This weekend felt hilariously nostalgic. Six months ago we could almost count on a Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce sighting during the NFL regular season, also known as season one of TNT. They’ve been much more quiet during season two, quite smartly, so their joint appearance at the first weekend of Coachella 2024 was giving nostalgia, absurdly. This couple is barely a year old, nobody needs to be wistful about them from the fall of 2023 in the spring of 2024. And yet… with all these adorable TNT sightings at Coachella, it does feel like a kinda throwback. 

 

Taylor and Travis showed up on Saturday and were seen at several sets – dancing, kissing, hanging out with Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan, and singing to Taylor’s own songs on another artist’s stage: 

@noahbrox

Taylor swift & travis kelce vibing to ice spice during her Coachella set 😭 #icespice #spicecabinet #taylorswift #traviskelce #coachella #travisandtaylor #taylorswift #icespicecult

♬ original sound - Noah Brox
 

And this is going viral – Travis lifting her so she could see better. 

 

You will note she’s wearing a New Heights baseball cap, so a little promotion for her boyfriend’s pod, though it is green and since I’m Chinese, I died a little inside when I saw it because green hats are bad luck for cuckoldry. But let’s not worry about this – what’s Chinese superstition up against Taylor Swift? 

 

This was Taylor’s first time at Coachella since 2016. Back then she was dating Calvin Harris who was performing there just ahead of the release of his collaboration “This Is What You Came For” with Rihanna. And the reason that’s significant is because, as we know now, Taylor co-wrote the song with him under a pseudonym which was revealed when they broke up and one of the narratives around their split was whether or not he disrespected her, artist to artist. Enter Tom Hiddleston, the “Getaway Car”. 

Coachella, really, is where that whole saga started, as Taylor – as least going by her song lyrics – was looking for a way out of the relationship with Calvin Harris. 

 

Now, all these years later, she’s back at Coachella with a football player, if you can believe it, who is giving the performance of being her biggest fan, of all the men she’s ever dated. And their relationship has basically become monoculture. But none of this hits the way it does if you don’t follow celebrity gossip. The day ones are the people who appreciate this story arc. 

Let’s talk about work now. Because we’re now just three days from the release of The Tortured Poets Department and she’s out here at Coachella all like that’s not the thing that the music industry is bracing itself for. Coachella Weekend two starts just a few hours after the Tortured Poets will be unleashed. Do you think Taylor will show up next weekend, a surprise guest on someone else’s stage, for one of the biggest heatscore/focus-pulls the festival has ever seen? She has several friends who happen to be performing there. Lana Del Rey, Sabrina Carpenter, who opened for her on tour, so any criticism that might be leveled would be neutralised by the fact that being on Taylor’s tour greatly increased Sabrina’s profile; or of course Bleachers, Jack Antonoff’s band, since there is no doubt that Jack worked on at least one if not more of these upcoming tracks. 

The Bleachers set would be the most obvious option. Is it going to happen or nah? Squawk your prediction! (app link here)