Taylor Swift’s ‘The Albatross’ Lyrics Seemingly Reveal the Warnings Travis Kelce Got About Her

Taylor Swift gave her boyfriend Travis Kelce two not-so-subtle love songs on The Tortured Poets Department: “The Alchemy” and “So High School.” However, as fans spent more time listening to Swift’s new album over the weekend, some theorized that Swift snuck in a third track about Kelce and his experience dating her with “The Albatross.”

“The Albatross” explores the public stigma of being attached to Swift, who seem to cast herself and her fame as the albatross around her partner’s neck.

That spotlight was in part what caused her six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn to end, multiple sources said following their spring 2023 breakup. One source told People on April 10, 2023, “Joe has struggled with Taylor’s level of fame and the attention from the public. The differences in their personalities have also become harder to ignore after years together. They’ve grown apart.”

Swift begins “The Albatross” recounting the warnings her partner received about her—in this case, seemingly Kelce. She then describes his decision to forge ahead despite them: “Wise men once said / ‘Wild winds are death to the candle’ / A rose by any other name is a scandal / Cautions issued, he stood / Shooting the messengers / They tried to warn him about her.”

She ends the song by portraying those same “wise men” (perhaps the public? or people who have her partner’s ear?) turning on him—and her helping save him. She sings, “The devil that you know / Looks now more like an angel / I’m the life you chose / And all this terrible danger.”

Kelce has spoken multiple times about choosing to be Swift’s boyfriend, despite the harsh spotlight that comes with it. “Cautions issued,” as Swift sings in the first verse, he has literally “stood” his ground.

The Kansas City Chiefs tight end told WSJ magazine in November, “Obviously I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them…. I’ve never dealt with it. But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it…. The scrutiny she gets, how much she has a magnifying glass on her, every single day, paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant she goes to, after every flight she gets off, and she’s just living, enjoying life. When she acts like that I better not be the one acting all strange.”

Kelce revisited the topic in January at a press conference ahead of the Super Bowl: “As long as we’re happy, we can’t listen to anything that’s outside noise. That’s all that matters.”

He added: “I brought this upon myself, and I do enjoy having fun with it all, and the biggest thing is making sure my focus is right here in this building.”

Kelce said on an April episode of his podcast, New Heights, that being Swift’s partner is “fun.” “I’m having a blast in life, baby, just flying high,” he said. “Enjoying it all. Bringing new lives into the football world, opening the football world up to new things.”