Taylor Swift appeared on the “New Heights” podcast, discussing her new album “The Life of a Showgirl” and her relationship with Travis Kelce. Photo / New Heights
For two hours this week, the world saw Taylor Swift in a way that she hasn’t been seen in years – maybe ever.
When she started out as a teenage country star in the early 2000s, Swift would upload MySpace videos that chronicled her adventures, post photos and comments on social media, or hop on YouTube live streams to chat with fans. But as she evolved into a global pop superstar, she slowly scaled back on revealing details about her life. In the past five years, she has only sat for a few interviews, mostly focused on her music.
Then she arrived on New Heights, the sports podcast hosted by her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and his brother, former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce. During a conversation that was unprecedented in both length and tone, she talked about everything, casually, as if she was just hanging out with her family or friends – while millions of people watched.
Earlier this week, the podcast sparked an internet meltdown when its social media team teased that Swift was the special guest on the podcast, and even more so when Swift confirmed that she had a new album in the works – titled The Life of a Showgirl – that she would reveal on the show. On New Heights, Swift did, indeed, unveil the record’s cover and release date, October 3. But she also revealed a lot more.
She talked about her two-year relationship with Kelce, purchasing her master recordings after a long fight to own her music, details about her father’s recent health scare, life before and after the record-breaking Eras Tour and, basically, what it’s like being one of the most famous people on the planet. Here are five highlights from the episode:
For someone who makes international headlines for her personal life, given that she famously writes songs about real people, Swift is very guarded about relationships. She doesn’t walk red carpets or do joint interviews with anyone she’s dating, and really, she rarely mentions them. A decade ago, it was considered shocking that she actually said her boyfriend Calvin Harris’ name out loud at an awards show. She dated actor Joe Alwyn for six years, and while they were photographed together, the public barely saw them interact. So during the podcast, Swifties – who have been desperate for more details about Swift and Kelce since they started dating in the summer of 2023 – were in disbelief as they watched the couple hold hands and cuddle during the interview.
“I owe a lot to this podcast. This podcast got me a boyfriend, ever since Travis decided to use it as his personal dating app about two years ago,” Swift said, as Kelce cracked up. They have already shared the gist of the story, which is that during an ad break on the podcast in July 2023, Kelce said that he tried and failed to give Swift a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it when the Eras Tour came to Kansas City.
“It was such a wild, romantic gesture to just be like ‘I wanna date you’,” Swift said, going on to explain that Kelce went through none of the proper channels, like her management or publicist, to try to get a meet-and-greet. Instead, he just showed up at Arrowhead Stadium with Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and figured that because it was his workplace and he knew the lady who operated the elevator, he would get backstage, no problem.
But that backfired, because as Swift noted, it’s not 1973 anymore, and celebrities have serious security protocols. But that led to Kelce’s shout-out on his podcast which Swift compared to the scene in the film Say Anything when John Cusack holds up a boom box outside Ione Skye’s window.
“This is sort of what I’ve been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager,” she said, and joked that she was circling back to the podcast as a thank you. “Look at this!” Swift said, framing Kelce’s face with her hands. He took her hand and kissed it: “I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he said.
Much of the interview went like this, as they talked about how they bonded over their similar jobs, entertaining people in football stadiums. He gazed at her adoringly and hyped her up at every opportunity, calling her the greatest songwriter of all time. (“Says her boyfriend,” Swift deadpanned.) Kelce was his usual self-deprecating self, joking about how she’s taught him so many big words; Swift said she fell for him after he made her laugh and that he is the kind of person who lifts everyone’s spirits. “He’s like a human exclamation point,” she said. It didn’t hurt that a flurry of people, including Chiefs coach Andy Reid, a family friend, reached out after the podcast shout-out to tell Swift that Kelce was a great guy.
While Kelce had to adjust to everyone in the world having an opinion on their relationship, Swift emphasised that she doesn’t look at social media and is “terrified” to open her DMs. She would tell anyone that getting upset at online comments is a waste of time: “You should think of your energy as if it’s expensive, as if it’s a luxury item. Not everyone can afford it.”
The episode also served up a music industry business lesson, as Kelce’s brother Jason, the co-host, grilled Swift about what, exactly, it means to own your music, from master recordings to publishing. After years of fighting to own her masters (after her Nashville label sold them in 2019 to manager Scooter Braun, who then sold them to a private equity firm), she finally announced in May that she bought them back, for a rumoured US$360m price tag. Swift got choked up multiple times as she talked about the process of trying to get back the recordings, and how owning her life’s work had been her dream and priority since she was a teenager, when she started saving money. She thought it was never going to happen and called the goal an “intrusive thought” that bothered her every day.
She sent her mother, Andrea, and brother, Austin, to Los Angeles for a meeting with the private equity firm. Then, one day earlier this year, not long after the Super Bowl, her mother called and said the deal had gone through. Swift talked about how she hit the floor when she heard the news, and when she went to tell Kelce, who was playing a video game at the time, she was crying so hard she could barely speak. He said he started crying, too, because he had seen the sheer amount of effort she put into her work.
Swift said that it never would have happened without her fans and the support she got when she decided to rerecord four of her six early albums to devalue the sale of her masters. “They were like, ‘We ride at dawn!’” she said, and then grinned. “They’re the reason I was able to purchase my music back, because they came to the Eras Tour.”
Swift spoke lovingly of the Eras Tour, the highest-grossing tour of all time, earning US$2 billion after 149 shows around the world. However, she said, it entailed being in perpetual physical discomfort, spending more than three hours onstage each night, mostly in very high heels, and she had to have a recovery station in her hotel rooms. But she called it a formative time in her life.
Swift wanted the shows to be “really high concept and really high value” for fans, she said, and to make it feel like you were scrolling through a never-ending algorithm where there was always something new to catch your attention. She said she felt like she had accomplished that goal when she read reports that some fans were so overwhelmed by the spectacle that they got post-show amnesia.
Now that she’s off tour, Swift revealed she’s gotten back into her hobbies, which she joked would be at home in the 1700s, such as sewing (baby blankets and children’s purses) and cooking. Swift said she’s in a sourdough bread phase and is workshopping a Funfetti sourdough recipe for Jason’s daughters, because they love all things rainbows. “We put sprinkles in everything when we hang out,” she said. Swift said she has curated her internet activity to be a) looking at sourdough blogs, and b) watching videos of otters that Kelce sees on his Instagram algorithm.
Swift said that she and Kelce spent a lot of time in Florida over the past few months and spent time with her parents, because her father, Scott, had a quintuple bypass and her mother had knee surgery. “We really Florida-ed it up,” she said, adding that it ended up being one of the most special times in her life, having a lot of long talks with both of her parents, who are two of her best friends.
Swift debuted the cover art for The Life of a Showgirl, which features her submerged in a bathtub wearing a slinky bedazzled dress. That’s because the theme of the album is everything that was going on behind the curtains while she was on tour the past two years, she said, and she ended each night in the tub to decompress. It took her hours before she could wind down and go to sleep.
The other big news is that Swift has reunited with her former collaborators, Swedish pop genius writer-producers Max Martin and Shellback, who worked with her on her biggest pop smashes (Shake It Off, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Style, Blank Space etc). Swift said this album is full of upbeat songs, very different from her recent alt-folk leaning and moody albums such as Folklore, Evermore and The Tortured Poets Department, and it reflects the joy and drama of her tour.
“My main goals were melodies that were so infectious that you’re almost angry at it, and lyrics that are just as vivid but crisp and focused,” she said. Kelce, who has heard all 12 tracks already, confirmed that the album has “12 bangers”.