Will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s marriage affect her music?

Mark SavageMusic CorrespondentGetty ImagesTaylor Swift and Travis Kelce have introduced their engagement after two years of datingEvery fairytale wants a cheerful ending, and after 11 albums of affection, heartbreak and shattered desires, Taylor Swift has discovered her Prince Charming. However after she introduced her engagement to Travis Kelce, what is going to Swift’s newfound happiness imply for her music?Swift’s best present as a lyricist is the way in which she weaves her personal story into her songs, balancing intricate, particular element with common themes of affection, hope, heartbreak and betrayal.And from the very starting, the musician’s love life has been the connective tissue of her writing.Her debut single, Tim McGraw, written throughout a faculty maths class, was all about her then-boyfriend, Drew Dunlap.Believing they’d break up earlier than he left for school (a premonition that got here true), she wrote a track to commemorate the occasions they’d slow-danced within the moonlight to the automobile radio: “While you suppose Tim McGraw/I hope you consider me.”It is a timeless story – one which’s destined to be repeated at more energizing’s weeks throughout the nation this autumn – and set in movement a career-long narrative about Swift’s romantic tribulations.She’s written about emotionally unavailable males (Jake Gyllenhaal, All Too Nicely), falling for a foul boy (Harry Types, I Knew You Have been Hassle) and rebound romances (Tom Hiddleston, Getaway Automotive).All through all of it, she’s been conscious of the obsessive degree of debate round her relationships. In Shake It Off, she poked enjoyable on the media’s discourse: “I am going on too many dates / However I can not make them keep / At the very least, that is what individuals say.”Getty ImagesSwift’s relatable lyrics have made her one of many greatest pop stars on the planetBlank House went one step additional, taking each horrible hearsay about her love life and amplifying it with satirical relish.”Within the final couple of years the media have had an exquisite fixation on portray me because the psycho serial dater woman,” she informed the Grammy Museum. “Each article was like, ‘This is Taylor Swift standing close to some man. WATCH OUT GUY!'”My first response was to be like, ‘That is a bummer. This is not enjoyable for me’.”However my second response was, ‘Hey, that is really a very fascinating character they’re writing about: She jet-sets world wide gathering males – and she will get any of them, however she’s so clingy that they go away and he or she cries in her marble bathtub surrounded by pearls’.”I used to be like, ‘I can use this’.”It is a theme she returned to on final 12 months’s However Daddy I Love Him – the place she likened the web critics of her relationship with The 1975’s Matty Healy to a village filled with pitchfork-wielding puritans.Confronting her viewers, she scolded: “I will let you know one thing about my good title / It is mine alone to shame / I do not cater to all these vipers wearing empath’s clothes.”‘Contentment is a creativity killer’Now, it is reductive to solid Swift’s again catalogue (274 songs and counting) to a cleaning soap opera about her love life.She’s written insightful and witty lyrics concerning the media (“You would not final an hour within the asylum the place they raised me”, Who’s Afraid of Little Outdated Me?); concerning the joyous bonds of friendship (“We’re completely satisfied, free, confused and lonely in one of the simplest ways”, 22) and even getting away with homicide (“I’ve cleaned sufficient homes to know learn how to cowl up a scene”, No Physique No Crime).However not for nothing has she been referred to as “pop’s best diarist” and “the maestro of reminiscence”.So what occurs when she settles down? As her pal and collaborator Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine as soon as identified: “Contentment is a creativity killer.””Marital bliss and home boredom are likely to make much less fascinating rock songs than searching for love,” agrees journalist and creator Hadley Freeman, talking on BBC Radio 4’s Right this moment programme.For proof, look no additional than Bruce Springsteen. In 1991, he married his bandmate Patti Scialfa, disbanded the E Avenue Band and relocated to California.Springsteen celebrated his new-found serenity with two albums, Human Contact and Fortunate City – however they’re usually ranked as his worst.Getty ImagesBeyonce’s profession entered a brand new part after she grew to become a mom in 2011Female artists have regularly used settling down as a supply of inspiration.Madonna’s Ray Of Mild, written after the delivery of her daughter Lourdes, eschewed her brash Nineteen Eighties persona for a extra non secular, psychedelic sound. Amid stiff competitors, it stays her finest album, and I will combat anybody who says in any other case.When Beyoncé revealed her child bump on stage on the 2011 MTV Awards, columnists tripped over themselves to take a position what it would imply for her music. However her subsequent album, 2013’s Beyoncé, was a turning level – a disruptive, experimental, futuristic R&B album that set the template for the third act of her profession.Swift has already proved she will write affecting, transferring songs from a spot of happiness. Her six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn generated songs like Delicate and Lover, which rank amongst her finest work.She’s already written two songs about Kelce, each of which appeared on final 12 months’s The Tortured Poets Division album.On So Excessive Faculty, she described how his chivalry restored her religion in males (“Get my automobile door, is not that candy?”), whereas The Alchemy rhapsodised concerning the second he gained the Tremendous Bowl and ignored the trophy to “come operating over to me”.The star lately confirmed that her forthcoming twelfth album, The Lifetime of a Showgirl, is “extra upbeat” than the remainder of the fabric on Tortured Poets Division – which was largely involved together with her break up from Alwyn and a tumultuous relationship with Healy.Talking on the New Heights podcast, she stated Showgirl was recorded through the European leg of her record-breaking Eras Tour – inserting it within the early phases of her relationship with Kelce.”It simply comes from, like, probably the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I used to be in in my life… and in order that effervescence has come by means of on this file,” she stated.Summing it up extra succinctly, Kelce described the album as “12 bangers”.Getty ImagesThe couple have been cautious about revealing particulars of their relationship in publicSo, to return to the unique query: Will Taylor’s music replicate her newfound happiness? It could be bizarre if it did not.However let’s not overlook that her final interval of home bliss, through the relationship with Alwyn, additionally prompted a shift away from diary-entry lyrics.The pandemic-era albums Folklore and Evermore embraced fictional, fantastical storytelling, set in opposition to a backdrop of natural, acoustic soundscapes.They marked a turning level in Swift’s cultural acclaim, rejuvenating her profession after the uneven and poorly-received Lover album.If marriage prompts one other shift, it may open up a complete new chapter in her profession.”There’s a complete realm of different materials while you’re married or settled down,” creator Olivia Petter informed Radio 4’s Girl’s Hour. “So it is a totally different form of fairytale, a unique form of fantasy, that she’s entering into now.”Some followers have already identified that the star’s fortunate quantity is 13 – and her thirteenth album would be the first to deal with her marriage.For conspiracy-minded Swifties, it virtually appears to be like as if she’s deliberate all of it alongside.