Taylor Swift spent Friday morning chatting like an old friend and it was impossible to tune out. Fresh off the 5am GMT drop of The Life Of A Showgirl, she jumped across British radio to talk about the music and her life with fiancé Travis Kelce. The wedding talk kept coming and she did not dodge it.
On BBC Radio 1 with Greg James, Taylor turned banter into an invite. While Greg joked about being picked up by 6ft 6 Travis, Taylor said that he will do that “as soon as he sees you at our wedding”. Greg’s eyes popped. ‘Woah, woah. Am I coming?’ Taylor said, ‘obviously’, and promised details another time. She called it a ‘destination wedding’ and kept the location to herself.
She then joined Hits Radio Breakfast Show with Fleur East, Will Best and James Barr and faced the big question. Would Ed Sheeran perform She did not rule it out. ‘I mean it would be hard to keep him from it I think! That’s the thing he’s like ‘I’m always being asked to sing at weddings’ and you’re like “Ed if there’s a stage you know that you’ll be on it!”
She kept going. ‘He knows what people want and he wants to give people what they want. That’s the fun thing about our friendship is we both love performing and we love writing and we love singing. It’s actually not that hard to talk either of us into performing at anything!’
Taylor also shared why life with Travis clicks. ‘He’s a blast. He’s just the most fun person, life of any party, even when it’s just us. That’s the goal, isn’t it? Find a best friend who you think is hot.’
On Capital Breakfast with Jordan North and Sian Welby, she confirmed Opalite is Travis’s favourite track and explained why the word stuck. ‘I think that is his favourite he loves that one. I have favourite words and favourite phrases and things that I will put in an endless file of lyrics that I’m just constantly going to and cherry picking from when I’m writing.
‘And I had written down the word Opalite because I learned that it is actually a man-made Opal. Opal can be man-made just like diamonds.
‘Travis’ birthstone is an opal, so I have always fixated on that, and I’ve always loved that stone. And I thought it was kind of a cool metaphor that man-made Opal and happiness can also be man-made too.
‘So that is kind of what the song is about the kind of juxtaposition of those two.’
On Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston and Emma Bunton, she flashed the ring and credited Travis for getting it right. ‘He designed it with this amazing jeweller Kendrik Lubek is her name, she does all her gold engraving by hand and I’d shown him a video of, I just thought her stuff was so cool, so I showed him a video a year and a half ago, and he was just paying attention to everything it turns out because when I saw the ring I was like ‘[gasps] I know who made that, I know who made that!
‘And also he listened to me! It was like, you really know me, I didn’t know what I’d want, but he did somehow and that’s kind of a flex.’
Hen do plans are still up in the air. ‘But everyone’s scattered across the world is the thing, actually you’d think I’d be the type of person who would have obsessed over the idea of a wedding my whole life, but I actually never thought about what I would do, what I would want, until I met the person.
‘So I haven’t even thought about that, doing a hen, this is the first time I’ve thought about that!’
She also framed the new album as a real time diary. ‘One thing about this album that I think is really exciting is that oftentimes when I make a record there’s like a lag time between when I made it and when it enters the world.
Like for example, my last album, Tortured Post Department, by the time that album came out, I was in a completely different point in my life. With this one I would say that this album is a complete and total snapshot of what my life looks like right now.’
Happiness is not slowing the writing either. ‘Writing songs is one of my favourite things, and I did kind of nurture a fear, early on in my career, that if I wasn’t ever truly miserable in my personal life, would I be able to write?
‘And I think that’s one of the reasons why I love this album so much, is, we were like catching lightning in a bottle, every time we were writing songs for this record, and I do think someone in your life that fuels you, everyone in my life is like ‘you’ve never been so yourself’, it’s an interesting thing, you’ve been you your whole life but we are different shades and ourselves at different volume levels, and this person came into my life and everyone’s like ‘you’ve never been so you’ and I think that comes through in music, people who fuel you, fuel every part of you, they make you walk taller, they make you present in a more vibrant way’.
