Pop

Taylor Swift is closing out 2023 on a high note, becoming the first entertainer to ever earn TIME‘s prestigious Person of the Year title on Wednesday (Dec. 6). The news broke exactly a week prior to the pop star’s 34th birthday, with Swift gracing three unique global covers of the magazine and sitting for a […]

There’s some good news and some great news for Swifties about the as-yet-unannounced Taylor’s Version of Taylor Swift‘s 2017 album Reputation. In an interview with TIME magazine for its Person of the Year issue, Swift revealed that she’s hard at work on the re-record of her sixth album, which featured such hits as “Look What […]

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.”