On August 13th, Swift broke a Guinness World Record for a YouTube livestream with a total of 1.3 million concurrent viewers after her appearance on her soon-to-be brother-in-law’s, Jason Kelce’s, podcast, New Heights.
Her Instagram post announcing her engagement also became the sixth most-liked post on the platform. It featured a photo of Swift and Kelce captioned, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” with the singer’s 2024 song “So High School” playing in the background, which has long been speculated to be about Kelce.
“I’m so happy for her engagement, she definitely deserves this,” comments junior Charlotte Berg, “I can’t wait for the album to come out too.”
The new album is planned to be released on October 3rd, 2025, with 12 songs, and has already been released for preorder on her website.
According to Swift, “It feels kind of energetically like how my life has felt. This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant. It felt like catching lightning in a bottle.”
Swift teased the album on August 11th on her Instagram page with a clip from her appearance on the podcast New Heights and a full orange makeover of her online platforms, inspired by the album’s color scheme.
The singer-songwriter confirmed that while the album has multiple variants for purchase, it will not have any extra song releases, unlike many of her recent albums and re-recordings, which featured surprise songs after their initial release.
“I wanted to do an album that was so focused on quality and theme and everything fitting together like a perfect puzzle, these 12 songs for my twelfth album. I think we achieved that, and I feel very happy about that,” Swift says.
The track list for The Life of a Showgirl has also been announced, having fans buzzing with theories over song titles such as “The Fate of Ophelia”, “Eldest Daughter”, and “Ruin The Friendship.” The album’s title track, “The Life of a Showgirl”, features Sabrina Carpenter, who just released her own album, Man’s Best Friend.
“I’ve heard the new album’s tracks supposedly line up with her past albums,” reveals sophomore Baylee Bolton, who’s been a fan since 2014. “For example, track five, ‘Eldest Daughter, ‘ corresponds to Taylor’s 5th album, 1989. The feature with Sabrina was hinted at in one of Sabrina’s music videos, too.”
For this new “era”, Taylor is switching out one of her co-producers of 10 years, Jack Antonoff, for the Swedish producers and songwriters Max Martin and Johan Shellback. Antonoff first worked with Swift in 2014 and was a “Mastermind” behind songs on several of her albums, from 1989 to The Tortured Poets’ Department.
As for Shellback and Martin, they previously worked on Swift’s albums Red, 1989, and Reputation, on some of her hits such as “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, “Blank Space”, and “…Ready For It?” They’ve also collaborated with many popular artists throughout their career, working with The Weeknd, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and Justin Timberlake.
In addition to her upcoming album, Swift’s engagement has fans everywhere celebrating that the pop star has finally found “the 1.”
The couple went public with their relationship in the fall of 2023 and haven’t shied away since. Kelce was a frequent attendee of Swift’s Eras Tour, and Swift has been seen hugging “Papa” Kelce, Travis’s father, after the Kansas City Chiefs’ win in the AFC Championship and at the 2024 Super Bowl and happily socializing with his family.
On her debut on New Heights, Swift described her and Kelce’s relationship as “something [she] had written songs about since [she] was a kid.”
Kelce hasn’t hesitated to support his fiancée’s success either, saying, “It’s just still so poetic in her melodies and her references and stuff. It’s just so much fun to listen to. I’ve been dancing throughout the house,” on the podcast discussing the album, calling it a “complete 180” from The Tortured Poets Department.