The Untold Truth Of Taylor Swift
The following article includes brief references to sexual assault.
Taylor Swift's incredible journey towards being a superstar started at a young age. When she was still in elementary school, she won a national poetry contest for her submission called "Monster In My Closet." She released her debut album in 2006 as a 16-year-old and first gained fame thanks to her single "Tim McGraw." Swift's next album "Fearless" earned the teenager her first of three album of the year awards — the others for "1989" and "folklore" — including 12 total wins for the Recording Academy. With her win for "folklore," Swift made history as the first to nab the coveted trophy three times as a woman solo artist. Swift has been at the top of the music industry for over a decade and continues to pick up awards. In 2019, she earned Billboard's woman of the decade honor. And as of 2022, she beat her own record with 40 awards at the American Music Awards, the most of any artist.
Starting with her tenacity as a teenager, Swift's personal story has been filled with heartbreaks, drama, and personal triumphs. And with the public eye constantly on the singer, Swift has navigated fame in an unprecedented way. Calling all Swifties, this is the untold truth of Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift's Pennsylvania childhood
Taylor Swift started her career as a country music star. But she didn't grow up in the South. In fact, Swift is from Reading in Southeastern Pennsylvania. The young girl grew up in Wyomissing Township on an 11-acre Christmas tree farm. When Swift played a show in Philadelphia during her 2018 tour, she said (via The Morning Call), "This is what I call a hometown show." The "Fearless" singer told the audience about her recent stop by the house she grew up in. "It's not my family farm anymore. We sold it when we went to Nashville," she explained to her fans. "I've been thinking about how cool it is to be back where I started writing songs."
On Swift's Instagram account that July, she posted a photo of herself standing in front of a white barn at the farm. The singer is holding a photo of herself as a little girl in front of that same barn. "Take me home," she wrote.
The legend behind her introduction to guitar
A Pennsylvania-based computer store slash music studio owner has said he played a big role in the music superstar's story. As Ronnie Cremer told the New York Daily News in January 2015, his brother apparently introduced him to young Taylor Swift, who came in with her mom and brother to record a demo. "It was a couple cover songs. I recorded the demo for her. It wasn't a great demo, but it was a demo," he recalled. Cremer also knew how to play the guitar so after the demo session, Swift's mom asked him to teach her daughter. "We're trying to teach her how to play country music," her mom reportedly said. But Cremer, a rock fan, confessed he didn't "know the first thing about country music." Evidently, it didn't matter, and Cremer said he began to visit Swift at her home in Wyomissing to give her guitar lessons.
He explained how he would give Swift lessons twice a week in the evenings for a few hours. "It went from teaching her guitar, to teaching her how to structure songs," he said. "That just clicked to her, and made sense," the technician recounted. Looking at her performances as a huge star, Cremer can still see his teaching at work with the singer. For example, he remembered teaching her, "'If you want to play a song in F, play it in D and put the capo on the third capo.' So you notice when she plays, she still moves that capo around a lot."
Taylor Swift's origins in Nashville
Before she was a teenager, Taylor Swift visited the city that would change her life. As an 11-year-old, she went around Nashville, Tennessee, to drop her demo off at every Music Row record label. Part of her reason to visit the city was from watching a documentary about Faith Hill. The "There You'll Be" singer was first discovered in Nashville. "So of course I got it in my head that there was this magical land called Nashville where dreams come true and that's where I needed to go," Swift told The Telegraph. She remembered that she "began absolutely non-stop tormenting my parents, begging them on a daily basis to move there."
Her first big break happened when she was 14 years old, and Sony/ATV Tree brought her on as a writer. And then, another big break happened. In a video interview with Inc., Scott Borchetta, a music producer and founder of the Big Machine Label Group, remembered receiving a package from Swift with her image and demos when he was still with Universal. He invited Swift, her manager, and her family to his office in Nashville to play some music. After telling them he planned to leave the company to launch his own label, he said, "The only promise I can make you tonight, is that if you wait, you have a record deal with me." And the rest is history.
Going coffee shop acoustic with the singer-songwriter
Taylor Swift is from Pennsylvania and made it big in Tennessee, but the singer has a special connection with New Jersey. Before she moved to Nashville, the singer would visit the Shore with her family every year. "I spent my summers at the Jersey Shore from the time I was 2 until we sold the house in Stone Harbor when I was 14. It was a pretty magical place to grow up," Swift explained to the Philadelphia Inquirer. And while she was by the ocean, Swift would play her guitar and sing at coffee shops as an unknown performer. The future star recalled, "I used to sing karaoke at Henny's [on Third Avenue] and play acoustic shows for hours on end at Coffee Talk, a little cafe on 98th Street." She remembered inviting her friends and family to those early performances, who would often "show up and put dollars in my tip jar." And she would try to keep the gigs going for as long as possible. Swift explained, "When I would run out of material, I'd just start making up songs on the spot."
In a visual for her song "seven" from the album "folklore," there was a photo of a young Swift. As writer Tim Marcin noted on X, formerly known as Twitter, she's wearing a sweatshirt that says "Sea Isle," referencing the shore town in New Jersey.
Taylor Swift's early start as an actor
Before she became a country star, Taylor Swift was into a different genre of music. "I started out doing musical theater as a kid," she revealed in an interview on "The Zane Lowe Show." Swift added that theater was "what made me fall in love with performing as a medium."
One of her earliest performances was singing the National Anthem at an NBA game. A video shows Swift as an 11-year-old belting it out in front of the crowd at a Philadelphia 76ers game. In her native state of Pennsylvania, Swift participated in local musical theater productions of "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Annie" at the Berks Youth Theatre Academy. As a young girl, she also took voice and acting lessons in New York City. However, some unsuccessful auditions faltered her early Broadway aspirations.
Later in her career, Swift had the chance to be involved with musicals. As she told Lowe, she first auditioned to play Éponine in the 2012 movie adaptation of the musical "Les Misérables." "I didn't get it, but it was such an amazing experience just doing the screen test," she shared (via Rolling Stone). But the director of the film, Tom Hooper, remembered Swift when preparing for his 2019 film version of "Cats" the musical. "And so basically when I was approached this time, it was a straight-up offer," Swift recalled.
The Grammy winner's big victory with a small payout
After a meet-and-greet in Colorado in 2013, Taylor Swift reached out to a local radio station to tell them that, as Time recalled in 2017, one of their DJs grabbed her rear-end from under her skirt. This led to DJ David Mueller's termination, which led to Mueller suing Swift for defamation, which led to Swift firing back with a countersuit. Swift told Time she "had to watch this man's attorney bully, badger and harass my team including my mother" and was accused of lying about the encounter. The singer took the stand and, as she recalled to the outlet, "I'm told it was the most amount of times the word 'a**' has ever been said in Colorado Federal Court." Swift won the case but only asked for $1. "To this day he has not paid me that dollar, and I think that act of defiance is symbolic in itself," she said.
Years later, the matter was referenced in the Supreme Court. Per TMZ, Justice Elena Kagan brought it up during another case, noting "that dollar is going to represent something both to me and to the world of women who have experienced what I've experienced." Justice Kagan further pointed out that it was about standing up for herself, not the money. "And it was an unquestionable physical harm," she said. "But, she just asked for this $1 to say that she had been harmed."
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
Taylor Swift has detailed her past relationships in songs
Part of Taylor Swift's success is her ability to vividly detail her experiences in her lyrics. "I always write songs about my life," Swift told The Telegraph. "And if you're horrible to me I'm going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That's how I operate."
Early in her career, Swift and Joe Jonas were romantically linked, but it didn't last forever and always. As Swift told Ellen DeGeneres, the boybander broke up with her over the phone in a 25-second call, and she wrote a track about him for "Fearless" called "Forever & Always." Talking to People about the tune, she said, "[It's] a song about watching somebody completely fade away in a relationship and wondering what you did wrong."
This is one of the many songs penned by Swift that appear to allude to an ex-beau — some secret boyfriends and others major celebrities. "Like a new generation's Carly Simon," wrote Rolling Stone in 2016, "Taylor Swift has played fun games with her fans in leaving clues and hints — both ambiguous and blunt — about the many male muses for her break-up songs." And Taylor Swift's break-up songs sure have gotten tongues wagging. There's "Style," which may or may not be about Harry Styles. There's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," which may or may not be about Jake Gyllenhaal. There's "Dear John," which may or may not be about John Mayer. And the list goes on.
How tall is the Blank Space hitmaker?
Taylor Swift is a towering figure in the music industry as one of the most successful artists. And she literally towers over others, with her surprisingly tall frame at 5'11". The singer revealed to The Telegraph that she used to feel self-conscious about her height, noting that she's "taller than people think I am."
"I didn't like being tall when I would walk up to a group of girls, and they were all a head shorter than me," Swift explained in an interview for Girls' Life. But after some time, the singer began to embrace how her stature compared to shorter people. "When I can put on a pair of four inch heels and walk into a room and be taller than everybody else, now I look at it as a good thing," she said.
Swift also said that being tall didn't matter when looking for a significant other. She explained to Girls' Life that a guy's personality is the most important part and just wanted someone who "sweeps me off my feet." As Swift put it, "I don't have any height limits. Like, if a guy is shorter than me, that's cool."
Inside Taylor Swift's squad
Ah, yes. Taylor Swift's cadre of celebrity pals. Her high-profile friend group of models and musicians has included Selena Gomez, Lorde, and Karlie Kloss — and we're only scratching the surface of Taylor Swift's squad roster. The 2015 visual for "Bad Blood" famously boasted a star-studded (Squad-studded?) ensemble that featured Gigi Hadid, Jessica Alba, Hayley Williams, and many others. The following year, Swift attended a Kings of Leon concert with the likes of Dakota Johnson, Cara Delevingne, Zoë Kravitz, and more. Suffice to say, Swift's made a lot of friends over the years.
The more famous the group became, the more backlash Swift faced. "I never would have imagined that people would have thought, 'This is a clique that wouldn't have accepted me if I wanted to be in it,'" Swift told Rolling Stone. She said what started off as a group of successful women turned into something beyond her original intention. "I thought it was going to be we can still stick together, just like men are allowed to do," Swift stated. And in an article she wrote for Elle, the singer described a few of those relationships, forged in her 20s, as "situationships." As Swift explained, "It's sad, but sometimes, when you grow, you outgrow relationships. You may leave behind friendships along the way, but you'll always keep the memories."
That was evident as the years passed, as membership in Swift's squad continued to evolve, with old standbys remaining (she had dinner with Kravitz in September 2023) and new friends joining (Sophie Turner, Laura Dern, and Greta Gerwig have become pals).
Who is Taylor Swift Dating?
After a few high-profile, celebrity relationships, Taylor Swift met British actor Joe Alwyn. It's believed that they first met at the 2016 Met Gala. Swift's song "Dress" alludes to first meeting someone with a buzzcut when her hair was bleached ... which lines up with both Swift and Alwyn's hairstyles at the event. Or perhaps they first connected in NYC when, as Tumblr user hauntedromantics stitched together, Swift and Alwyn apparently went to the same speakeasy one night. In a 2020 conversation with Paul McCartney for Rolling Stone, Swift opened up about finding "bits of normalcy" in her life with Alwyn. "I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids," she told the legendary rocker.
But sadly, that relationship didn't last; in April 2023, Swift and Alwyn split after six years. Swift didn't spend much time in post-relationship angst, though; just weeks later, she was spotted with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy. Rumors of romance (which neither confirmed) were rife for a few months, but by the summer, whatever it was they had was over. "They are absolutely not together and aren't even in contact anymore," a source told People.
The rumor mill once again went into overdrive that September, when reports swirled that she and NFL star Travis Kelce were an item — seemingly confirmed when she appeared in a VIP suite to watch Kelce play (sitting with his mom, no less). More on this below.
Life as a Swiftie
One of the aspects of Taylor Swift that makes her a legendary pop star is her fervent fan base, the Swifties. At the time of writing, Swift's social media accounts are two of the most followed in the world: Her Instagram account clocks in at 273 million followers and her X account almost 95 million followers. And the singer takes care of her fan base. During the holiday season in 2014, Inc. reported that Swift had personally wrapped gifts sent to 32 lucky Tumblr followers via FedEx. And going beyond simply sending presents, Swift had documented that year's Swiftmas on YouTube.
Another one of Swift's connections with fans were her album listening parties. Prior to the release of a new album, she invites her fans to be among the first people to hear the record. Swift hosted such events for her albums "Reputation," "1989," and "Lover." In fact, she held two parties for "Lover," one in London and the other in Nashville to show her love on both sides of the pond.
In an interview for The Telegraph, Swift explained how she loves to hold meet-and-greets with fans before and after her shows. And since many of her fans have supported her for years, Swift said she built connections and relationships through many interactions. "I have girls come up to me and tell me exactly what's going on in their love lives," she said.
Little-known roles with Taylor Swift as an actor
More than just a world-famous singer, Taylor Swift has tried some acting. One of her most high-profile roles arrived in the 2019 movie adaptation of the musical "Cats." The film was a disaster at the box office — and this even after the CGI that turned Swift and her co-stars into human-cat hybrid characters was fixed and the film was re-released in theaters.
Less disastrous were a few smaller roles by Swift in movies and TV. She appeared as an actor in an episode of the long-running series "CSI." In the episode, she was a murder victim, who'd been stabbed and then died. Sticking with the creepy vibes, the singer also appeared as a ghost piano player in "The Giver." While the film may have flopped, she was in pretty good company, considering her co-stars were Oscar winners Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep. Then, in a more lighthearted appearance, Swift made a surprise cameo in the TV series "New Girl." During a wedding scene, the groom declares his love for a woman in the audience, only for the camera to cut to a character played by Swift who is then swept off her feet.
Swift next expanded her acting repertoire by appearing in 2022's "Amsterdam," David O. Russell's 1930s-set comedy drama starring Margot Robbie, Christian Bale, and John David Washington. Reminiscent of her "CSI" role, Swift's character is killed when she's run over by a car.
Behind Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun's feud
As a teenager, Taylor Swift signed with Big Machine Label Group and then went on to produce her first six albums. But after she parted ways with the company to move to Republic Records, it set off a complicated and drama-filled set of events in 2019 involving record exec and manager Scooter Braun. In an estimated $300 million deal with Big Machine, Braun had acquired Swift's master recordings for these six records.
In a post on her Tumblr account, Swift addressed the music producer who had just taken the reins of her life's work. "All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I've received at his hands for years," she wrote. And in her speech for Billboard's Woman of the Decade award, Swift took a moment to call out her former record label. She criticized "the unregulated world of private equity coming in and buying up our music as if it was real estate." And about Braun? "I'm fairly certain he knew exactly how I would feel about it."
In November 2020, Braun sold Swift's masters to an investment fund, with Variety estimating the price at $450 million — meaning Braun reportedly pocketed a whopping $150 million from the transaction. Nearly two years later, Braun claimed on NPR's "The Limit" podcast that the reason he didn't inform Swift he was buying her music was an ironclad NDA he'd had to sign, which he said prohibited him from giving Swift the heads up.
She's rerecording her albums to stick it to Scooter Braun
After Scooter Braun's metaphorical gut punch, Taylor Swift picked herself up and came up with a novel way to regain a sense of ownership: she announced she'd be re-recording those six albums and release the "Taylor's Version" iterations of those LPs, something that had never been done before. Speaking with CBS News, she explained her plan was "to create the new masters to offset the deal." In April 2021, she released her first of these albums, "Fearless (Taylor's Version)," which debuted in the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart. That unprecedented success proved to be a game changer as Swift broke new ground in the music industry, and she wasted little time in following through with more.
Later that year, she released "Red (Taylor's Version)," and again featured not just the re-recorded songs from the original, but all manner of extras for fans, including several previously unreleased "From the Vault" tracks. "This will be the first time you hear all 30 songs that were meant to go on 'Red,'" she wrote in a post on X, before teasing the extended version of fan-favorite "All Too Well." "And hey, one of them is even ten minutes long." Like its predecessor, this re-recorded album also bowed in at No. 1.
In July 2023, Swift unveiled "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)," which not only debuted at No. 1, but remained in that chart position for a second week — the first "Taylor's Version" re-release to do so. That October, she'd drop the highly anticipated "1989 (Taylor's Version)."
The charitable side of Taylor Swift
Throughout her long-running and successful career, Taylor Swift has made a point to use her money for good causes. She once donated 6,000 books worth a reported $68,000 to the Reading Public Library. The titles she gave to her hometown's library included picture books, as well as children and young adult fiction and nonfiction books. And she helped out more school children following the success of her album "1989": Swift donated $50,000 — the proceeds from her single "Welcome to New York" — to New York City's Department of Education.
Swift goes above and beyond for individuals, too. In 2018, Swift donated $15,500 to a GoFundMe campaign for a fan's mother who had been in a coma for three years. And when a judge ruled against Kesha in her legal battle against Dr. Luke, Swift offered monetary support. As CNN reported at the time, the "willow" singer's rep stated that she gave Kesha $250,000 "to help with any of her financial needs during this trying time."
In 2021, Billboard compiled a vast list of Swift's charity donations over the years, including the African Parks Foundation of America, the Houston Food Bank after Hurricane Harvey, and the Joyful Heart Foundation.
She also paid for a fan's college tuition
Taylor Swift's philanthropy has clearly been well documented; for example, she reportedly made hefty donations to local food banks at every stop along the way of the U.S. leg of her "Eras" tour.
Occasionally, Swift's generosity can take a more personalized turn. That was the case when Swiftie Ayesha Khurram, whose Tumblr posts had attracted the singer's attention and led to an invite for a pre-concert meet-and-greet with Swift. Khurram, a Canadian university student, posted that her parents had been struggling financially, and that she wasn't sure that they'd be able to afford her tuition that year. "When I posted, I was just like venting. It's hard to pay off tuition. It's really expensive," Khurram told CBC News in 2019. Her friends suggested she post her PayPal info, in case anyone wanted to help her out.
As Khurram recalled, she received a PayPal notification that she'd received $6,386.47 from Taylor Nation, LLC — the entire amount of that year's tuition, and then some — while she was baking up a batch of cookies. (We wonder if she was following Swift's famous chai sugar cookies recipe?) "It's more than what I asked for," Khurram said. "This is the kind of thing you don't expect. You don't even dream about it. In no corner of your brain are you thinking, 'Taylor Swift is going to send me money and help me out.'" Swift also attached a brief note of encouragement with her monetary gift. "Ayesha, get your learn on girl. I love you! Taylor," she wrote.
How much is Taylor Swift worth?
As one of the most successful musical artists of her generation, Taylor Swift is also one of the wealthiest. With 10 studio albums as of 2022, plus re-recordings of her early albums, the singer would be rich based on just her music. But she's also put on massively successful stadium shows. In 2015, her tour supporting the "1989" album reportedly earned over $250 million. She later outdid herself with the tour for "Reputation," breaking records as the most successful U.S. tour at the time while reportedly grossing over $340 million. As successful as those were, her "Eras" tour in 2023 was her most lucrative yet. In fact, CNN reported that it was poised to become the highest-grossing tour in history, estimated to make a staggering $2.2 billion in the U.S. alone.
A big portion of the singer's net worth has gone toward buying homes. Business Insider even dubbed Swift as a bona fide real estate mogul. By 2020, she was boasting a real estate portfolio worth $84 million. Her eight properties included a four-story townhouse, as well as a 8,309-square-foot duplex penthouse, both in New York City. Not to mention a mansion in Beverly Hills, and two properties in Nashville, Tennessee. Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, she owns a Watch Hill estate by the ocean.
As of September 2023, Celebrity Net Worth estimated that Swift was worth $600 million.
Taylor Swift has broken so many records
The year 2023 proved to be a pivotal one for Taylor Swift, as her popularity exploded to never-before-seen levels. That included her recordings and her live performances, with the "Eras" tour breaking records for ticket sales. In fact, breaking records kind of became Swift's thing. For example, at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards, Swift took home nine awards — the most ever in one night. She also pulled off a rare feat on the charts when her re-recorded version of "Speak Now" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart, which became her 12th No. 1 — surpassing the previous record that was held by Barbra Streisand. Prior to that, the release of her 2022 "Midnights" album broke Spotify's record for number of streams in a single day.
As for her "Eras" tour, when tickets first went on sale, the demand was so overwhelming that the Ticketmaster website crashed; in a statement, Ticketmaster revealed that more than 3.5 million fans had pre-registered to buy tickets, the biggest number in the company's history. Adding to that, Swift's three-night stint at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium set an attendance record for the venue, with a combined 217,625 fans watching her perform.
That demand extended beyond live performances to her concert film, documenting the tour, which broke the record for presale tickets by raking in $26 million before the film even premiered.
Her Eras tour boosted the economy of every town she visited
With Taylor Swift's "Eras" tour set to become the most revenue-generating concert tour in music history, it shouldn't be surprising to discover the jaw-dropping economic impact experienced by the cities that have hosted her shows. As Fortune pointed out, estimates indicated that consumers will have spent close to $5 billon in those local economies — within only the U.S., not including the international destinations where Swift performs — as a direct result of her tour.
Citing figures from research firm QuestionPro, the magazine reported that each Swiftie, on average, pumped about $1,300 into the local economy for each show, spending the cash on hotels, travel, food, etc. — beyond what was spent on concert tickets and merchandise. "Taylor Swift's sold-out concerts, layered on top of one of our largest annual conventions, combined to become the most successful weekend for Chicago hotels in recent history," Michael Jacobson, president of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association, told Fortune. On both nights for that weekend alone, an estimated 44,383 hotel rooms had been booked, for a hotel occupancy rate of 96.8%.
No less an authority that the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia confirmed that Swift's performances in the city proved to be a key factor in an explosion in tourism for the region; in fact, the organization revealed that the month of Swift's Philly shows had been the most lucrative for the region's hotel industry since prior to the beginning of the pandemic.
Taylor Swift helped out pal Sophie Turner during her Joe Jonas split
While the members of Taylor Swift's squad have changed over the years, there seems to be little question that Taylor Swift, for a variety of reasons, is a very good friend to have.
One person who experienced this firsthand has been Sophie Turner, the British actor best known for portraying Sansa Stark on "Game of Thrones." In September 2023, headlines were made about her apparently fraught divorce from Joe Jonas, with subsequent reports indicating some fundamental disagreements involving the custody of their two young children.
In the midst of the split, Swift took Turner to dinner in New York City, and also invited her to be part of a girls' night Swift held at her Greenwich Village apartment. In fact, Swift then reportedly loaned Turner the apartment so that she and her kids would have someplace to stay in the Big Apple while she and Jonas sorted out the custody details. According to Page Six, Turner had apparently been staying at a midtown hotel, but photos taken by paparazzi showed Turner unloading luggage and bringing it into Swift's place. "Sophie is doing OK. She is happy to be back with her girls," a source told People. "Working in Europe was very hard for her. She missed her girls."
Once upon a time she wanted to work on Wall Street
Had she not become one of the world's most popular singer-songwriters, Taylor Swift may have followed some other career paths. While she showed an early aptitude at acting and musical theater, there is another vocation that she may have attempted.
In a YouTube interview back in 2011, Swift was asked if there were any other career paths she'd considered. As she revealed, her father's job as a stockbroker gave her an inkling that she might want to work in finance. "Ever since I was a little kid ... my dad has been telling me to save my money, or invest in utilities," she said, explaining that her dad's passion for the stock market was similar to her own passion for music. "I didn't know what a stockbroker was when I was eight, but I would just tell everybody that's what I was going to be," Swift proclaimed. As for whether she'd be any good at it, the singer-songwriter figured she could probably pull it off.
"I love my dad so much, because he's so gung-ho for his job, and I just saw how happy it made him, and I just thought, like, I can broke stocks," she quipped.
Taylor Swift is branching out into movie directing
So what can't Taylor Swift do? That's a question that has yet to be properly answered, but for the time being, the answer is ... not much. That extends to her next potential career as a film director. In late 2022, Swift — who'd already directed about a dozen of her own music videos — made her first foray into becoming the next Scorsese or Spielberg by directing a short film, essentially an extended music video for her 10-minute "Taylor's Version" re-recorded single "All Too Well." Starring "Stranger Things" star Sadie Sink and "Teen Wolf" alum Dylan O'Brien, the 14-minute film tells a tender coming-of-age story.
Shortly after that, Variety reported that Swift had written a film script that she was going to direct, to be produced by Searchlight Pictures, the studio that delivered such acclaimed films as "Nomadland" and "The Shape of Water." "Taylor is a once in a generation artist and storyteller," said Searchlight presidents David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield in a statement. "It is a genuine joy and privilege to collaborate with her as she embarks on this exciting and new creative journey."
During a conversation with "The Banshees of Inisherin" director Martin McDonagh for Variety, Swift detailed how her desire to direct movies is a natural extension of her songwriting. "I always wanted to tell stories," she explained. "I have always written stories, poetry, songs. And I think this just grew out of that storytelling. And the more I did it, the more I loved it."
The Grammy winner is shaping up to be a force in politics
For the entirety of her music career, Taylor Swift had been staunchly apolitical; if she held any political viewpoints, or aligned with particular party affiliation, she kept that information to herself.
That changed in October 2018, when she took to Instagram to endorse senatorial candidates Phil Bredesen and Jim Cooper for the House of Representatives in Tennessee — both Democrats. "In the past I've been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now," she wrote.
Swift, who would comment further on her decision to speak out politically in her 2020 "Miss Americana" documentary, became even more political in September 2023, when she issued a post via her Instagram Stories in celebration of National Voter Registration Day, urging Swifties to register so their voices could be heard at the ballot box. In that post, the "Only the Young" singer included a link to Vote.org, where her fans could easily register. According to NPR, the end result was the registration of more than 35,000 new voters on that single day — an increase of nearly 25% over the previous year. While it's impossible to determine how many of those were a direct result of Swift's post, Vote.org reported that there had been an increase in participation of 1,226% just within an hour after Swift shared her message.
This Swiftie conspiracy theory claims she's Broadway bound
As previously mentioned, one of Taylor Swift's longtime goals has been to perform on Broadway. "The first time that I fell in love with performing is when I went to go see theater in my hometown in Pennsylvania," the "Cats" star told Billboard back in 2011. "... Things like that just really inspired me from an early age to love putting on a theatrical performance where there are storylines and characters, and you're always seeing a scene change into another scene."
As of this writing, that goal has yet to come to pass. However, some of Swift's more conspiratorial-minded fans came to believe that Swift had left a series of arcane clues indicating that, after completing her "Eras" tour, her next stop would be The Great White Way. It all began — where else? — on TikTok in July 2023, with a fan unveiling a seemingly convoluted conspiracy theory based on Swift-themed billboards that had just gone up in New York City, Los Angeles, and Nashville — with all three billboards situated on streets named Broadway. The fan offered some more admittedly speculative evidence to back up the theory, including Swift referring to a Seattle crowd's tour outfits as being worthy of a Tony Award, a Swift tweet referencing winning the EGOT, and pointed to various social media posts in which Swift used the word "playing" rather than "performing."
While Swift is well-known to drop Easter Eggs for her sleuthing Swifties, as one might expect, this theory that the singer-songwriter was Broadway bound was met online with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Taylor Swift's rumored romance with Travis Kelce shook the NFL
In September 2023, rumors about Taylor Swift's love life sparked again. This time, her rumored paramour wasn't an actor or musician, but Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. "Taylor and Travis have been quietly hanging out," a source told The Messenger. While neither confirmed they were a couple, Travis' brother — Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jason Kelce — kind of did. "I try to keep his business kind of his business, stay out of that world. But having said that, I think he's doing great and I think it's all 100% true," Jason told Sports Radio 94.
Swift pretty much confirmed the confirmation when she appeared in a VIP box at KC's Arrowhead Stadium to cheer on the Chiefs as they took on the Chicago Bears, seated next to Travis' mom, Donna Kelce. To say Swift's presence at the game didn't go unnoticed is an understatement; not only was the game the highest-rated broadcast on network television that week, it was also the week's highest in the females aged 12-17 and 18-49 demographics — neither of which are typically a big demo for the NFL.
Her next appearance as the Chiefs took on the New York Jets was also impacted by the Swift effect, becoming the highest-rated NFL broadcast since February's Super Bowl. As for Mama Kelce, Donna named "Shake It Off" as her fave T-Swift track and told the "Got It from My Momma" podcast of the hype, "It's very surreal. ... I feel like I'm in an alternate universe, because it's something I've never been involved with ever before."