{"id":905124,"date":"2026-09-25T15:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T15:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905124\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T15:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T15:36:12","slug":"taylor-swifts-songs-about-travis-kelce-continue-to-be-unbearable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905124\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift\u2019s songs about Travis Kelce continue to be unbearable."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

Taylor Swift\u2019s September surprise seemed more exciting when it sounded like it would consist of just one song. Coming nearly a year after the big-pop mishmash that was The Life of a Showgirl<\/a>, and a few months after the soft-countryish Toy Story\u00a05 single \u201cI Knew It, I Knew You<\/a>,\u201d maybe \u201cPatient Zero\u201d would signal another stylistic turn ahead of a future album. At least, as the first official release from Taylor Swift the Married Lady, it would be some kind of landmark.<\/p>\n

But that was Tuesday. On Wednesday we learned the single would be part of a four-song \u201cencore\u201d to Showgirl, in other words part of the now standard \u201cdeluxe edition\u201d method by which artists usually extend the streaming life cycle of an album. Yawn. Meanwhile, Swift claims<\/a> she was dropping in on producers Max Martin and Shellback to celebrate Showgirl\u2019s record-setting first-week sales<\/a> and they just got so worked up they accidentally wrote four songs. Because that\u2019s plausibly how the schedule of the world\u2019s biggest pop star works.<\/p>\n

Give Swift some credit: By her standards, adding only four songs to a previously released album, and waiting a year to do it, is a huge act of restraint, like a former pack-a-day smoker who now just bums a loosie when she\u2019s drunk. Keep it up and this music critic\u2019s trauma might yet heal from that infamous April night when she added a whole second album<\/a> to The Tortured Poets Department at 2 in the morning.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Anyway, true to its billing as the \u201cencore\u201d to Showgirl, these new songs sound fairly similar to that album, and similarly are at best a couple of notches above half-successful. \u201cPatient Zero\u201d itself opens with an unexpectedly Celtic-sounding fiddle lick. This teased at my futile hope that it would be a callout of her embattled friend<\/a> and sometime faux-Celtic singer<\/a> Ed Sheeran, with the upshot of \u201cRemember, he failed to come out in solidarity with me<\/a> first!\u201d But no such luck. Instead, the epidemic-origin metaphor\u2014a pop-culture commonplace by now, whose uncomfortable AIDS-era origins<\/a> I don\u2019t blame Swift for being too young to know\u2014is directed at a woman being done wrong by some dog of a dude who did Swift wrong first. It\u2019s a highly Swiftian formula of sympathy with a scoop of \u201cI told you so.\u201d And it\u2019s perfectly passable, with lilting cadences you\u2019ll hum along with when it\u2019s playing and likely forget until it plays again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The upbeat \u201cCleveland\u201d would sound fine if you heard it from four or five rooms away, but listening closer, it just leads me to beg for the thousandth time that Swift please, please, please stop reading the comments<\/a>. She recites a litany of mean things her Ohio-born footballing beau\u2019s fans have said about her, does some of her most annoying talk-singing to say nyah-nyah, he likes me anyway, and then seems to announce their engagement at the end, which might feel like something if they hadn\u2019t been married since July already. In other words, consistent with all her big love songs about Travis Kelce so far, it sucks. At least, unlike Showgirl\u2019s \u201cWood,\u201d it doesn\u2019t make me want to peel all my skin off to escape it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mercifully, matters improve from there. \u201cPink Clouding\u201d is an airy disco song whose theme is genuinely affecting: \u201cYou were so good\u00a0\/ That\u2019s why you haunt me like you should\u00a0\u2026 Years later, I still wonder how to tell you sorry.\u201d The title echoes \u201cLavender Haze,\u201d from Midnights<\/a>, and a lyric refers to \u201cwhere the arrow hit,\u201d reminding me of \u201cThe Archer,\u201d from Lover<\/a>. It could have fit on either of those records, and maybe it\u2019s about the same person they were. On a couple of hours\u2019 acquaintance, I would call it a keeper.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n


\n This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only<\/p>\n

History\u2019s Most Famous Ax Murderer May Not Have Been a Murderer and May Not Have Used an Ax
\n <\/a><\/p>\n


\n This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, All of Taylor Swift\u2019s Songs About Travis Kelce Continue to Be Terrible
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

That goes double for \u201cBabylon,\u201d which is a story song in the Folklore<\/a>\u2013Evermore<\/a> line, which Swift seems to be doing at least once an album these days to prove she still can. It always makes me wish she\u2019d flip the ratio and write mostly fictional narratives (as on Evermore) while saving the personal ones up for the deepest impact. The yarns need to find a wider musical range, though\u2014\u201cBabylon\u201d has contours a bit too much like \u201cThe Last Great American Dynasty,\u201d for instance. It\u2019s about a man who comes to regret abandoning his family for pleasure and ambition, wishing he could go back to \u201cBabylon\u201d\u2014which Swift seems to be using as a lost-paradise term like Shangri-la, and I\u2019d say somebody really needs to expand her reggae collection<\/a> stat, except I fear where that might lead. But it\u2019s not immature, whiny, or narcissistic, and that, my brethren and sistren and \u2019tren beyond the binary, is an exodus to root for.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Nadira Goffe
\n It Wasn\u2019t Looking Good for Ed Sheeran. Then I Saw His Most Recent Concert.
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

To be honest, I\u2019ve almost stopped hoping for more. Maybe we\u2019ve gotten all the growth from Swift we\u2019ll ever get. But \u201cBabylon\u201d at least reminds me there was a time not so long ago when she took an evolutionary leap, even though she then mostly reverted to form. It could happen again, ideally without need of another pandemic. Otherwise, it feels as if her reality, as with so many of her fellow billionaires, will only continue to withdraw from the one the rest of us must inhabit, and her future will continue to look like a series of ever-less-convincing encores.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Copy Link
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Gift Story
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

You have remaining gift available this month. This gift link is valid through .<\/p>\n

There was an error with your gift link. Please try again.<\/p>\n

Copy link\n <\/p>\n

Link copied!\n <\/p>\n

Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month.Become a Plus Member<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,596,2581,136,593,11255,2897],"class_list":["post-905124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-football","tag-marriage","tag-music","tag-nfl","tag-pop","tag-taylor-swift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}