Taylor Swift’s songs have looked ahead toward marriage since she was a teenager.
It’s hard to imagine a world in which Taylor Swift didn’t eventually get married. Perhaps no artist today has an identity tied as closely to the idea of a forever love as hers is. So the Instagram announcement yesterday about her engagement to her boyfriend of two years, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, felt existentially fitting, even preordained.
Swift has been writing songs that look ahead toward marriage since she was a teenager. “Mary’s Song (Oh My My My),” from her self-titled debut album, released when she was only 16, tells the story of two childhood best friends who grow up to marry each other and still exchange loving looks when they’re 87 and 89. Her early radio hit “Love Story” ends with a proposal. (“Marry me Juliet, you’ll never have to be alone,” she sings, from the perspective of Romeo. “I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress.”) And marriage has continued to be a motif as she’s grown up. References are strewn throughout most of her 11 albums: “I want you for worse or for better”; “You and I go from one kiss to getting married”; “I like shiny things, but I’d marry you with paper rings.” (Kelce did not ask her to make good on this promise—her diamond ring is both shiny and humongous.) Her song “Lover” is so commonly played at weddings that it has a “First Dance Remix.”
The question of marriage is not uncomplicated for a woman who loves to work as much as Swift does. A couple of weeks ago, when she announced her forthcoming album, The Life of a Showgirl, on New Heights, the podcast hosted by Kelce and his brother, Jason, the two men marveled that she recorded it between grueling three-hour shows for her Eras Tour. “I just love it. I love it a lot. I love music,” Swift said, by way of explanation. At some moments in her discography, when ambition and marriage are at odds, ambition wins. “Fifteen,” a touching song by an 18-year-old looking back at her youthful folly, includes the line “Back then, I swore I was gonna marry him someday, but I realized some bigger dreams of mine.
