Stop Being a Curmudgeon About Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's Wedding

In 2023, following a hush-hush breakup with longtime partner Joe Alwyn, then a highly publicized, fan-criticized courtship with 1975 frontman Matty Healy, Taylor Swift penned what should be remembered as the saddest song of her career.

In “The Prophecy,” a four-minute lament at the end of 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, the 36-year-old pop star for the first time acknowledges that even she is sick of this turmoil. Even she is sick of wanting one thing so badly and failing to achieve it.

That thing, of course, is love.

"Please I've been on my knees / Change the prophecy / Don't want money / Just someone who wants my company," she pleads. “Let it once be me / Who do I have to speak to / About if they can redo the prophecy?"

Swift sings the lyrics, directed at the unnamed higher power in charge of her fate, with an almost resigned futility, a tragic disbelief permeating every note. Though she is asking for something to change, the defeated tone with which she croons suggests she holds no illusions that her wish will be fulfilled.

She believes she is destined to be alone. Why else would another relationship fail? Why else would another man leave? Indeed, her fate was prophesied long ago; she is meant to remain a loveless, love-obsessed woman, stuck forever contending with this cruel irony. Such is her lot in life. Such is, as the song contends, the prophecy.

It is one of her more humanizing pieces of work. Yes, Swift has always made her A-list breakups appear shockingly relatable, as though breaking up with an Oscar-nominated actor is the same as dumping your 11th-grade lab partner, but she rarely sounds as crestfallen. She sings here with no anger to explore, no resentment to lay bare. Instead, a billionaire pop star is brought to her knees, begging, perhaps pathetically so, for a man. It’s as close to a peek inside her head as listeners have had in years.

This is the backdrop against which Swift meets Travis Kelce, whom she will marry on Friday at Madison Square Garden.

Just as she is ready to give up, he appears, heart in his hands. And for what feels like the first time in her life, she is openly and publicly pursued. She is loudly revered by her partner. She is comfortable asking to be in the spotlight. There is an end in sight, and the girl who never managed to find true love—who made a career out of her search for it, in fact—would finally be able to rest.

Yes, it is a bit trite. For one, the whole thing reads like a fairytale. The damsel in distress is saved by the bearded hunk, who happens to work in a place known as Chiefs Kingdom? Give me a break. If I wanted to watch a Disney movie, I’d put on Cinderella. Moreover, Swift is one of the most successful individuals on the planet—you’re telling me she needs a man to feel whole? What kind of message does that send?

Truthfully, however, both of those takes are—let’s face it—boring, no fun and unfair. Are you really so jaded as to root against a feel-good moment? Why not enjoy a good love story when you see one? Why not celebrate when the woman single-handedly responsible for shepherding the Earth’s female population through breakup after breakup finally finds the one? And why not extol when the union is made official, especially when we know just how badly she wanted it?

For years, the public has enjoyed the fruits of Taylor Swift’s romantic failures. More than any other artist, her heartache was our gain. We have watched her crash and burn, then rise from the lovelorn ashes. We have laughed with and at her. We have cried to her and for her. She was always the bridesmaid, and never the bride.

Now, she has finally found the treasure that long eluded her, the one she so desperately craved. In honor of all she has already given us, can’t we just cheers to that?

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