Winning streak. Warm the benches. Call the amateurs and cut ‘em from the team.
It doesn’t take a genius to spot the references to her new boyfriend, NFL hero Travis Kelce, in the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s new record The Alchemy, released as part of her much-anticipated new album, The Tortured Poets Department, overnight. Read our review here.
The song — a heartfelt track featuring talk of touchdowns, trophies and being the greatest in the league — has only been out for a few hours but is already being called an anthem for the Tayvis era and a not-so-secret love letter to the pop queen’s new Kansas City Chiefs partner.
The nods are hardly surprising, in many ways. ‘Swelce’, ‘Traylor’ or whatever you want to call them have hardly been subtle in their public displays of affection since their relationship started last summer, their recent Super Bowl kisses and Coachella hand-holding quickly earning them power couple status.
‘America’s golden couple’, ‘American royalty’ and ‘the new Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio’ (the international movie star and one of the most famous baseball players of all time, who married in 1954) are among the descriptions doing the rounds of Swift and Kelce in recent months — and that was before the new album dropped and sent fans on the hunt for clues about the singer’s most recent relationship into overdrive. Little did many of them think those clues would be quite so obvious. The football jargon and sporting metaphors are everywhere. Clearly, Tayvis isn’t going anywhere anytime soon — or not if Swift can help it.
So how did it all begin, exactly? What did we learn from their appearances at the Super Bowl and Coachella? And what else does this recent song tell us about America’s hottest new relationship?
From a friendship bracelet to football fandom
It all started with a bracelet. Well, the mention of a bracelet.
According to his New Heights podcast, which he cost-hosts with his brother Jason, Kelce, 34, first expressed interest in Swift, 34, in July 2023, when he told his listeners that he’d recently been to a Swift concert and had written his number on a friendship bracelet to give to her.
Anyone know how to get a bracelet to @taylorswift13? … asking for a friend 😅 @BWWings
— New Heights (@newheightshow) July 26, 2023
New episode premieres NOW!
Tap in: https://t.co/lmQ8fLH1IO pic.twitter.com/4yYr8HSb0m
“If you’re up on Taylor Swift concerts, there are friendship bracelets, and I received a bunch of them being there, but I wanted to give Taylor Swift one with my number on it,” he said at the time. “I was disappointed that she doesn’t talk before or after her shows, because she has to save her voice for the 44 songs that she sings... She doesn’t meet anybody—or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personal.”
Two months later, reports hinted that the pair had been “quietly hanging out” and that “Swift saw [Kelce] when she was in NYC a few weeks ago”. Sources went onto tell Entertainment Tonight that the pair were in the “talking” phase of their relationship and were keeping it casual given their hectic schedules. “Travis has been into Taylor for a while and definitely has a crush on her. He is a simple guy that is very funny, charismatic, chill, and loves playing football,” reports said, with Swifties comparing the romance the plot of High School Musical, where a singer and a sports star get together.
The couple’s first public appearance came a couple of weeks later, when Swift was seen supporting Kelce at a game. The world’s biggest pop icon was pictured in a VIP box at the Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, chatting to his mother Donna and dressed in the team’s signature red.
Since then, a flurry of public appearances: Swift bringing her celebrity inner circle to Kelce’s game in New Jersey; his mum posting a video of her with Swift on her Instagram; them holding hands on their way to a Saturday Night Live after-party. Snaps of them packing on the PDA on dates followed, and more podcast mentions; him admitting to being “protective” of Swift on dates and reacting to fans saying Swift put him “on the map”.
They were pictured on a dinner date in Argentina, where she was debuting the international leg of her Eras Tour, in November, and she gave him a shout-out at a show the following day. He called her “hilarious” and “a genius” in an interview a few days later, saying they shared a similar outlook on family, work, and life. “Everybody knows I’m a family guy,” he said. “Her team is her family. Her family does a lot of stuff in terms of the tour, the marketing, being around, so I think she has a lot of those values as well, which is right up my alley.”
Reports suggest Swift moved into Kelce’s home for several weeks later that month while on a two-month break from her Eras Tour - just a week or so before her first public interview about the relationship. “This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she told Time magazine in December.
Travis Kelce always holding on tightly to Taylor Swift’s hand. There has literally been nothing to suggest it could be a pr stunt, not even one thing since they got together
— King Derrick Henry (@MrSunshine911) November 11, 2023
It’s really hilarious seeing the haters come up with NO valid reason/argument 💙pic.twitter.com/KxYwwoYEvq
“We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard-launch a first date.”
Several public appearances have followed, mostly in the form of Swift cheering Kelce on at various games, one of the most high-profile being on January 28 when she rushed onto the field and gave her boyfriend a big kiss in front of the cameras. “Tay, I’m going to enjoy with the guys... I love you. So much it’s not even funny,” Kelce is heard telling the singer in a clip shared on social media. “I love you, too,” she’s heard responding. “I’ve never been so proud, ever!”
The pop mega-star announced her next album at the Grammy’s in February, with eagle-eyed Swifties since spotting a potential clue to the album’s name, The Tortured Poets Department, in Kelce’s interviews as early as November, when he praised his new girlfriend for turning “life into poetry”.
"HE KNEW," fans were quick to point out on social media. He has since admitted he has heard bits of the new album already, and it’s “unbelievable”. “I can’t wait for her to shake up the world when it finally drops,” he told a press conference at the Super Bowl that week.
ConSwiftacies
The right-wing conspiracy theories began almost as quickly as the relationship did: that the whole relationship is contrived; that the results of the Super Bowl and Grammy’s have been rigged by the Pentagon; that Biden has coaxed Kelce into proposing to Swift on Sunday night to help boost support for the democrats, for which both he and the singer have expressed backing in the past.
The MAGA pack were quick to point to the fact that this was the fourth time in five years Kelce’s team had made it to the Super Bowl — and the first since Swift joined the team’s entourage.
“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” presidential candidate turned Trump surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy asked on social media ahead of the final in February. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.”
Others joined in. “Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield,” pro-Trump broadcaster Mike Crispi claimed at the time.
Much of the speculation surrounded the couple’s previous backing of Biden’s party. Swift avoided politics for many years of her career, but dipped her toe in six years ago, in 2018, when she endorsed two Democrats in Tennesse, where she owns two homes. “I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country,” she wrote on social media. “I believe in the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG.”
She went onto criticise Trump’s pandemic response two years later, in 2010, and has since endorsed his rival Joe Biden and urged fans on Instagram to register to vote (according to Vote.org, there was an uptick of 35,000 voter registrations following Swift’s post). The fact that Kelce’s adverts have promoted the Pfizer Covid vaccine in the past has only fuelled such conspiracy theories about the pair being agents of the Pentagon.
Traylor by numbers
13. That’s how many appearances Swift had made at NFL games since she started dating Kelce before jetting into Vegas for the Super Bowl in February (she flew in just in time, following her Saturday night Eras Tour performance in Tokyo).
The pop star’s presence at her new boyfriend’s football games had already had enormous consequences for the sport by this point. There was a 400 per cent rise in sales of Kelce’s No87 jersey after she was first spotted in the stands at a Chiefs game at the end of September, and the Chiefs’ game against the Baltimore Ravens in January, which Swift attended, had a record 55million television viewers, according to CBS Sports.
Duly, a new demographic of super-fans has followed. According to NBC, viewing numbers of the NFL for girls aged 12 to 17 was up 53 per cent in the latter part of this season. “Taylor is obviously a dynamo,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said of the ‘Taylor Swift effect’ on his sport ahead of the Super Bowl. “Everything she touches, obviously, there are people following, and so we count ourselves fortunate and we welcome it.”
Kelce is believed to have won $164,000 for his team’s Super Bowl victory in February. To put that in context, that’s £132,000, or 264 Taylor Swift concert tickets - though he did recently joke about the eye-watering amount he’s already had to spend on Super Bowl tickets for his family and friends recently. "I'm not really doing much different other than just counting how much money I'm spending on this damn Super Bowl for family and friends to come... Just making sure I'm on top of those finances and losing all this money,” he told his podcast listeners.
He’s a wealthy athlete already. According to recent reports, the Chiefs star is currently on a four-year contract worth $57.25m and his 2024 earnings have eclipsed $12m with incentives, though that’s nothing in comparison to his new girlfriend’s more than $1 billion status.
Still, the couple’s real power lies not in their bank accounts but in their influence. Swift has more than 279m Instagram followers, putting her at number 15 in the world in the follower rankings (she trumps Jennifer Lopez, Kourtney Kardashian and Miley Cyrus, but is beaten by Kendall Jenner, Justin Bieber and Beyonce). Kelce has a mere 5.9m followers in comparison, but that’s huge in comparison to the rest of his team and his own status pre-Swift. Reports show that he gained the second-highest number of Instagram followers of any sports star last year thanks to his high-profile new girlfriend, earning himself an impressive 3.69m new followers when the relationship shot to public attention.
“If the Chiefs win the Super Bowl and Travis Kelce proposes to Taylor Swift on the 50 yard line the entire world will explode,” fans wrote on X ahead of the final, amid speculation that they woulod either get engaged at the Super Bowl or on their one-year anniversary in July.
The Chiefs star addressed the rumours in good spirit, telling a reporter: "I'm focused on getting this ring [the Super Bowl ring], and that’s all that my mind’s focused on right now."
Super Bowl speculation, shout-outs and very pointed song lyrics
The Super Bowl proposal didn’t happen, much to fan’s disappointment, but there’s been plenty to keep the Traylor fans happy in recent weeks. Since the Super Bowl, they’ve been spotted at a zoo in Sydney during her Eras tour and both made public shout-outs to the relationship, him speaking about their trip to Australia together on his podcast, and her giving him a shout-out during a performance in Singapore, where he was in the audience.
Last month, they partied with Madonna at the Oscars, holidayed in the Bahamas together and were spotted on a lunch date at Nobu in Malibu. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” he told People magazine in an interview this month, after being seen on a teammates’ Instagram story singing one of his girlfriend’s song while out golfing.
The couple have been spotted on several dates since then, but none more public than at the Californian music festival Coachella, where they were seen dancing, kissing and holding hands as they watched Swift’s friends and collaborators Ice Spice and Jack Antonoff.
"Taylor and Travis were so excited to go to Coachella together," a source told reporters after their surprise appearance at the festival. "They wanted to be there to support their friends and just have fun. They had the best time at the festival and were in their own world even though so many people were around them... They are very in love and in sync in so many aspects of their lives, and it's very sweet to see."
The new song, then, has only has sent what was already one of the world’s hottest new power couples into the stratosphere. “This happens once every few lifetimes, these chemicals hit me like a white wine,” Swift sings before talk of being “on a winning streak.”
NFL wins or not, it’s clear she’s not just talking about the football.
