Taylor Swift is set to walk down the aisle to marry fiancé Travis Kelce, but her love life has been a bit of rollercoaster until now and includes a savage breakup
She may be set to marry the man of her dreams, but Taylor’s slow path to Travis has been notoriously bumpy. As reflected in her song lyrics, she has frequently been broken-hearted and once called herself “ridiculously stupid” when it comes to falling in love. “So much of her music has been about past relationships,” says PR and communications expert Lynn Carratt. “Her songs have traced her emotional journey in real time, and fans have always bought into that. Her relationships are embedded in her music for listeners to decode, and rather than being a celebrity who is forever talking about her love life in the public eye, she instead creates and controls her own narrative around it.”
Just a few weeks before Taylor and Travis got together, she split from The 1975 rocker Matty Healy, who she first met almost a decade earlier at one of his gigs. They were repeatedly linked over the years, but the rumours finally became a reality in May 2023 when Cheshire-born Matty attended three of Taylor’s Eras shows in Nashville. On one occasion, he was seen clutching a hand to his heart as she performed, and they were later seen holding hands while out for dinner with Taylor’s long-term collaborator Jack Antonoff. They were snapped out together in New York too, and Matty also attended an Eras show in Philadelphia with Taylor’s dad Scott.
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But while the fling reportedly ended after just a month, it was still said to have been intense, and Taylor sang about Matty on her 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department. In fact, he was said to have inspired its name, with the title track concerning his love of typewriters. “You left your typewriter at my apartment / Straight from the Tortured Poets Department,” she sang. Meanwhile, the track Loml was also thought to have been about Matty, with lines like, “It was legendary / It was momentary / It was unnecessary / Should’ve let it stay buried.”
Prior to Matty, Taylor’s six-year romance with British actor Joe Alwyn was her longest to date. It was thought they first met at the Met Gala in 2016, but they kept things strictly off-radar, with Taylor once saying, “Our relationship isn’t up for discussion.” In a diary entry that accompanied her 2019 album Lover , she wrote of their time “hiding out in London”, adding, “We have been together and no one has found out for three months now.”
The album included the song London Boy , in which she sang about cosy trips to Camden Market and Soho, while she confirmed to fans that earlier song Gorgeous was also about the Conversations W ith Friends star. Joe even made a fleeting appearance in Taylor’s Miss Americana documentary, and he co-wrote the songs Exile and Betty on her album Folklore , under the pseudonym of William Bowery.
After the pair spent much of lockdown in the capital together, rumours of an engagement swirled, and there were suggestions they had tied the knot when she wore a wedding gown in her video for Willow . But in April 2023, the pair split, with friends blaming “differences in their personalities” as well as the intense pressures of fame.
Unsurprisingly, Joe’s presence was felt on The Tortured Poets Department , with songs like So Long, London referencing Taylor’s pain at the end of their time together. “The fact Taylor writes about relationships in her music makes it so relatable,” says author Annie Zaleski, who explored the meaning of more than 250 tracks in her book, Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind The Songs .
“She’s been very honest and vulnerable about where she’s at, and fans can say, ‘I’ve gone through that as well.’ Her music is very human and empathetic, and shows how life can be difficult. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, even for Taylor.”
Before dating Joe, Taylor had a 15-month relationship with Scottish DJ Calvin Harris, but their amicable split in June 2016 soured when she moved on with the actor Tom Hiddleston. A fight over songwriting credits saw Calvin claim Taylor and her team were trying to “make him look bad”, and her subsequent song Getaway Car was seen as a revenge shot, with lines like “I wanted to leave him / I needed a reason.”
Her whirlwind fling with Marvel star Tom then sparked a media frenzy, but after he famously wore an ‘I HEART TS’ T-shirt on the beach, Taylor felt it had all become too public and #HiddleSwift was officially over. The relationship was also shrouded in claims it had been a PR stunt, but that was refuted. “Of course it was real,” Tom said in response to the doubters. “We had the best time.”
Another much-hyped but short-lived romance came with former One Direction singer Harry Styles, who Taylor first met at the 2012 Kid’s Choice Awards. The pair were affectionately dubbed ‘Haylor’ by fans, but after around a month of dating it ended in early 2013, with Taylor admitting her subsequent song Style was about “one of those relationships that’s always a bit off”. But the pair seemed on good terms as they bumped into each other at the 2021 Grammys, and Harry once said of their time together, “It was a learning experience for sure.”
Of course, Taylor’s most famous breakup anthem is We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together , and the track was widely assumed to concern her on-off dalliance with actor Jake Gyllenhaal. He reportedly broke Taylor’s heart just as she turned 21. When they split in 2010 it gave rise to the mysterious red scarf in her song All Too Well – widely viewed as an emblem of devastating lost love.
Taylor also had other brief romances with Twilight actor Taylor Lautner and musician John Mayer, while she once revealed that singer Joe Jonas dumped her over the phone after three months of dating in 2008. “I looked at the call log – it was like 27 seconds. That’s got to be a record,” she said. That split resulted in several songs on her album Fearless , including Forever & Always, with savage lyrics that seemed to refer to Joe as a “scared little boy”.
Meanwhile, Travis has had some celebrity relationships of his own, with one former flame Maya Benberry winning his heart on his US reality show Catching Kelce . In the series, 50 contestants from across the US vied to snare Travis, and he and Maya dated briefly in 2016 before going their separate ways. He also had an on-off romance with sports journalist and influencer Kayla Nicole for several years, but they broke up for good in May 2022. Travis was then linked to Access Hollywood presenter Zuri Hall in 2023, but their relationship was never confirmed.
But while Taylor and Travis have found happiness together, it’s safe to assume the singer won’t stop writing sad songs in future. “Being happy brings different sources of melancholy,” adds Annie. “She’s often written about the pain of growing up and her own insecurities, and I think she will still want her music to convey the full range of human experience.”
Source: Mirror
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