Taylor Swift’s Public Romance With Travis Kelce Is Nothing New, Here’s Why.

As she watched on from the VIP friends and family suite at Arrowhead stadium, Taylor appeared to be incredibly close with Travis’s mom, Donna Kelce. 

After the game, the pop superstar didn’t seem to mind who saw her as she was filmed riding in Travis’s convertible car with the top down on their way to an after party.

And this very public hard launch of their romance was just the beginning, with Taylor and Travis continuing to be incredibly open as their relationship grows.

They each made a surprise appearance on the same episode of Saturday Night Live, and have been pictured together by the paparazzi on several occasions over the last few weeks.

Taylor has also supported Travis at many more of his football games, and he has spoken openly about dating the singer on his weekly podcast, New Heights.

Travis’s mom, dad, and brother have also discussed Taylor in the media, and his inner circle have even shared photos with the star to their social media pages. 

After taking September and October off, Taylor returned to the stage with her highly-acclaimed concert last week, and Travis was in attendance on Saturday night.

This time, it was his turn to support her as she performed, and he was spotted looking chummy with her dad, Scott Swift, in the Eras VIP tent. 

And when Taylor changed the lyrics to her song “Karma” to overtly reference Travis, his and Scott’s excited reaction was captured on camera by excited fans in the crowd. 

Acknowledging how willing Taylor is to let the world know that she and Travis are together, one person tweeted: “taylor never made her relationships so public what is she doing.”

Another echoed: “we haven’t seen taylor this happy in a public relationship we’ve been waiting for this moment so no we will never shut up about last night”

But long-time Swifties disagree, and have come with the receipts to prove that the way that Taylor is behaving with Travis really isn’t anything new when it comes to the star. 

In fact, the two relationships that preceded Joe were arguably the most public that Taylor had before Travis, namely due to the way that she’d had started to utilize social media at this point in her career.

While Taylor’s love life has always been highly-publicized thanks to the media interest that is largely fueled by the star’s songs, she began to offer a more intimate insight into it when she started dating Calvin Harris in 2015. 

At this point in time, Taylor’s career had reached new peaks following the release of her highly-acclaimed 2014 album 1989, which cleaned up at the Grammys and established Taylor as one of the world’s biggest popstars. 

She had also forged an A-list clique of celebrity friends, otherwise known as her “girl squad,” which she gave fans glimpses into on Instagram. 

Before she wiped her social media page ahead of her Reputation era in 2017, the profile was full of intimate photos of her cooking, partying, and generally hanging out with everybody from Selena Gomez to Blake Lively to Karlie Kloss.

And she had a similarly no-holds-barred approach to her love life, with Calvin being a frequent fixture on her grid. 

During another award ceremony the following year, she name-dropped him in her acceptance speech and said how thankful she was to have "the most amazing person to come home to" for the first time in her life. And in an interview with Vogue months later, she described their relationship as "magical."

If you cast your minds back to the summer of 2016, Taylor and Tom’s relationship was so incredibly public right from the start that many people — including her biggest fans — genuinely believed that they were actually filming a music video, and the whole thing was an elaborate piece of performance art. 

It’s worth noting here that over that very summer, Taylor’s reputation had famously plummeted after Kim Kardashian leaked the phone conversation she’d had with Kanye West about him name-checking her in his song “Famous” earlier that year. 

At the time, Taylor was branded a “snake” and run off social media — which is perhaps why we didn’t get any appearances from Tom on her Instagram page the way that we did with Calvin. 

However, their every move was still documented thanks to conveniently-taken paparazzi photos and leaked source quotes.

Similarly to her interactions with Donna Kelce, Taylor appeared to be getting along with Diana famously — and, as also seen in her new relationship with Travis, source quotes about her and Tom that were attributed to Taylor’s camp were regularly being published online. 

By July, Tom was proudly wearing an “I [heart] T.S.” tank top as he frolicked in the sea with Taylor, and the paparazzi were on hand to capture photos of the PDA.

The couple then embarked on somewhat of a world tour as they were pictured going on dates in various different countries.

After the whirlwind, and well-documented, relationship, Taylor and Tom called it quits in September, and a source told Us Weekly at the time that the breakup was a result of Taylor being overwhelmed by the public’s perception of their relationship amid the continuing scrutiny from Kim’s leaked phonecall.

The start of their relationship coincided with Taylor’s decision to completely retreat from the spotlight as she struggled to regain public favor after Kim’s exposé.

And this approach seemed to work for Joe, with the two quietly falling in love away from the glare of the paparazzi and social media. 

Because of the private nature of their relationship, Taylor’s music from this time period is the only real insight that we have into it. And while lyrical interpretation is entirely subjective, Taylor’s music suggests that she and Joe enjoyed their low-key life away from the glitz and glamor of showbiz. 

Instead of the paparazzi documenting their every move and details of her love life being leaked to the press, Taylor rejected publicity in its entirety and would take back entrances into dive bars to meet Joe in a bid to preserve their privacy. 

And many of Taylor’s songs imply that much of the unrest in her and Joe’s relationship came when it was exposed to the public, and she detailed her fear that the fanfare that follows her celebrity status would eventually become too much for him to deal with.

As a result, it appears that she actively battled to keep the whole thing as private as possible, and even when she returned to the spotlight towards the end of 2018, she refrained from explicitly speaking about Joe in public. 

Over the six years, Taylor and Joe were only pictured together a handful of times, and would attend most of their work-related events separately. On the rare occasion that they both attended, they wouldn’t walk the red carpet together.

Joe also refrained from speaking about his relationship when asked about Taylor during interviews, and the most that we learned about it outside of Taylor’s songs came in her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana.

Interestingly, the one and only shot of Joe in the documentary is a scene in which Taylor runs off stage after a concert and into his arms. The imagery is almost identical to her embrace with Travis at the weekend, with the only key difference being that Joe waited backstage instead of in view of fans. 

Soon after the documentary’s release, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and further facilitated Taylor and Joe’s decision to fly under the radar. But as the lockdowns ended and Taylor started to work on her 10th studio album, Midnights, her unrest within their relationship seemingly started to grow.

Midnights was released in October of last year, and after news of Taylor and Joe’s split was announced in April, many fans began to speculate that this had actually been a breakup album. 

In particular, it was noted how many of Taylor’s songs appeared to suggest that she’d grown tired of the humdrum life that she and Joe had created together. 

This is perhaps at its most exposed in the song “Bejeweled,” where Taylor goes so far as to express her resentment at the way that her relationship with Joe had kept her from the spotlight.

Taylor’s quest for publicity appeared to begin almost as soon as her and Joe’s breakup was announced, first of all with paparazzi photos of her either alone or with friends in New York City.

Then, just weeks later, Taylor was reported to be dating the highly divisive British singer Matty Healy. And while she didn’t ever explicitly acknowledge this romance, she did actively fuel it. 

Throughout the month of May, Taylor seemed keen to flaunt her rumored new boyfriend. Just two days after they were publicly linked, Matty was spotted in the VIP tent at Eras tour. 

Here, he appeared to be cozy with Taylor’s family and best friends, and soon after he was even on stage performing with her opening act Phoebe Bridgers. 

They were also spotted kissing, and source quotes attributed to their inner circles were regularly published online.

But arguably the most overtly public part of these early days of their relationship came when fans noticed that both Matty and Taylor had mouthed the exact same words during their respective shows in an apparent secret declaration of their love. 

As the backlash grew, Taylor remained defiant and just days after Matty’s February comments about masturbating to Black women being “brutalized” resurfaced, she made a point of ignoring the offense that he relationship was causing.

Appearing to subtly double down on her relationship choices in a rare statement about her personal life, Taylor alluded to the romance as she told the crowd at one of her concerts: “I’ve just never been this happy in my life – in all aspects of my life — ever before.”

However, the relationship ended before the month was out — shortly after a podcast clip of Matty laughing as his friends referred to Taylor’s mom as “Miss Piggy” resurfaced online.

Which isn't surprising, with it being apparent that Taylor has always welcomed conversation around her love life — and that this type of publicity is something that she was determined to reclaim after her relationship with Joe ended. 

And while it’s nobody’s place to say whether or not the public unfolding of Taylor and Travis's relationship is better or worse than her private six years with Joe, it can definitely be said that it’s certainly not anything new.