Actually Dating?

    All signs are pointing to yes as Taylor and Travis were seen leaving Arrowhead Stadium on September 24, 2023 (12 years on the day that Taylor performed there for
    Speak Now) in Kelce’s convertible last night. It’s one of Taylor’s more public dates in the past, but we are here for America’s princess dating football royalty.

    Apparently, Travis even rented out the restaurant for the Chiefs afterparty and their date! While we wait for more, shop styles similar to the
    New Era jacket T-Swift was wearing here.

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    Jai Phillips

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