Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour movie is now in theaters and going to be one of the biggest movies of 2023. For all the Travis Kelce, her dating rumors are part of the success.
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is trending toward an opening weekend gross of over $100 million, which would immediately make it the highest grossing concert film of all time. It’s not a surprise when you look at the success of the tour it’s based on, which sold the most tickets ever for an artist in a single day and is projected to earn $2 billion by this month. The show’s set list spans the many “eras” of the 33-year-old Swift’s career, with room for hits like “You Belong With Me,” “Bad Blood,” and “Anti-Hero.”
While Swift’s songwriting and genre curveballs have defined the many eras of her still-early career, so has public fascination with her non-artistic life. In particular, Swift’s romantic history has grown to mythological proportions, her reported relationship with NFL player Travis Kelce making as many headlines as the The Eras Tour box-office records. Photos and videos of Swift attending Kansas City Chiefs games went viral, as so many paparazzi photos of the musician and her current flames have in the past.
The joke is that Swift will inevitably write a song about Kelce once they break up, part of a recurring punchline that has followed Swift for over a decade now. Just searching for “Taylor Swift break up song” on Twitter unleashes a barrage of mockery in anticipation of it. A cursory online search shows people already using ChatGPT to “find out” what one would sound like.
But what might be mockery to some is a reason for adoration to others. That openness about relationships and their (extremely) likely problems? For Swifties, that’s the draw.
Objectively, Swift has written a ton about break-ups. In “Tim McGraw,” the first song on her self-titled debut album, her in-song character hopes that a high school boyfriend remembers her every time they hear a song by the country artist. The track was apparently inspired by real-life events. Raw, autobiographical songwriting is not a new thing, for Swift or any artist.
