Taylor Swift is entering her latest era and she is sharing all the details with the Swifties in her nearly two-hour appearance on the New Heights podcast with her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and his brother, Jason Kelce.
The teaser for the episode revealed that the 35-year-old pop star would be talking about her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, which will be released on Oct. 3.
“This is my brand-new album, The Life of a Showgirl,” Swift said as she held up the blurred-out vinyl.
“T.S. 12,” Travis cheered.
Swift unveiled the album cover once the episode aired on YouTube, which already has nearly 10 million views. Throughout the episode, Swift hit on subjects like her relationship with Travis, owning her entire catalogue of music and of course, the new album.
Now that the full-length podcast — or New Heights (Taylor’s Version) — has been released, here’s everything you need to know about Swift’s appearance and the new album.
The Life of a Showgirl was created during the Eras Tour
In the full episode, Swift told the Kelce brothers that she worked on the album in Europe while she was on the Eras Tour — flying between dates to record, truly embodying the album’s title, The Life of a Showgirl.
“How on earth did she do this on the tour is still blowing my mind,” Travis said.
The Cruel Summer singer said she just “loves music a lot.”
“I would do three shows in a row, I’d have three days off. I’d fly to Sweden, go back to the tour and actually, like, working on this, I was physically exhausted at this point in the tour, but I was so mentally stimulated and so excited to be creating,” Swift added.
Travis said his girlfriend was “literally living the life of a showgirl.”
Then she read the track list. The entire album was completed in Sweden with producers Max Martin and Shellback, who worked with Swift before on hits like I Knew You Were Trouble, Shake It Off and Blank Space.
“Do you want to see the back cover? The back cover is where we find the 12 tracks for my 12th album,” Swift said, before reading out each song title, including a collab with Sabrina Carpenter.
“This is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time,” Swift added.
She also said the new album is about “what was going on behind the scenes during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant.”
When it comes to The Life of a Showgirl, Swift wanted to make sure the new album had “melodies that were so infectious that you’re almost angry at it.”
She also wanted to create lyrics that were “just as vivid but crisp and focused and completely intentional.”
When asked about the album’s glittery, orange colour, Swift said it is “energetically how my life has felt.”
The major Easter egg Swift dropped for The Life of a Showgirl
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Swift mentioned exiting through an orange door on the last date of the Eras Tour, which was a “subliminal hint that I may be leaving the Eras Tour era,” she said. “But I was also entering a new era.”
It was an Easter egg for The Life of a Showgirl.
“I would leave the stage every night going down the elevator lift. That’s how every single Eras show ended, except for one, except for the last one, where I exited through a door — an orange door, to be specific. And that actually was an Easter egg,” Swift explained.
Swift said she was “pretty happy” that the Swifties noticed that Easter egg.
“I was like, ‘I trained them well,’” she added.
Earlier in the episode, Swift also spoke about how she approaches Easter eggs for her fans.
“The art of the Easter egg is that there’s dos and don’ts, right? Like, I’m never going to plant an Easter egg that ties back to my personal life,” she said. “It’s always going to be towards music or … something I’m coming up with, something I have coming up, a plan I have coming together. Something that you don’t know I’m saying for a specific reason that you’ll hear later, and you’ll go back and be like, ‘Oh my God.’”
Swift added that she is drawn to numerology and she loves “math stuff” and dates.
She even shared that she has a special numeric connection with her boyfriend, Travis, whose football jersey number is 87. Swift said her favourite number is 13 and said that 87 plus 13 is 100, and they’re “numbers that have a specific significance.”
Swift’s mom and brother helped her buy her masters back
Swift discussed regaining control over her entire body of work. In May, it was announced that the pop star purchased her catalogue of recordings — originally released through Big Machine Records — from their most recent owner, the private equity firm Shamrock Capital. She did not disclose the amount.
Travis said Swift “reclaiming” her master recordings was “one of my favourite things this summer.”
“I signed a record deal when I was 15 and I kind of refer to it as I got my music back this summer but I never owned my music at all,” Swift explained. “Traditionally, a lot of record deals are set up in a way that artists don’t own what’s called their master recordings. Owning your master recordings means that you have complete control and power over distribution, licensing and essentially the way your legacy is shaped.”
She said that since she was a teenager, she’s been saving up money to buy her music back.
In order to gain the rights to her music, Swift said she sent her mother and brother to Los Angeles to discuss acquiring her music catalogue with Shamrock Capital.
“They sat down with Shamrock Capital and they told them what this meant for me,” she said. “They told them the whole story of all the times we’ve tried to buy it, all the times it’s fallen through.”
Swift revealed that she was told she acquired her master recordings a few months after the Super Bowl.
“I get a call from my mom and she’s like, ‘You got your music,’” Swift said, as she got emotional. “It’s literally been so long since this happened, and it’s every time I talk about it … I just like, very dramatically hit the floor for real. Honestly, just started like bawling my eyes out, and I’m just like, weeping.”
Travis said he also started crying when Swift got the news.
“You were weeping,” Swift said to Travis.
“I was blown away that you have been doing this your entire life and for your first six albums, you weren’t given the rights to all of that,” Travis added. “I know what that looked like and I know how much it burns you that you didn’t have that.”
How Travis and Swift began dating
When Swift was discussing the Eras Tour, Travis described it as a catalyst for his interest in Swift.
Swift said Travis tried to meet her during her Eras Tour concert at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., in July 2023.
She joked that he “threw a man tantrum” when he wasn’t able to give her the friendship bracelet he had for her.
“This dude didn’t get a meet and greet and he’s making it everyone’s problem, that’s what I thought at first,” Swift shared.
But Swift went on to say that Travis declaring his interest in dating her on his podcast was “wild.”
“It was such a wild, romantic gesture to just be like, ‘I want to date you,’” she said.
“That’s what it does when you’re on the stage and you perform in Arrowhead. That’s what it did to me,” Travis added. “You come to Arrowhead, I get to meet you. That’s the perk of playing for the Chiefs.”
Swift said Travis planned to meet her during the concert that night.
“You realize he didn’t even reach out to our management. I was like, when this podcast came out, I was like, ‘Did he ever reach out to be like, in the tents, or did we know he was in the building?” Swift said. “He came with Pat (Patrick Mahomes), and thought that because he knows the elevator lady, that he could talk to her about just getting down to my dressing room.”
The Fortnight singer went on to say that Travis declaring he wanted to date her on his podcast “felt more like I was in an ’80s John Hughes movie, and he was standing outside of my window with a boombox saying, ‘I want to date you! Do you want to go on a date with me? I made you a friendship bracelet! Do you want to date me?’”
Travis went on to say he wanted Swift to “just meet me once, just give me a chance.”
“I was like, ‘If this guy’s not crazy, this is sort of what I’ve been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager,’” Swift said.
She has become ‘obsessed’ with the NFL
The Love Story singer also opened up about how she is now “obsessed” with the NFL.
She said when she first started dating Travis, she was lost when it came to football terminology.
“I didn’t know what a first down was. I didn’t know what the chains were. I didn’t know what a tight end was.… Oh my God, I fell in love with it. I became obsessed with it,” Swift said. “I became a person who was running through the halls of my house screaming, ‘We drafted Xavier Worthy!’ My friends are like, ‘Who body-snatched you? What do you mean we drafted Xavier Worthy?’”
Swift also said her previous relationship with sports was when she sang the national anthem at games.
“My relationship with sports was like, you know, I grew up in Pennsylvania. I always heard my dad yelling at the screen watching Eagles games. That was always the sports sounds that I heard in my house,” she said. “However, I was up in my room, playing guitar, learning instruments, playing piano. I was focused on different things. I was so laser-focused on music, and that’s how it was in school.
“I would go to sporting events so I could sing the national anthem. Everything was a means to an end to get me to do music. I know every halftime show from the Super Bowls, but I didn’t watch the sports.”
Swift also joked about the complaints about her having screen time when she attends Travis’s games for the last two seasons.
“You guys have a lot of male sports fans that listen to your podcast and I think we all know that if there’s one thing male sports fans want to see in their spaces and on their screens, it’s more of me,” Swift said with a smile.
— with files from The Associated Press
