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Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce Kiss After Kansas City Chiefs Win Super Bowl 2024!
Madonna did it. Lady Gagadid it. Katy Perryhas done it. Beyoncédidit—twice.
Taylor Swift, however,hasyet to perform during the Super Bowl.
Not that the 34-year-old needed to go anywhere near a microphone thisyear to make substantially more football-adjacent news than the actual Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show headliner, Usher. (Who, for the record, was the consummate proand got rave reviews.)
But Swiftwas part of the "maybe this year?" conversation long before she coupled up withKansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelceandadded sports mediadarling/antihero to her ever-growing list of accomplishments.
Yet every year, inevitably another artist is announced.
Whichseems antithetical, because wouldn'tthe biggest sport in the United States andthe producers of themost-watched live TV event of the year want to join forces and get the biggest pop star in the world?
Of course, there are reasons why the event that's seemingly Taylor-made for the star(the halftime show usually lasts 13 minutes, FYI) hasn't yet included her. Because it's totally been her gig to turn down...right?
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For starters, as far as2024 was concerned, the logistics simply didn't make sense.
Swift just kicked off thesecond half of her record-smashing Eras Tour, and presumably would have felt no need to jet from Japan to Las Vegas (by way of Los Angeles) after performing fournights straightin Tokyo unless she wanted to cheerKelce on in person.
Meanwhile, at least they're celebrating his third Super Bowl win and her whirlwind visit—she has tobe in Melbourne, Australia, to perform Feb. 16—didn't include consolation kisses.
But even Swift's tight schedule didn't prevent endless unfounded speculation up until the 11th hour that she'd join Usher (who was announced as the headliner back in September) in some capacity on stage. The "Yeah" singer, meanwhile,just finished a Vegas residency in December, so he was the definition of geographically desirable when it came toputting the show together.
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As for the preceding 15 yearsafter she first hit No. 1 on theBillboard200 with her sophom*orealbumFearless:Swift spentsome of that time not exactly known as asinger of stadium-shaking bangers for everybody. That narrative has obviously since been thoroughly dismantled, stadiums literally left shaking on her Eras Tour, but the anthemic "You Belong With Me" aside, early Swift wasnot yet the artist she would soon become.
"We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" off ofRed, released in 2012, was her first No. 1 single (and it would be impolite to not sing along whenever you hear it), but it wasn't until1989's stream of hits—"Shake It Off," "Blank Space," "Bad Blood"—in 2014 thatyoucouldstart picturing Swift commanding the Super Bowl stage.
In 2013, however, she had signed a lucrative "long-term" endorsem*nt dealto be the face of Diet co*ke, a Coca-Cola Co. executive calling her"an extraordinary individual and a wonderful symbol of achievement." And chief rival Pepsi had just resumed its sponsorship of the Super Bowlhalftime show in 2013, Beyoncé's lights-out performance at the Superdome in New Orleans the start of a beautiful friendship. (And she couldn't help stealing the show in 2016 from technical headliner Coldplay.)
Swift remained a Diet co*ke brand ambassador through 2018. And, incidentally, she didn't release any new music between 2014 and 2017, which on paper doesn't look like much of a gap but at the time was downright haunting when she broke her every-two-years-like-clockwork pattern.
"Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me," Swift said of that fraught timefollowing her viral clash with Kim Kardashianand Kanye West. (Happily, she was recalling her "career death" from the comfier perch of being namedTIME's 2023 Person of the Year.)
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Pepsi remained in the game through 2022, after which Apple Music took over as the halftime show sponsor—and reportedly asked Swift if she'd do the honors at Super Bowl LVII in February 2023. Her fans were convinced it was finally going to happen, connecting every imagined dot.
Swift declined, however, purportedly because she was in the thick ofrerecording the albums she made for Big Machine Records, her response to Scooter Braunacquiring the rights to her back catalogue when his company Ithaca Holdings bought the label in 2019. That ambitious project dovetailed with her most prolific period to date, which saw the release ofLover, folklore,evermore and Midnightsbetween 2019 and 2022.
Moreover, TMZ reportedin 2022that sources withdirect knowledge of the halftime showsaid Swift didn't want to takethat particular stageuntil she'd finished re-recording her first six albums. She's still got two to go, her 2006 self-titled debut and 2017's persona-redefiningReputation, teasing the latter as"a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure."
Adding to the 2023 time crunch was preparation for her career-spanningEras Tour, which began last April.And, while collecting her 13th Grammy onFeb. 4, Swift announced her11th studio album,The Tortured Poets Department, will drop April 19. Not even performing dozens of sold-out dates and releasing a blockbuster concert film could slow down the muses.
Just thinking about all of it, it's kind of amazing she made it tothe Super Bowl onFeb. 11as a spectator.
"It feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33," she told TIMElast year. "And for the first time in my life, I was mentally tough enough to take what comes with that."
With her Eras Tour booked through this December, it doesn't seem likely that there's a blank-enough space on Swift's schedule that would allow for her tofine-tune a halftime show to her exacting specifications.
But ifit's something she wants to do, at this point she just has to say yes.
And in the meantime, Swiftstillkinda headlined the 2024 Super Bowl. See all the highlights from her celebration with Kelce right here:
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Patrick T. Fallon / AFP
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PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
