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After endless rumors, speculation and countless camera pans to Taylor Swift cheering on Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce from the family skybox over the past few months, the singer finally opened up about her relationship with the NFL star in an interview for Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year cover story.
“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell… We started hanging out right after that,” Swift said of a July 26 episode of Kelce’s New Heights podcast in which he recounted his failed attempt to woo the singer by making a special friendship bracelet for the July 9 Eras Tour show he attended at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. “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,” she continued in one of her first in-depth interviews in four years.
Kelce said at the time that he was “butt hurt” that Swift doesn’t speak to anyone before or after the shows to preserve her voice. “She doesn’t meet anybody, or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personal,” he said on the pod.
They did, obviously, meet soon after and Swift described how they’ve shown up for each other in the months since, with Taylor attending half a dozen Chiefs games and Kelce flying down to Buenos Aires, Argentina on Nov. 11 during a bye week to see another Eras gig. “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she said in the first official public confirmation of their relationship. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”
And, about those suite shots that have become a staple of the NFL’s coverage of the couple, Swift said she doesn’t even understand how camera operators know where she’s sitting during the games. “There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once,” she said of the now-ubiquitous footage of her hanging with Kelce’s mom and KC QB Patrick Mahomes’ wife, Brittany. “I’m just there to support Travis… I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads… Football is awesome, it turns out… I’ve been missing out my whole life.”
Time‘s editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs noted in an introduction that the Person of the Year has typically been a “ruler over traditional domains of power,” such as a politician or a titan of industry. But in choosing Swift, Jacobs said Swift found a way to “transcend borders and be a source of light,” calling her a “rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story.”
In the story, Swift also touches on the intense preparations she did for the Eras Tour and the completely drained feeling after each gig that leaves her in bed the whole next day, as well as the emotional spiral she was sent into by Kanye West’s sexist “Famous” lyrical shout-out and how she was “so knocked on my ass” by the $300 million sale of her catalog to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings.
The National’s Aaron Dessner got a front-row seat to Taylor Swift‘s creative process when the pair teamed up on Swift’s pandemic-era 2020 acoustic folk albums Folklore and Evermore. And in an interview with People magazine for its 2023 Most Intriguing People of the Year issue, the guitarist/composer could not say enough about how impressed he is with Swift’s studio and people skills.
“I think Taylor is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. The poetic and literary bent of her lyricism, where songs often have elaborately woven narratives and hidden meanings that connect to her earlier or future work, what her fans call ‘easter eggs,’ helps to create an entire artistic world that we all get to inhabit and obsess over as her fans,” he said of Swift’s legendary secret world of clues and hints hidden in videos, lyrics and photographs.
“I love the sense of belonging that this creates in Taylor’s music, where joy, overcoming adversity, shattering patriarchal structures and celebrating diversity are so prevalent as themes. She is an absolute genius and thankfully also a truly wonderful human being,” he added.
Asked to share a studio story illuminating Swift’s skills as a songwriter, Dessner said he remembered sending Tay the music for the Evermore song “Willow,” only to have her write “the entire song from start to finish in less than 10 minutes… it was like an earthquake.” He also called her the “hardest working artist” he’s ever met, describing how Swift is involved in “every aspect” of writing and producing her songs thanks to her “incredible attention span and focus on detail.”
That attention extends to her private life, with Dessner revealing that he’s “never seen anyone wait on her,” and that when he’s stayed at Taylor’s house the singer — a “very, very good cook” — whipped up breakfast and dinner for everyone. “She’s legitimately just a very down-to-earth and hardworking person,” he said.
Dessner first met Swift in 2014 and that year’s 1989 album was the one that roped him in, he said, because it was “a perfect pop record” that he used to have fun cranking up on his stereo. The track that really got him was “Blank Space,” which, not to put too fine a point on it, felt to him like an “impossibly perfect pop song” when he heard it on the radio. Once he heard the entire album, Dessner was hooked by the sense that Swift was “some kind of incredibly rare unicorn of a song and songwriter.”
As for the “incredible endurance” it takes to play 44 songs over more than three hours a night on her record-breaking Eras Tour, Dessner said the only comparison he could make was to the legendary stamina of Bruce Springsteen in his prime. Though, to be honest, he said, “he [Springsteen] doesn’t have to cover as much ground as Taylor does up there.”
Even though Brenda Lee was the most likely contender for the next Christmas song to top the Billboard Hot 100 — after spending the last four holiday seasons peaking at No. 2 — it didn’t make it any less amazing to see “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” up top on this week’s chart, 65 years […]
BTS‘ Jin just had his first birthday as a soldier. And in a sweet message to fans, the newly 31-year-old star — who celebrated his birthday on Dec. 4 — expressed his gratitude while briefly reflecting on his time so far in the South Korean army, just over a week shy of his one-year enlistment anniversary.
“Hello, this is Jin,” he began in a post on Weverse, as translated from Korean to English by Google. “Thank you very much to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. I always enjoyed [livestreams] with ARMY on my birthday, but unfortunately I couldn’t enjoy it this year, which breaks my heart.”
“Even though I can’t be with you physically, please know that I am having a good time with you in my heart,” he added.
South Korean law requires all able-bodied men between ages 18-28 serve 18 to 21 months in the military. Jin became the first member of the famous K-pop group to begin his mandatory enlistment on Dec. 13, 2022, just days after he turned 30.
In January, he shared photos of himself in uniform, with CNN reporting at the time that he’d completed his five weeks of basic training and had been selected to serve as an assistant instructor at the Yeoncheon army base in northern Gyeonggi Province. A note at the bottom of his Monday (Dec. 4) Weverse message says that Jin is currently a sergeant as a result of his “outstanding military career.”
Jin’s bandmates J-Hope and Suga began their stints earlier this year. And, as announced Tuesday (Dec. 5), the remaining four members of BTS — Jimin, V, Jung Kook and RM — will be enlisting any day now.
“There’s still a lot of time left, but I’m already excited to be with you,” Jin continued in his note to fans. “Oh, and our members are going to join the army… I hope that time passes quickly and I can have a good time with the members and the ARMYs.”
“Thank you again for wishing me a happy birthday,” he concluded. “I’ll be back soon.”
Taylor Swift is this year’s “most intriguing person” according to People, and stars such as Hayley Williams, Tim McGraw and Sabrina Carpenter are here to tell you why.
According to the publication, Swift earns this year’s honors for her “record-shattering” Eras Tour, Taylor’s Version rerecords and public intrigue-generating relationships with both her famous friend group (Selena Gomez, Sophie Turner, Gigi Hadid and others) and her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. But for Carpenter, a pal of the “Anti-Hero” singer and one of several Eras openers, the secret to Swift’s magic is her ability to connect with fans — although her cookie-making skills don’t hurt either.
“She’s able to connect with every single person in the crowd, like she’s singing to them personally,” the “Nonsense” singer told the publication. “And offstage she is still a superstar, but she’s a superstar who’s really good at baking.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time with her, and I’ve never seen anyone wait on her,” Aaron Dessner, a frequent collaborator of Swift’s, added. “When I have stayed at her house, Taylor herself was cooking everyone breakfast and dinner. She’s legitimately just a very down to earth and hard-working person.”
One of Swift’s former country music peers — and the namesake of her 2006 debut single — Tim McGraw also gave his thoughts on Swift’s character. “She knows when, where, how to promote [her work], but she also knows when, where, how to be normal and be a human just living her life,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, the 12-time Grammy winner is cropping up on quite a few year-end lists. Not only was she named the top artist of 2023 by both Spotify and Apple Music, but she was also recently declared Forbes‘ fifth most powerful woman in the world. The latter publication estimated that she’s ending the year with a net worth of $1.1 billion, comprised of $500 million from royalties and touring, $500 million from her music catalog and some $125 million in real estate.
Swift also scored two new No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 this year — “Is It Over Now?” and “Cruel Summer,” which reached its peak four years after its release — and topped the Billboard 200 for five weeks. And, her Eras Tour film became the highest grossing concert movie of all time — but even with all of that in mind, Hayley Williams thinks it’s only the beginning for the superstar.
“I’m almost afraid to say it,” the Paramore frontwoman told the magazine, “but I kind of think she’s just getting started.”
It’s hard, if not impossible, to out-goth Robert Smith. But on Monday night (Dec. 4), Team Niall’s Nini Iris did her level best to bring all the spooky vibes to her cover of The Cure’s 1989 mope rock ballad “Lovesong” on The Voice.
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The 27-year-old Tbilsi, Georgia native who made it to the live shows on the Georgian version of The Voice in 2012 and then moved to New York in 2016 — where she went from being a cabaret singer to a professional wedding singer — has been on a serious roll since the beginning of the playoff rounds last month.
But on Monday night she kicked it to a new high with her moving, emotive Cure cover. Accompanied by a string quartet and pianist, Iris stood atop a square platform midstage wearing a midnight black dress, long lace gloves and a matching choker and belted out the song’s keening lyrics over the moody arrangement.
Adding a bit of Adele-like soul to the darkly bouncy song from the Cure’s Disintegration album — which became the band’s highest-charting U.S. single when it hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in Oct. 1989 — Iris climbed into her sky-high register to sing the track’s’s haunting refrain: “Whenever I’m alone with you/ You make me feel like I am home again.”
As the music swelled and Iris’ voice took on a gritty growl, she became more animated and held the final “I will always love you” for an extra beat as mentor Horan closed his eyes and watched with pride. “And the Grammy goes to” he joked, dubbing the performance “absolutely spectacular.”
The stunning performance came on the same night that season-long frontrunner Ruby Leigh, 16, posted yet another impressive performance for Team Reba when she sang McEntire’s 1980 single, “You Lie.” With the season 24 grand finale just two weeks away, the competition got real on Monday night when the top 12 semifinalists finally competed for America’s votes.
Other impressive performances from the episode included Team Reba’s Jacquie Roar’s roaring version of Lainey Wilson’s “Wildflowers and Wild Horses,” Team Gwen Stefani’s Kara Tenae doing an elegant cover of Keyshia Cole’s “Love” and Team John Legend singer Lila Forde’s mellow ramble through the Barbie soundtrack Indigo Girls folk rock classic “Closer to Fine.” The show also featured spots from Team Gwen’s Tanner Massey and BIAS, Team Niall’s Huntley and Mara Justine, Team Legend’s Azán and Mac Royals and Team Reba’s Jordan Ranier.
Watch Nini Irish sing “Lovesong” on The Voice below.
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The Weeknd stars in a new trailer for Festival, a game from Rock Band studio Harmonix in which the singer — who now goes by his birth name, Abel Tesfaye — is the headliner in a music-experience slated to launch inside Fortnite on Saturday (Dec. 9). Like Harmonix’s most beloved games, Festival lets fans tap […]
In 1978, Kate Bush became the first solo woman to reach No. 1 in the U.K. with a song she wrote, produced and performed entirely by herself with “Wuthering Heights.” Forty-five years later, in October, dance–pop artist Kenya Grace joined her as the second to pull off the feat with the quietly devastating “Strangers,” her major-label debut single.
“There wasn’t too much pressure on that song, to be honest,” Grace says. “I didn’t really have some mad goal in mind — I just wrote it one random night.”
For Grace, 25, that kind of writing experience is the result of skills she’s been honing her entire life: she began creating and performing songs for friends and family at age four, inspired by Norah Jones tracks that her mother would play around the house. By 16, the South Africa-born, Southampton-raised singer was frequenting drum’n’bass parties, baptizing herself in the energy of the U.K. dance music scene that would soon characterize the sound of her own music. “When I start writing something at 120 BPM, I’m like, ‘No, it’s way too slow,’” she quips.
She graduated from London’s Academy of Contemporary Music in 2019 — an institution she likens to a massive networking event — and spent the next few years building an audience on TikTok. Even from her initial videos, Grace displayed a deft understanding of how to present her music, including one clip in which she crafted a beat by using her music production controller to source sound waves from oranges.
The post caught the attention of Day One Music’s Nick Huggett and Nick Shymansky, who have signed and developed British music icons including Amy Winehouse and Adele. By November 2022, two months after she self-released the aptly titled “Oranges,” the two were managing Grace. “We’re seeing someone with a craft [who] knows how to sing and command an audience,” Shymansky says. “We’ve got someone that has earned their stripes and is ready to take on the world.”
They prioritized growing her fan base on an international level, and by July, the two helped her sign a deal with Major Recordings, an electronic dance music label launched by Warner Records. “We knew early on that more than half of her audience was in America; it’s not a coincidence the deal was signed there,” Shymansky says. “We had offers for shows in Los Angeles prior to ‘Strangers’ — that’s not typical for a British artist at such an early stage.”
Kenya Grace photographed on November 20, 2023 at SOUTH56 studio in London.
Bex Day
The partnership quickly paid huge dividends in “Strangers” — though a different song nearly took its spot. “I signed my deal about two weeks before I posted [a snippet of] ‘Strangers’ online,” Grace recalls. “The month before that, we were lining up a different song,” which ultimately became its follow-up single, “Only In My Mind.”
Nonetheless, when a teaser of “Strangers” connected with listeners on a musical and lyrical level, the label pivoted, with Grace still meticulously poring over the song’s final mix. “I was rewriting the lyrics to make it rhyme,” she says. “I’m always really funny and picky about vocal production. I spend the longest on the vocals.”
Sonically, the song is steeped in drum’n’bass and aligns with the current U.K. dance music revival in the U.S. led by artists like Fred Again.. and PinkPantheress. The song’s vulnerable lyrical bent (“And then one random night when everything changes/You won’t reply and we’ll go back to strangers”) plays to Gen Z’s penchant for unflinchingly honest pop songwriting.
Though Grace admits feeling pressure ahead of its release, “Strangers” officially arrived through Warner Records/Major Recordings on Sept. 1. By the end of the month, it became her first entry on the Hot 100 (since reaching a No. 52 high). The track has also climbed to No. 1 in the U.K.; reached the top 5 on the Billboard Global 200; and spent five weeks atop Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, marking the first time in the ranking’s decade-long history that a track solely written, produced and sung by a woman has reached the summit.
Says Huggett: “We had no expectations other than, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if this did better than the last release, which was really nowhere near there?’ That was the benchmark. Every time we put out some music, we want to improve on it incrementally.”
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While social media helped buoy “Strangers,” the resources of a traditional label drove the song at radio and helped place it on editorial playlists on digital service providers. The song has earned 773.7 million on-demand streams through Nov. 23, according to Luminate. “The label used this explosive moment to make sure there’s a proper campaign globally,” says Huggett. “We’ve been blown away with how brilliantly the label has worked the record with their understanding of the complexity of radio and traditional media.”
In October, Grace released the trance-driven “Only In My Mind,” and three weeks later, followed it with a “sad acoustic version” of “Strangers” as the song continues to chart. At the top of December, she detailed a biting take on modern love with “Paris” and, come 2024, she expects to release her “dark, moody [and] dance-inspired” debut album.
In the meantime, she’s on her first tour, with stops in London, New York and Los Angeles — though Shymansky has his sights set on even brighter lights: a Las Vegas residency 10 years from now. “There’s a long road to get there, but we think she has the goods to do that,” he says. “That’s gotta be the ambition.”
From left: Nick Huggett, Kenya Grace and Nicholas Shymansky photographed on November 20, 2023 at SOUTH56 studio in London.
Bex Day
A version of this story will appear in the Dec. 9, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Taylor Swift is the world’s fifth most powerful woman, outpacing Beyoncé and Rihanna on Forbes‘ annual ranking. Making her highest ever position to date on the 2023 list, the “Anti-Hero” singer is the top-ranking musician on the tally. Overall, she’s only bested by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at No. 1, European Central […]
Maroon 5 are headed back to Las Vegas for a new run of shows in their M5LV The Residency at the Dolby Live at Park MGM theater. On Tuesday morning (Dec. 5), the group announced 16 new dates for 2024 in May, June, September and October at the intimate 5,200-capacity venue. A statement announcing the […]