#Stars: Celebrated as a cultural pioneer, he leaves behind a legacy as a master musician, mentor, and beloved family figure.

The success of AI #music creators sparks debate on future of music #industry.

McCann’s songs span a range of genres, from indie-pop to electro-soul to country-rap. There’s just one crucial difference between McCann and traditional musicians.

“I have no musical talent at all,” he said. “I can’t sing, I can’t play instruments, and I have no musical background at all.”

McCann, 37, who has a background as a visual designer, started experimenting with AI to see if it could boost his creativity and “bring some of my lyrics to life.” Last month, he signed with independent record label Hallwood Media after one of his tracks racked up three million streams, in what’s billed as the first time a music label has inked a contract with an AI music creator.

McCann is an example of how ChatGPT-style AI song generation tools like Suno and Udio have spawned a wave of synthetic music. A movement most notably highlighted by a fictitious group, Velvet Sundown, that went viral even though all its songs, lyrics and album art were created by AI.

It fueled debate about AI’s role in music while raising fears about “AI slop” — automatically generated low quality mass produced content. It also cast a spotlight on AI song generators that are democratizing song making but threaten to disrupt the music industry.

Experts say generative AI is set to transform the music world. However, there are scant details, so far, on how it’s impacting the US$29.6 billion global recorded music market, which includes about $20 billion from streaming.

The most reliable figures come from music streaming service Deezer, which estimates that 18 per cent of songs uploaded to its platform every day are purely AI generated, though they only account for a tiny amount of total streams, hinting that few people are actually listening. Other, bigger streaming platforms like Spotify haven’t released any figures on AI music.

Udio declined to comment on how many users it has and how many songs it has generated. Suno did not respond to a request for comment. Both have free basic levels as well as pro and premium tiers that come with access to more advanced AI models.

“It’s a total boom. It’s a tsunami,” said Josh Antonuccio, director of Ohio University’s School of Media Arts and Studies. The amount of AI generated music “is just going to only exponentially increase” as young people grow up with AI and become more comfortable with it, he said.

Yet generative AI, with its ability to spit out seemingly unique content, has divided the music world, with musicians and industry groups complaining that recorded works are being exploited to train AI models that power song generation tools.

Record labels are trying to fend off the threat that AI music startups pose to their revenue streams even as they hope to tap into it for new earnings, while recording artists worry that it will devalue their creativity.

Three major record companies, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Records, filed lawsuits last year against Suno and Udio for copyright infringement. In June, the two sides also reportedly entered negotiations that could go beyond settling the lawsuits and set rules for how artists are paid when AI is used to remix their songs.

GEMA, a German royalty collection society, has sued Suno, accusing it of generating music similar to songs like “Mambo No. 5” by Lou Bega and “Forever Young” by Alphaville.

More than 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and Damon Albarn, released a silent album to protest proposed changes to U.K. laws on AI they fear would erode their creative control. Meanwhile, other artists, such as will.i.am, Timbaland and Imogen Heap, have embraced the technology.

Some users say the debate is just a rehash of old arguments about once-new technology that eventually became widely used, such as AutoTune, drum machines and synthesizers.

People complain “that you’re using a computer to do all the work for you. I don’t see it that way. I see it as any other tool that we have,” said Scott Smith, whose AI band, Pulse Empire, was inspired by 1980s British synthesizer-driven groups like New Order and Depeche Mode.

Smith, 56 and a semi-retired former U.S. Navy public affairs officer in Portland, Oregon, said “music producers have lots of tools in their arsenal” to enhance recordings that listeners aren’t aware of.

Like McCann, Smith never mastered a musical instrument. Both say they put lots of time and effort into crafting their music.

Once Smith gets inspiration, it takes him just 10 minutes to write the lyrics. But then he’ll spend as much as eight to nine hours generating different versions until the song “matches my vision.”

McCann said he’ll often create up to 100 different versions of a song by prompting and re-prompting the AI system before he’s satisfied.

AI song generators can churn out lyrics as well as music, but many experienced users prefer to write their own words.

“AI lyrics tend to come out quite cliche and quite boring,” McCann said.

Lukas Rams, a Philadelphia-area resident who makes songs for his AI band Sleeping With Wolves, said AI lyrics tend to be “extra corny” and not as creative as a human, but can help get the writing process started.

“It’ll do very basic rhyme schemes, and it’ll keep repeating the same structure,” said Rams, who writes his own words, sometimes while putting his kids to bed and waiting for them to fall asleep. “And then you’ll get words in there that are very telling of AI-generated lyrics, like ‘neon,’ anything with ‘shadows’.”

Rams used to play drums in high school bands and collaborated with his brother on their own songs, but work and family life started taking up more of his time.

Then he discovered AI, which he used to create three albums for Sleeping With Wolves. He’s been taking it seriously, making a CD jewel case with album art. He plans to post his songs, which combine metalcore and EDM, more widely online.

“I do want to start putting this up on YouTube or socials or distribution or whatever, just to have it out there,” Rams said. “I might as well, otherwise I’m literally the only person that hears this stuff.”

Experts say AI’s potential to let anyone come up with a hit song is poised to shake up the music industry’s production pipeline.

“Just think about what it used to cost to make a hit or make something that breaks,” Antonuccio said. “And that just keeps winnowing down from a major studio to a laptop to a bedroom. And now it’s like a text prompt — several text prompts.”

But he added that AI music is still in a “Wild West” phase because of the lack of legal clarity over copyright. He compared it to the legal battles more than two decades ago over file-sharing sites like Napster that heralded the transition from CDs to digital media and eventually paved the way for today’s music streaming services.

Creators hope AI, too, will eventually become a part of the mainstream music world.

“I think we’re entering a world where anyone, anywhere could make the next big hit,” said McCann. “As AI becomes more widely accepted among people as a musical art form, I think it opens up the possibility for AI music to be featured in charts.”

Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press

VENICE, Italy — Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi arrived at the Venice Film Festival Saturday for the world premiere of Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” the kickoff to what’s expected to be the film’s major awards season push.

Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein and Elordi is the monster in this adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, which del Toro has been dreaming about making for decades.

“It’s the movie that I’ve been in training for 30 years to do,” del Toro told The Associated Press recently.

A few hours before the premiere, del Toro said he feels like he’s in “postpartum depression” now that he’s completed the film, a gothic feast of sets.

Isaac said before they started making “Frankenstein,” del Toro told him, “I’m creating this banquet for you, you just have to show up and eat.”

“This film feels particularly personal,” Isaac added. ”I think ultimately it is about outsiders."

Elordi joined the production fairly late in the process, and threw himself into the childlike monster, who he didn’t find so hard to relate to.

“It’s a vessel that I could put every part of myself into,” Elordi said. “In so many ways the creature that is on screen in that movie is the purest form of myself, he’s more me than I am.”

There may be some disruption outside of the red carpet as an anti-war march is planned to take place in the evening, ending near the festival. Organizers hope to turn the spotlight to the war in Gaza.

The last time del Toro was at Venice was with “The Shape of Water” in 2017, which won the festival’s top prize that year before going on to pick up the best picture and best director Oscar in 2018. Netflix does not yet have a best picture winner in their arsenal, but is betting big on “Frankenstein.” Del Toro’s last film, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” won the streamer its first best animated film Oscar.

Like “The Shape of Water,” “Frankenstein” is up for the big awards at Venice, where it will be competing with films like Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Bugonia,”Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite,” Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice” and Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab.” Winners will be announced by the Alexander Payne-led jury on Sept. 6.

Netflix plans to release “Frankenstein” in theaters on Oct. 17, before it comes to streaming Nov. 7.

Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press

Dispatcher shakes it off after announcing Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement over scanner.

That appears to be how officers in the Lansing, Michigan, area learned about the superstar singer’s betrothal to Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce.

The official announcement, made in a five-photo joint post on Instagram, marks the fairytale culmination of a courtship that for two years has thrilled and fascinated millions around the world.

Joyful chaos ensued nationwide, with oddsmakers taking bets on when and where the celebrity couple will wed. Swifties, the pop star’s enormous and ardent fan base, can even wager on the flavour of the wedding cake.

Kansas City-based tax preparer H&R Block sent out a light-hearted email to staff, telling them they could head home early to check social media feeds and debate potential wedding playlists.

“Celebrate love. Speculate about the dress. Argue whether the reception will be held in KC or a castle in Europe,” the email said.

Matthew Pittman, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, hastily organized a skit before his social media class began Tuesday, pretending to cancel a test because of the engagement.

“I can’t focus. You all can’t focus. Class is cancelled, get outta here,” Pittman told the students.

Video shows the students grabbing backpacks and rushing for the door. By the end of class, the video had around 50,000 views and by dinner around 1 million. It was so convincing that some news outlets mistakenly reported that Pittman actually did call off class because of the engagement. He had to reassure a higher up at the university that he hadn’t.

“This is going to be like a royal wedding,” said Pittman, who has dozens of Swift’s songs on his running and workout playlist. “We don’t have a real king or queen or prince or princess, but we have this now. This is the joyous, happy love story. A lot of people need it.”

Jordan, the Ingham County, Michigan, dispatcher, said the last big event that she watched with co-workers was Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s 2018 nuptials. Now she thinks they might watch Swift and Kelce’s wedding together, especially after what happened.

After the first scanner flub, an officer informed her, “You had an open mic there,” and then deadpanned, “That’s great news about Taylor Swift.”

Jordan tried to fix the problem, but laughter erupted when she continued: “Dispatch. I’m clear. Yeah. Aren’t you happy about Taylor Swift?”

Jordan had been eagerly awaiting the news from the singer, whose hit song “Shake It Off” spoke to her. “We do a hard job, lots of dark things, so it’s kind of nice to be able to laugh a little,” she said.

Officers played along with the scanner mishap, one asking, “Well, give us some more gossip, at least.”

“It’s a big ring,” Jordan said.

“Best hot mic ever,” an officer declared.

Jordan has been ribbed ever since. “I had one ask me when I was planning to retire, and I said not soon enough.”

Heather Hollingsworth, The Associated Press

Emma Raducanu backs Carlos Alcaraz’s bold new buzz cut at US Open.

NEW YORK - Briton Emma Raducanu gave Carlos Alcaraz’s hairstyle her seal of approval at the U.S. Open on Wednesday after the Spaniard divided opinion with his dramatic new buzz cut earlier in the week.

Alcaraz’s close-cropped style was the talk of Flushing Meadows on Monday when the second seed outclassed Reilly Opelka in his opener, with fellow tennis players and fans online all weighing in.

Raducanu, whose decision to team up with Alcaraz in the U.S. Open’s revamped mixed doubles tournament sparked romance rumors between the pair last month, said that the 22-year-old former champion owned his new look.

“I think he pulls it off. If you own a haircut like that, then it can work,” Raducanu told reporters after reaching the third round with a 6-2 6-1 win over Janice Tjen.

“I think, you know, mixed field, but whatever he does it’s not going to affect what he does on the court. I’m just happy to see him having fun with whatever.”

Alcaraz said following his first-round victory that the new haircut was the result of his brother mishandling the clippers when he wanted a trim before the tournament.

(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in New York Editing by Toby Davis)

James Cameron on two decades of making ‘Avatar’ and the future he sees for movies.


NEW YORK — James Cameron recently turned 71 as he brought his third “Avatar” film, “Fire and Ash,” to the finish line.

Cameron first began developing “Avatar” more than 30 years ago. He started working on the first film in earnest 20 years ago. Production on “Fire and Ash,” which ran concurrently with 2022’s “The Way of Water,” got underway eight years ago.

By any measure, “Avatar” is one of the largest undertakings ever by a filmmaker. It’s maybe the only project that could make “Titanic” look like a modest one-off. Cameron has dedicated a huge chunk of his life to it. Now, as he prepares to unveil the latest chapter of his Na’vi opus on Dec. 19, Cameron is approaching what he calls a crossroads.

“As you get older you start to think of time in a slightly different way,” Cameron says from his 5,000-acre organic farm in New Zealand. “It’s not an infinite resource.”

Two more “Avatar” films are already written and have release dates, in 2029 and 2031. Right now, though, Cameron is focused on completing “Fire and Ash,” which is almost guaranteed to be the biggest movie of the fall. To get “Avatar” — a franchise already worth US$5.2 billion in worldwide tickets sales — back in the minds of moviegoers, “The Way of Water” will also be rereleased Oct. 3.

“As I told the brass at Disney, we’re right at the glide slope to land right on time for delivery,” Cameron says. “The first film was a nightmare. Movie two was hectic. But here, I keep having to pinch myself because it’s all going well. The film is strong.”

There may be no filmmaker more at the nexus of past and future blockbuster making than Cameron. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” will arrive as Hollywood is reconciling itself to a new theatrical normal. In a movie industry of shrinking ambition, “Avatar,” an original spectacle that once was the wave of the future, is already beginning to look like an endangered species.

In a recent interview, Cameron reflected on his history with “Avatar” and what’s next for him, including a planned adaptation of Charles Pellegrino’s “Ghosts of Hiroshima.” For Cameron, most of his work is likely to touch on one of what he calls “the big three”: Nuclear weapons, machine super intelligence and climate change.

“Avatar,” a family saga that grows more complicated and darker in “Fire and Ash,” relates to the latter. The films are environmental parables, set in a verdant faraway world. Sustainability, community, connection to nature — these are some of the pillars of Cameron’s life right now, in the movies and outside them.

“I’m just a humble movie farmer,” he says, smiling, “who’s also a farmer farmer.”

AP: When you decided to embark on “Avatar,” was it more likely that if you didn’t, you’d spend your time mostly away from movies, doing deep sea exploration and other things?

CAMERON: It was sort of: Do the “Avatar” saga or follow my interests more. I knew that “Avatar” would be all-consuming, and it has been. When I set down that path, a reasonable projection was eight to 10 years to get it all written and do movie two and movie three together and get them out. But it’s actually turned out to be more than that. It was a major commitment and decision to make for me as a life choice. But the “Avatar” movies reach people and they reach people with positive messaging. Not just positive about the environment but positive from the standpoint of humanity, empathy, spirituality, our connection to each other. And they’re beautiful. There’s a kind of magnetic draw into the film. It almost feels like it’s being pulled out of the audience’s dreams and subconscious state.

AP: “Avatar” began as a dream, didn’t it?

CAMERON: I was 19. I was in college and I had a very vivid dream of a bioluminescent forest with glowing moss that reacted to your feet and these little spinning lizards that floated around. It’s all in the movie, by the way. The reason it’s in the movie is because I got up and painted it. That later became the inspiration, just a few years later, for a science-fiction script. I said, “Hey I got this idea for a planet where everything glows at night.” We wrote that in and it never went away.

Years after that, when I was the CEO of Digital Domain, I wanted to push Digital Domain to be able to create CG worlds, CG humanoid creatures using performance capture. I just threw the kitchen sink into the treatment called “Avatar.” So it came from almost a Machiavellian reason. I was trying to drive a business model for the development of CG. Of course, the answer I got from my technical team was: “We are not ready to make this film. We may not be ready for years.” But it still served that inspirational purpose, which was: Well, how do we get ready?

AP: “Ghosts of Hiroshima” would be your first non-“Avatar” feature as director since “Titanic” in 1997. What do you think when you hear that?

CAMERON: It’s interesting. As I said earlier, “Avatar” has been all-consuming. In the process, we’ve developed many new technologies. I enjoy the day-to-day process with a team. I’ve surrounded myself with really intelligent, really creative people who enjoy the process of the world building. We enjoy leveling up in our working process. It’s a long, steady state thing where I’m not having to create a new startup, build a team and then disband that team — the way the movies cycled for me back in the ’80s and ’90s. Now, I’m at a kind of a crossroads where I have to decide if I want to keep doing this.

Four and five are written. If we’re as successful as we might potentially be, I’m sure the films will continue. The question for me will be: Do I direct them both? Do I direct one of them? At what point do I pass the baton? How pervasive do I want it to be in my life?

AP: When do you think you’ll decide?

CAMERON: I’m not going to make any decisions about that until probably Q2 of next year, when the dust has settled. And there are also new technologies to consider. Generative AI is upon us. It’s going to transform the film business. Does that make our work flow easier? Can I make “Avatar” movies more quickly? That would be a big factor for me.

AP: You’ve said the movie industry needs to use technological advances to bring down budgets. Is that the way forward?

CAMERON: The theatrical business is dwindling. Hopefully it doesn’t continue to dwindle. Right now, it’s plateaued at about 30 per cent down from 2019 levels. Let’s hope it doesn’t get cannibalized more. In fact, let’s hope we can bring some of that magic back. But the only way to keep that magic alive and strengthen it is to make the kinds of movies people feel they need to see in a movie theater. Unfortunately, those movies are not getting greenlit as much as they used to be because studios can’t afford them. Or they can only afford to take the risk on certain blue chip stocks, so it doesn’t allow new IP to get launched. It doesn’t allow new filmmakers to come into those genres.

I’d like to see the cost of VFX artists come down. VFX artists get scared and say, “Oh, I’m going to be out of a job.” I’m like, “No, the way you’re going to be out of a job is if trends continue and we just don’t make these kinds of movies anymore.” If you develop these tools or learn these tools, then your throughpoint will be quicker and that will bring the cost of productions down, and studios will be encouraged to make more and more of these types of films. To me, that’s a virtuous cycle that we need to manifest. We need to make that happen or I think theatrical might never return.

AP: I do sometimes feel watching movies like “Lawrence of Arabia” or “Titanic” that these are monuments of a bygone era.

CAMERON: I would love to think that we’ve been building a new monument for the last three or four years. And I think there will always be a market for the new monument builds. The streamers kind of cannibalized the theatrical market with the promise of a lot of money to attract top filmmakers and top casts, and then that money has all retrenched back. The budgets aren’t there. Everything is starting to look like it’s driving toward a mediocrity. Everything starts to look to me like a typical network procedural, or at least that could be an end point within just a couple years.

Unfortunately, the economics of streaming expanded rapidly and then contracted rapidly. Now, we’re betwixt and between models. It’s cannibalized theatrical and, at the same time, it’s not delivering the budgets to do the kind of imaginative, phantasmagorical filmmaking.

AP: “Avatar” has basically unfolded as a family saga. It seems like in these films, what you’re most interested is spirituality and human connection.

CAMERON: The “Avatar” films, and certainly the new one “Fire and Ash,” do exactly the same thing. In a way, they cast us in a good light. The humans in the story are the bad guys. But really what it’s saying is that the attributes we value — our interpersonal and intercommunity connections, our spirituality, our empathy — in the movies they reside in the Na’vi. But of course we as the audience take the Na’vi’s side. So they seem a kind of aspirational, better version of us. In a sense, it’s still empowering and reinforcing certain values and ethics and morals.

Now, it’s a little more challenging in movie three because we show Na’vi who have kind of fallen from grace and are adversarial with other Na’vi. I think one of the reasons “Avatar” has been successful in all markets around the world is because everybody is in a family or wishes they were in a family. They have their ties. They have their tribes. They have their connections. And that’s what these films are about. What would you risk everything for?

AP: Does that apply to “Ghosts of Hiroshima” as well? You’ve spoken about it like a tragedy of disconnection.

CAMERON: “Ghosts of Hiroshima” is about testing our empathy boundaries. Somebody needed to be empathetic to the fact that a nuclear weapon was going to be used against human beings. And I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of should the bombs have been dropped, who was right, who was wrong. But I do want to remind people of what these weapons are capable of doing against targets. It’s unfathomable.

There were three bombs in 1945. One was used as a test and two against people. There are now 12,000 and they range in power from 100 to over 200 times the energy that was generated at either one of those two bombings. We’re in a very precarious world right now. And because of all the geopolitical challenges internationally — more nuclear powers, more saber rattling, unaccountable leadership in #Russia and #America right now — I think we’re in as precarious a situation as we were in the Cuban missile crisis era.

Jake Coyle, The Associated Press

#Taylor Swift and #Travis Kelce’s love story, from friendship bracelets to engagement rings.

It started with a friendship bracelet. It ended with an engagement ring. Taylor Swift, the pop superstar, and Travis Kelce, the football champion, are engaged.

The fiances, both 35, announced the news in a joint post on Instagram on Tuesday. It is the latest chapter in the couple’s love story, one that has spanned two years, two Super Bowls, an album announcement and the highest-grossing tour of all time.

Here is a look at some of the major events in their relationship.
A friendship bracelet, undelivered

It started, fittingly, with a friendship bracelet.

It was way back in July 2023 that Kelce attended Swift’s Eras concert at Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs play.

After, on his “New Heights” podcast with brother Jason Kelce, he professed to being disappointed — well, his word was “butthurt” — that he couldn’t meet Swift and present her with a bracelet with his phone number on it.

“She doesn’t meet anybody, or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personal,” he quipped. The podcast asked on Instagram: “Anyone know how to get a bracelet to @taylorswift13? … asking for a friend.”
Drivin’ the getaway car

But by that September, Kelce was hinting his efforts had achieved some success. He declined to elaborate amid speculation, telling an interviewer: “It is what it is.”

Clearly, though, something was happening. Soon, Kelce revealed he’d invited Swift to a game at Arrowhead. “I threw the ball in her court,” he said on another talk show.

Swift took Kelce up on his offer, appearing for all the world to see at the Chiefs-Bears game, cheering next to his mom, Donna Kelce. The two left the stadium in Kelce’s purple Chevelle “getaway car” — forgive the pun, but Kelce himself used it.

“Pretty ballsy,” Kelce said a few days later of Swift’s appearance, adding how much he loved seeing her cheer next to his mother.

It was the launch of a long series of appearances by Swift at Chiefs games. There was some online angst over whether Swift was distracting from football — while the NFL itself capitalized on her fandom. A day after the flashy Los Angeles premiere of her “Taylor Swift: Eras Tour” movie, she was back at Arrowhead.
Karma is the guy on the Chiefs

And now it was time for Kelce to be the adoring fan. In November 2023, Swift kicked off the international leg of her Eras tour, beginning in Argentina, where she changed the lyrics of “Karma” to salute her beau. “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs, coming straight home to me,” she sang. Scott Swift, next to a beaming Kelce, applauded his daughter’s new flame.

When Time magazine announced its person of the year, few were surprised. In the Time interview, Swift spoke about her relationship.

“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” Swift said, adding that they’d already been a couple before that first Chiefs game cameo.

Soon after, things were heating up on the football field — meaning the Chiefs were heading to the Super Bowl. At the AFC championship game, the couple made it clear they were fine with whatever attention was coming their way. In the middle of the field in Baltimore, after the Chiefs beat the Ravens, Swift and Kelce kissed. “I love you,” Kelce said. “So much it’s not funny.”
A race across nine time zones

There was one game left. Fans wondered: How would Swift make it from her Tokyo shows to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas?

“This week is truly the best kind of chaos,” Swift posted on Instagram.

Chaos indeed. In one week of February 2024, Swift attended the Grammys in Los Angeles, jetted to Tokyo for four concerts, then jumped back onto her private plane to make the Super Bowl with time to spare. To get there, she crossed nine time zones and the international dateline.

“She’s rewriting the history books herself,” Kelce said a day after the Grammys, where Swift had won album of the year for a record fourth time. “I told her I’ll have to hold up my end of the bargain and come home with hardware, too.”

And he did. The two kissed on the field again after the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers, Swift in her “87” necklace.
On the road again

Within days, Swift was on the road again, with Kelce joining her in Australia for some koala-cuddling at the zoo.

In Paris, Swift introduced a section from “The Tortured Poets Department,” her new album. Fans wondered if Kelce had made his way into some of its lyrics — like “You knew what you wanted and, boy, you got her,” from “So High School.”

But the highlight came in June, during a celebrity-packed set of concerts in London. There, Kelce made his Eras stage debut, donning a tuxedo and top hat and carrying Swift in his arms during a choreographed bit before “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

“I’m still cracking up/swooning,” Swift wrote later on Instagram.
‘Happiness and fun and magic’

As for Kelce, he spoke with pride about the relationship, noting on the “Bussin’ with the Boys” podcast that he had no desire to hide anything.

“That’s my girl,” he said. “That’s my lady. I’m proud of that.”

Swift echoed that emotion when she accepted an MTV Video Music Award last September, shouting out “my boyfriend Travis” in her speech.

“Everything this man touches turns to happiness and fun and magic,” she said.
‘I am just a jamoke supporting his girlfriend’

Throughout the summer and fall of 2024, Kelce attended a number of Swift’s remaining tour dates and mentioned her on “New Heights,” officially referring to her as “his girlfriend” in a July episode.

“She is every bit of what everyone makes her out to be. She’s so awesome. Some of these people you meet, and you’re just like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’” he said. “You are unbelievable, your talent is unbelievable, how you present yourself is unbelievable and I am just a jamoke supporting his girlfriend.”

Swift, too, was regularly photographed attending Kelce’s games — including the 2025 Super Bowl.
Lights, camera, action, football

A month post-Super Bowl, the couple made their red-carpet debut at the Tight End University in June, an annual three-day training summit founded by Kelce, George Kittle and Greg Olsen.

They were then spotted at Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville, where Swift hopped on stage to perform “Shake it Off” with country singer Kane Brown. For fans, it marked yet another moment of the couple showing very public support and admiration for one another.
‘The Life of a Showgirl’

A couple that collaborates together, stays together.

Swift announced her highly anticipated 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” in mid-August and included Kelce in the rollout. It began with a tease from “New Heights,” which later revealed Swift would appear in an episode the following day.

Swift told the Kelce brothers she wanted to show them something, revealing a mint-green briefcase that featured her initials in orange. Jason Kelce asked what was in it, prompting her to pull out a vinyl record.
‘Our jobs are very similar’

In the two-hour “New Heights” episode featuring Swift, she went into detail about the pair’s summer following the Super Bowl. She said she spent considerable time in Florida with Travis Kelce. She also said “our jobs are very similar”: They revolve around entertaining “people for three hours in NFL stadiums.”

On her self-described “favorite podcast,” Swift credited “New Heights” for getting her a boyfriend. “This is sort of what I’ve been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager,” she said of their romance.

And Kelce credited the tour for, well, getting him a girlfriend. “I see you on that stage and see how you can get an entire stadium going, and then I get you in a room and it’s like I’ve known you forever,” he said. “It’s the easiest conversation I ever had, and it was just so much fun that it knocked my socks off.”
Jock, meet writer

In late August, in a five-photo carousel shared to both Swift and Kelce’s official Instagram accounts, the couple announced their engagement. “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” she wrote in her caption.

It’s unclear when and where the two got engaged.

Jocelyn Noveck And Maria Sherman, The Associated Press

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