For better or for worse, Taylor Swift’s “squad” has become just as much a part of her brand as “writing about boyfriends” or “cats” or “trying too hard.” And as annoying as it must be to have all of your interactions with your friends be misinterpreted as some sort of Illuminati power play, bringing (white) women together to bolster their positions in the entertainment industry, it’s also not that far from that. Over the years, and especially since her mission to re-record six albums gave her (and publicist Tree Paine) new authority over her narratives and who she allowed in them, the squad has transformed, taken on new members, and let many, many go. From Folklore to Midnights, Swift leaned into her ultravisibility and started choosing her friends wisely — or, at least, intentionally. Since her last four new albums and four Taylor’s Versions, she has streamlined the main characters in her life, seemingly downsizing roles for Lena Dunham and Todrick Hall and leaving no room for Karlie Kloss, Dianna Agron, Cazzie David, and several blonde models including Martha Hunt. Pop stars like Katy Perry, Camila Cabello, and Lorde might have been demoted. Her closest and oldest friends, though, have appeared to rally around her.
Returning players include Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid, Jack Antonoff, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Zoë Kravitz, Cara Delevingne, Lily Aldridge, stylist Ashley Avignone, and the Haim sisters. Strategically, newcomers are either professionally tied to Swift or personally tied to one of her besties (i.e., once removed). These include significant others like Bradley Cooper, Robert Pattinson, Channing Tatum, and Barry Keoghan as well as friends-of-friends Laura Dern, Greta Gerwig, and Shawn Levy. While most of the new girl friends she’s made are her tour openers or collaborators, feud rumors persist, namely between her and Olivia Rodrigo, the biggest Taylor Swift fan with a No. 1 song besides Taylor Swift. Finally, there are ex-boyfriends, such as Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy, and her current boyfriend, Travis Kelce, reliably generating search interest. With the arrival of her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, revisit the evolution of Taylor Swift’s big ol’ happy squad. Everyone has their roles. This celebrity thing only works if we all play along.
September 2008: Katy Perry and Taylor Swift meet at the VMAs right as Taylor’s stardom is about to take off. Surely they’ll be friends forever!
2008: Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez meet while dating two-thirds of the Jonas Brothers. Taylor was dating Joe, Selena was dating Nick, and although those relationships didn’t make it, their friendship did.
September 13, 2009: A day that the world will never forget. Kanye West jumps onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards and steals the mic from Taylor Swift. You didn’t need a reminder, but pocket that for later anyway.
April 15, 2010: Katy Perry and Taylor Swift perform “Hot n Cold” together. Pals!
2012: Taylor meets Ed Sheeran through their management. It’s a collab made in heaven, although their first song together, “Everything Has Changed,” won’t be out until later that year. Welcome, Ed, the first male member of the squad.
January 17, 2012: The pop star tells Vogue that she wants to bake cookies with Karlie Kloss, then Kushner-less. Karlie is happy to! Fans almost instantaneously create archives of content all about Karlie and Taylor falling in love.
August 22, 2012: Lena Dunham tweets all about how much she loves Taylor’s music. Taylor responds saying she loves Girls, which is maybe when we all should’ve predicted the performative clusterfuck that is the Lover era.
Also, Katy Perry and John Mayer (a.k.a. Taylor’s ex, a.k.a the John in “Dear John”) begin an on-again, off-again relationship that lasts two years.
October 22, 2012: When Red comes out, the liner notes have a secret message: “ASHLEY DIANNA CLAIRE SELENA.” Ashley Avignone, her stylist; Dianna Agron (Glee); her hometown BFF Claire Winter Kislinger; and Selena Gomez all get a little thank-you.
February 10, 2013: Lena Dunham gets her wish. She and Taylor hang at the Grammys and its special and lovely, and who invited Lena Dunham to Beyoncé’s Grammys? 2013 was so weird. Even weirder: Katy Perry attended with her then-boyfriend John Mayer. Just BFF things!
March 16, 2013: MTV asks Haim who they think Taylor Swift should date next. (She’s just come away from her fling with One Direction’s Harry Styles.) “T.T. Swift, don’t date someone else,” Alana Haim replies. “Come out with us, and we will party, and we will be together as girls and be merry and we don’t need guys.”
November 12, 2013: Lorde & Taylor grab Shake Shack together. To be honest, this is an ideal hang. Crinkle-cut fries, Madison Square Park on a crisp fall day? Sold. This isn’t the first time they’ve hung out, though. Taylor sent Lorde flowers after a performance, and they hung out after the Grammys earlier that year.
November 13, 2013: While taping the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, Taylor hangs out with Cara Delevingne, Lily Aldridge, and Martha Hunt. Lily and Taylor had actually already met at a Kings of Leon concert. We won’t be commenting.
November 7, 2013: During this time, the Aramis and Porthos to Taylor’s D’Artagnan were having an indirect feud. Lorde thought Selena’s “Come and Get It” was objectifying women. Selena highly disagreed. To be fair, no one really knew what feminism was until Beyoncé explained it at the 2014 VMAs.
December 7, 2013: Just ahead of the fashion show’s air date, Martha Hunt shares a snap of Taylor.
December 13, 2013: Taylor celebrates her 24th birthday in Melbourne with Lorde. There’s a weekend of events, including a dinner and a garden party.
February 6, 2014: Taylor, Cara, and Ed have a little jam sesh at the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom’s house. Taylor shared the moment on Instagram, but it’s since been deleted, perhaps a victim of the Reputation rebrand. So many men lost.
March 2, 2014: Taylor Swift meets Gigi Hadid for the first time at a Harvey Weinstein Oscars party. Yikes all around.
March 5, 2014: On their way up California’s coast, Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift take a pit stop at the beach to enshrine their love. How many fan fictions has this photo graced?
July 4, 2014: Taylor throws her very first Fourth of July party at her home in Rhode Island. History is made. Lena Dunham attends.
August 23, 2014: Taylor credits Lena Dunham with her feminist awakening (as if she wasn’t at the 2014 VMAs when Beyoncé spelled it out with her ass). “Becoming friends with Lena — without her preaching to me, but just seeing why she believes what she believes, why she says what she says, why she stands for what she stands for — has made me realize that I’ve been taking a feminist stance without actually saying so,” she explains to The Guardian. Sounds almost exactly like what she recently told Vogue about her relationship to LGBTQ+ community.
September 8, 2014: Rolling Stone takes a tour of Swift’s home. Inside one of four bedrooms, there’s Karlie Kloss’s favorite Whole Foods snacks and a rack of vintage nightgowns that Taylor and Lena Dunham wear all day long. Okay, Little Women.
Taylor also opens up about the “mysterious” celebrity she’s feuding with. “She did something so horrible,” Swift says. “I was like, ‘Oh, we’re just straight-up enemies.’ And it wasn’t even about a guy! It had to do with business. She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me. And I’m surprisingly non-confrontational — you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So now I have to avoid her. It’s awkward, and I don’t like it.”
September 9, 2014:
October 27, 2014: Taylor Swift’s fifth album, 1989, comes out. The deluxe edition comes with a bonus song, “You Are in Love,” co-written by Jack Antonoff, Lena Dunham’s then-boyfriend. Dunham calls it her “someday wedding song.” And this is why we don’t count chickens before they hatch, people.
October 30, 2014: Karlie and Taylor crack open a cold one courtside at a Knicks game.
December 13, 2014: Taylor Swift’s 25th birthday party is attended by Karlie Kloss, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Haim, among others.
January 24, 2015: Haim and Taylor jet off to Maui.
February 13, 2015: Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift cover Vogue together. That’s an unbreakable bond, and yet.
March 4, 2015: Taylor Swift kindly throws newcomer and longtime fan Camila Cabello a birthday party! Haim and Selena are there.
April 30, 2015: Lorde holds Taylor Swift’s foot and the internet is like … “What?”
May 17, 2015: The Bad Blood music video comes out. It’s an obvious dig at Katy Perry, but truly that’s not even the remarkable part. It’s that Taylor Swift got Mariska Hargitay to be in a music video. Notably, the only Real Squad Members are Selena Gomez, Cara Delevingne, Martha Hunt, Karlie Kloss, Gigi Hadid, Lily Aldridge, and Lena Dunham. Selena Gomez plays the villain, wearing a blunt black bob that looks oddly like a certain other pop star.
June 27, 2015: Martha Hunt, Kendall Jenner, Serena Williams, Taylor Swift, Karlie Kloss, Gigi Hadid, and Cara Delevingne take the stage with Taylor at her concert in London.
July 3, 2015: This year’s Fourth of July party includes Martha Hunt, Haim, Ed Sheeran, and Gigi Hadid! Gigi is currently dating Taylor’s ex, Joe Jonas, so he and Nick come along, too.
September 21, 2015: YouTuber Todrick Hall uploads a cover medley of four Taylor Swift songs. She finds it, loves it, and they become good friends.
November 15, 2015: Kendall Jenner drinks bird saliva instead of answering which Taylor Swift squad member she likes the least. Thanks, James Corden.
February 11, 2016: Karlie Kloss and Gigi Hadid attend the Yeezy Season 3 fashion show. Karlie posts, then deletes, a photo of her Yeezy sneakers. Gigi tweets that just because she was at Kanye West’s fashion show where they played that Kanye West song that features a lyric her friend claims she isn’t comfortable with doesn’t mean that she supports the song or the person who wrote the lyric. Dating Taylor’s ex? Attending Yeezy shows? Gigi Hadid is the worst squad member and we love her for it.
February 14, 2016: Kanye West releases the song “Famous” (only on Tidal) that famously features the lyrics “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.” Taylor Swift denies signing off on the line.
One important note: At this point, Kanye West and Karlie Kloss are both being managed by Scooter Braun. Kanye drops him soon after, but Karlie remains close to Scooter to this day.
June 25, 2016: The “Famous” music video features a naked (wax) Taylor Swift in bed with about a million other celebrities. Taylor doesn’t comment, but Lena Dunham has something to say!
July 4, 2016: July already? Ruby Rose, Haim, Taylor’s then-boyfriend Tom Hiddleston, Gigi Hadid, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Martha Hunt, and Karlie Kloss are in attendance at Taylor’s annual Illuminati meeting.
July 17, 2016: Kim Kardashian West posts footage of Taylor Swift agreeing to the lyric in “Famous” on Snapchat. Happy National Snake Day! Selena Gomez doesn’t comment on it, but she doesn’t not comment on it. Martha Hunt and Ruby Rose also tweet their support for Taylor. Katy Perry takes the opportunity to promote her song.
July 18, 2016: Taylor Swift maintains that she never agreed to be called “that bitch.”
July 20, 2016: Kendall Jenner, BFF to Gigi, favorites tweets supporting her sister. No direct correlation, but fun to note that Kendall and Taylor were both connected to Harry Styles.
November 8, 2016: Taylor Swift, party planner extraordinaire, throws Lorde a birthday bash fit for a royal. Lena Dunham and Karlie Kloss come!
February 15, 2017: “When I was lesser known, I was like, ‘Who could not share their opinion?’ Then I found out that when you talk about politics, people straight up tweet you the floor plan of your house and say they’re coming to your house,” Lena Dunham defends Taylor Swift’s silence during the 2016 election. “You have to fucking watch it because people are nuts.”
May 18, 2017: Katy Perry’s “Swish Swish” drops and fans suspect the confrontational lyrics are about Taylor Swift.
May 28, 2017: Kim Kardashian West says Kendall Jenner was never part of Taylor Swift’s squad.
June 11, 2017: “I forgive her and I’m sorry for anything I ever did, and I hope the same from her,” Katy Perry tells Arianna Huffington about her feud with Taylor. “I think it’s actually like, I think it’s time. There are bigger fish to fry, and there are real problems in the world.”
June 12, 2017: While performing “Swish Swish,” Katy changes the lyrics to “God bless you on your journey / Oh, baby girl” instead of “Don’t you come for me / No, not today.”
June 19, 2017: “It’s like having a friend with very specific allergies,” Lorde explained her relationship to big celebrities to The Guardian. “There are certain places you can’t go together. Certain things you can’t do. There are these different sets of considerations within the friendship. It’s like having a friend with an autoimmune disease.”
June 20, 2017: She takes that back, actually.
July 7, 2017: Lorde basically says she’s not in Taylor Swift’s squad.
But she takes that back, too.
August 14, 2017: Amid Taylor’s groping trial, Lena Dunham and many more celebrities publicly support her.
August 27, 2017: Taylor Swift drops a brand-new music video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” and it’s all about getting revenge. Todrick Hall features as a dancer. And at the end, there’s a T-shirt filled with names, like when friends signed your shirt on the last day of school. Names that made it? Ed Sheeran; Danielle, Este, and Alana Haim; Selena Gomez; Claire Winter Kislinger; Abigail Anderson; Blake Lively; Ryan Reynolds; Todrick Hall; Lily Aldridge; Martha Hunt; Lena Dunham; and Gigi Hadid. Lorde, Cara Delevingne, and Karlie Kloss didn’t make the cut, I guess! Also missing: Kendall Jenner, but fans think she was specifically called out through a snake tattoo and thigh-high orange boots.
October 20, 2017: “Gorgeous” drops. It features Blake Lively’s daughter, James, at the beginning of the track.
March 16, 2018: Karlie to the New York Times: “Don’t believe everything you read.”
May 8, 2018: Katy Perry sends Taylor Swift an actual olive branch and a note.
July 14, 2018: Gigi Hadid and Taylor Swift reunite at one of Taylor’s concerts!
August 26, 2018: Karlie attends the Reputation tour, too.
October 18, 2018: Karlie Kloss marries Josh Kushner in an intimate wedding upstate. According to Elle, 80 guests attended, but Taylor Swift doesn’t make it. She was in Perth, Australia, on the Reputation World Tour.
December 31, 2018: Taylor shares a photo of her New Year’s Eve costume party! Gigi Hadid and Blake Lively are the only squad members to attend.
January 10, 2019: Taylor Swift posts a photo on her Instagram with Selena Gomez and Cazzie David, daughter of Larry David and ex-girlfriend to Pete Davidson. Welcome to the squad!
March 9, 2019: “In my twenties I found myself surrounded by girls who wanted to be my friend,” Taylor explained in an essay for Elle. “So I shouted it from the rooftops, posted pictures, and celebrated my newfound acceptance into a sisterhood, without realizing that other people might still feel the way I did when I felt so alone.”
March 14, 2019: Karlie Kloss tells Andy Cohen that she and Taylor are still close. “Taylor is incredible and I feel really lucky to call her a friend,” she said.
April 23, 2019: Taylor attends Gigi Hadid’s birthday party.
April 24, 2019: Martha Hunt and Ashley Avignone help Taylor prep for the Time 100 Gala.
May 31, 2019: Swift and Joe Alwyn go on a double date with Robert Pattinson and Suki Waterhouse, who formally entered the fold wearing coordinated outfits to a private Kings of Leon concert with Lorde, Lily Donaldson, Cara Delevingne, and Martha Hunt in 2016. “They were at a table, just the four of them,” a source gives Us Weekly nothing. “Rob and Taylor were across from each other.”
June 11, 2019: Katy Perry tags Taylor in a photo of a plate of cookies with “Peace at last” written on the side. Baked goods are the cornerstone of the squad.
June 17, 2019: The “You Need to Calm Down” video features Todrick Hall and Katy Perry. Their feud is officially, formally over.
June 24, 2019: Karlie Kloss and Josh Kushner have a second wedding in Wyoming. This time, celebrity pals like Katy Perry and Scooter Braun are in attendance. Taylor Swift is not. Instead, she was working on a new music video.
June 30, 2019: News breaks that Scooter Braun has purchased Taylor Swift’s former record label, including masters for all six of her previous albums.
July 1, 2019: Taylor’s “grossed out” about the news. She insinuates in an open letter that Scooter Braun has been behind all of the bullying she’s faced, likely referring to the Kim Kardashian West–Kanye West debacle. Cara Delevingne, Martha Hunt, Todrick Hall, Haim, and more comment on the situation in support of Taylor. Ed Sheeran’s comment is that he’s “speaking directly with [Taylor].” Camila Cabello unfollows the talent manager. Kendall Jenner likes Scooter Braun’s wife’s post defending him.
July 7, 2019: Lorde, Taylor Swift, and Haim exit a plane using umbrellas to hide their faces. It sounds just as ridiculous as it looks.
July 12, 2019: Ashley Avignone likes tweets suggesting that Karlie and Taylor are no longer friends.
July 22, 2019: Katy Perry attends a Kamala Harris fundraising event hosted at Scooter Braun’s house. Do olive branches have expiration dates?
August 10, 2019: Karlie Kloss goes on vacation with Scooter Braun and his wife, Yael Cohen. All smiles! Notably, Karlie doesn’t post a picture with him in it, but he does.
August 14, 2019: Cazzie David shares a selfie of herself, Taylor Swift, Danielle Haim, and Este Haim with the caption “Lover(s).” The squad will never die!
Fall 2019–Fall 2022: Boo’d up.
October 21, 2022: Taylor Swift drops Midnights, her first album entirely co-produced by Jack Antonoff, two weeks after the 1975 drops Being Funny in a Foreign Language, another album entirely co-produced by Antonoff. Matty Healy would later admit the 1975 “actually worked a little bit” on the Swift album, but it didn’t make the cut. Swift thanks Antonoff in an Instagram post as well as Zoë Kravitz, a surprise co-writer on “Lavender Haze” and “Karma.”
December 12, 2022: Matty Healy posts a since-deleted photo of himself, Bo Burnham, and Phoebe Bridgers sharing a three-way kiss with the caption “Gay Poets Society.” At the time, the public was more consumed with Bridgers’s rumored engagement to Paul Mescal and Burnham’s long-term partner, Lorene Scafaria.
January 12, 2023: Swift shows up at the 1975’s concert in London, covers their song “The City” on acoustic guitar, and performs the live debut of “Anti-Hero.”
February 7, 2023: Alwyn joins Swift for her big Grammys party and she’s photographed alongside MUNA wearing his leather Celine jacket. Fun fact: “The first time we met her, I, for some reason, decided to get to make her homemade bath salts,” Katie Gavin, the band’s lead singer, later tells Out. “We weren’t on tour and I was at home being a green witch, growing stuff in my garden and making bath salts. I got too excited about it and I was like, ‘I’m gonna bring some to Taylor’s Grammys party.’ But she was very nice about it. She liked them.”
February 9, 2023: Healy says some racist stuff on The Adam Friedland Show podcast, including making fun of Ice Spice, one of Swift’s many Universal Music Group labelmates as well a WME representee.
March 16, 2023: Alwyn “likes” an Instagram post from @taylorswift13 for the last time.
March 17, 2023: Alwyn does not attend the first Eras Tour concert. Emma Stone, who’s known Taylor since they were both teens, aged 17 and 18, respectively, from attending awards shows, does, along with Haim and Laura Dern.
April 8, 2023: Single Taylor Swift can be such a powerful thing and we didn’t know the half of it yet. People and Entertainment Tonight report she and Alwyn are officially over after six years together.
April 21, 2023: Swift’s friend Matty Healy apologizes about the Ice Spice thing, kinda. “It’s not because I’m annoyed that me joking got misconstrued,” he says onstage in Auckland. “It’s because I don’t want Ice Spice to think I’m a dick.” He goes on, “I am genuinely sorry if I upset her, because I fucking love her.”
May 5 and 6: Matty Healy’s on the sidelines for her Nashville shows, the simp that he is, while The Sun reports he and Swift are dating. On day two, he accompanies opener Phoebe Bridgers on guitar, then watches the rest of the show with a few of Swift’s friends, including Aldridge. Onstage, Swift returns a message that Healy previously mouthed to her at one of his shows: “‘This is about you, you know who you are. I love you.’”
May 11, 2023: Healy and Swift hold hands and, according to “Page Six,” kiss on a date at Casa Cipriani. Antonoff is also there and Ryan Reynolds posts a 1975 song to his story later that day, because he loves being involved …
May 15, 2023: Swift, Healy, Antonoff, Margaret Qualley, Kendrick Lamar, and Florence Welch are all at Electric Lady Studios for reasons Tree Paine has yet to divulge at this point in time. Fans also report seeing Zoë Kravitz and Channing Tatum plus famous Swifties Maggie Rogers and Gracie Abrams (an Eras Tour opening act).
May 24, 2023: Ice Spice’s remix of “Karma” gets announced, then Swift celebrates at Zero Bond with Healy, Qualley, and Antonoff. “Taylor and Matty were kissing,” according to a source, per People.
May 27, 2023: Waterhouse and Pattinson are seen at the Eras Tour in New Jersey on Keleigh Teller’s TikTok. Julia Garner is there, too — that’s important for later.
June 2, 2023: The Eras Tour Latin America dates will be opened by Sabrina Carpenter, former Disney star and the “blonde girl” Olivia Rodrigo was allegedly singing about on “Drivers License.” Not a very girls’ girl thing to do, O-Rod fans think.
June 5, 2023: Okay, well, Taylor Swift has an entirely different album to promote now, so she and Healy seemingly break up. Just before TMZ confirms the news, she drops the Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) track list.
June 30, 2023: The first single from Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album, “Vampire,” isn’t about her ex Adam Faze, sources claim, riling up rumors the song refers to discontent with Swift after the retroactive credits she got on Sour.
July 4, 2023: Selena Gomez, the Haim sisters, Ashley Avignone, and Austin Swift’s rumored girlfriend, Sydney Ness, gather at Swift’s Rhode Island residence (you know the one) because what’s more chill, normal, and friendly than a (private) beach day? Old Tay is back!
July 7, 2023: Swift gets sentimental while introducing Speak Now onstage. “He was a very positive force in my life when I was making the Speak Now album, and I want to say he did every single stunt that you saw in that music video,” Swift says of her ex-boyfriend Taylor Lautner. “He and his wife have become some of my closest friends and it’s very convenient because we all share the same first name.” Swift also says she wrote 1989 vault track “When Emma Falls in Love” about her best friend, fueling fan suspicion it’s about Stone’s 2011 relationship with Kieran Culkin.
July 8, 2023: Lautner reunites with a bob-less Joey King in Swift’s “I Can See You (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)” music video, then the two of them join her onstage at the Kansas City Eras Tour. King’s been around since the first Speak Now when she starred in the video for “Mean.” And, of course, Lautner paid his dues for dating Taylor Swift by being the inspiration for “Back to December.”
July 23, 2023: There’s something Swiftian about football (and one-time reality-dating-show) star Travis Kelce roping his brother, Jason, into his public display of affection for Swift, following her Kansas City Eras Tour stop, which Patrick and Brittany Mahomes also attended. On he and his brother’s podcast, New Heights, he overshares that he made Swift a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it, but she was gone before he could pass it off. At this point, the relationship is only a thing to him, so he’s starting his own rumors.
August 3–6, 2023: Anyone who’s anyone attends the Eras Tour in Los Angeles, most notably Channing Tatum, Antoni Porowski, Sarah Paulson, and “You Need to Calm Down” video star Hayley Kiyoko.
August 3, 2023: “Suki has always seemed like she stepped out of a time machine,” Swift says in an Ssense profile of her friend. “Her music is so raw and hopelessly romantic because that’s how she moves through the world.” Words of affirmation received: In response, Waterhouse posts on X, “love this woman sm.”
August 19, 2023: Swift welcomes Margaret Qualley to the family by roasting her and Antonoff in a wedding toast. Lana Del Rey reportedly sang her song “Margaret” at the reception, the romantic she is.
August 31, 2023: Travis has a new mustache and Jason wants to know, on New Heights, what a certain someone thinks about it. “We’re not gonna bring up Taylor Swift in this episode,” Travis says, “but something tells me she’s gonna like it.” He’ll later recall having the ’stache when he first met Swift.
September 5, 2023: Swift’s ex Joe Jonas files for the dissolution of his marriage with Sophie Turner. Presumably, he didn’t dump her over the phone, but who knows with this one?
September 11, 2023: Gigi Hadid and Swift couple up for a triple date with Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Channing Tatum, and Zoë Kravitz. You’d think pasta was an infinite resource.
September 18, 2023: Laura Dern, Greta Gerwig, and Kravitz meet Swift at Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria like they’re filming Real Celebrities of the West Village. No tables were flipped, per Rachel Handler’s postshow reporting and analysis.
September 19, 2023: Arm-in-arm with an actress, heading to Temple Bar, while news outlets from E! News to ESPN Sports Center speculate about her and someone else? Taylor Swift out does all her exes with this pap walk with Sophie Turner. Days prior, The (now-defunct) Messenger reported Kelce and Swift had been “quietly hanging out,” which the Kelce brothers had to attempt to laugh off at every podcast and NFL appearance that week. Trial by Tree Paine.
September 20, 2023: Taylor Swift refuses to have anything but Italian food. She and Turner grab dinner with Blake Lively, Brittany Mahomes, and Lively’s older sister, Robyn, back at Emilios Ballato. Does she know there’s a Dim Sum Palace right around the corner?
September 21, 2023: Matty Healy deactivates his X account after being called out by Lucy Dacus of Boygenius. Taylor’s favorite poet initially posted that he had told Dacus he was inspired to start a band called combining “girl” and the R-slur. The punch line, if you can call it that, was “I don’t really hear from her that often.” Let Dacus set the record straight: “you don’t hear from me at all,” she quote-posted.
September 24, 2023: Oh, so, being cheer captain is okay when she does it? Swift screams “Let’s fucking go!” from the VIP seats while supporting confirmed boyfriend Travis Kelce at her first Chiefs game, alongside Mama Kelce. The tight end later says they’ll keep things more private than this, but as millions of people will see on Super Bowl Sunday, that simply isn’t true with this group. “Taylor is very focused on work right now and hanging out with her girlfriends,” says a source according to People. “Travis invited her to the game, and of course she said ‘Yes.’”
September 28, 2023: Turns out, Turner and her daughter Willa are staying at Swift’s New York City apartment while unable to return to England due to custody lawsuits.
October 1, 2023: Mama Kelce chills with Jake from State Farm at an Eagles game in Philly and then heads to Jersey to watch the Chiefs with Swift, Lively, Reynolds, freshly single Hugh Jackman, Antoni Porowski, Sabrina Carpenter, and Shawn Levy. Clearly the marketing menaces at Reynolds’ Maximum Effort are doing the max, but how this all relates to Deadpool 3 is for another timeline.
October 5, 2023: Hayley Williams of Paramore says Swift’s mom, Andrea, is the reason they became friends over a decade ago. “We were at some Grammy party — it was actually Timbaland’s Grammy party. Huge,” she recalled on The Tonight Show. “I was very nervous, but a woman came up to me and she said, ‘I’m Taylor Swift’s mom and, you know, Taylor doesn’t have a lot of friends her age that do music. And I would love to, like, you know, introduce you guys or get your number.’”
October 11, 2023: Beyoncé shows up at the Eras Tour movie premiere, in Tree Paine’s best move since the squad. Speaking of Tree, it’s the first of many red carpets for her this era and she gets to kiki with Bey’s publicist Yvette Noel-Schure.
October 14, 2023: Travis and Taylor are apparently all over each other at the Saturday Night Live after-party right in front of Ice Spice’s Catch sushi!
October 15, 2023: Sources say Gigi Hadid and her new boyfriend, Bradley Cooper, are borrowing Swift’s Rhode Island residence as a “secret love nest.” “Taylor is a total romantic and loves playing cupid for her friends,” a source claims, per “Page Six.” “Even though Gigi and Bradley have their own properties in New York, they wanted somewhere more private to spend time getting to know each other, and Taylor was only too happy to help. She said the door to her home is always open for them to use.” In exchange, she reserves the right to use their lives as songwriting material, surely.
October 22, 2023: Taylor Swift and Brittany Mahomes start acting like long-lost twins who reunited at summer camp. The WAGs celebrate a touchdown with a personalized handshake, surrounded by the rest of the players’ families.
October 26, 2023: The cinephile contingent of Taylor Swift’s associates — Lively, Reynolds, and Levy, surreptitiously meet up at Bradley Cooper’s house midday for what I’d bet was a private screening of Maestro, mid-strike, ahead of its November theatrical release. “Page Six” has Lively and Reynolds leaving at approximately 2:50 p.m., enough time to watch all 129 minutes of Maestro and, of course, about 20 minutes of previews. Bradley Cooper has to make his money somehow.
October 31, 2023: It’s scary how sources differ on Selena Gomez’s opinions of Traylor. They tell “Page Six” “Selena thinks Taylor going to games and galavanting through New York immediately after just meeting Travis is something that is very unlike her” and “alarming.” She reportedly even turned down invitations to Chiefs games. There’s confusion on DeuxMoi (shock), with an anonymous follower saying they “can confirm the article about Selena and the Haim sisters not approving of ts and tk is completely false.” Was it @selenagomez?
November 4, 2023: Swift, Hadid, Gomez, Mahomes, Turner, Delevingne, and somehow others, have sushi at Bond Street, then do a slow strut to Zero Bond, surrounded by paparazzi. Cooper reportedly shows up and stays until 3 a.m. with Hadid, but there are no photos of that. Interesting.
November 12, 2023: Reports try to say Selena Gomez is “wary” of Traylor moving too fast. “Selena doesn’t want to be mean or negative, but she’s just not sure about Travis,” a source for OK! claims, adding that Selena brought up her concerns at a two-hour meal in October. Paps must not have been invited to that one.
November 14, 2023: Hadid denies rumors she’s anything but supportive of Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce. “Didn’t the press try this last week w Selena?” she comments on a Perez Hilton Instagram post. “Let it be.. we are all over the moon for our girl. Period.” She probably didn’t feel great about the Chiefs’ moment of silence for Israel the month prior, while Palestine went unmentioned, though.
ET follows it up by reporting “Selena and Gigi both love Taylor and Travis together.” “Selena and Gigi are in a good spot and have put any past drama behind them,” an ET source adds, referencing Gomez’s brief connection to Hadid’s ex Zayn Malik.
November 30, 2023: Swift returns the favor and attends the London premiere of Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé with Blake Lively. Both Beyoncé and Swift partnered with AMC Theatres for distribution, with Swift using AppleTV+ and, later, Disney+ for streaming.
December 6, 2023: Swift attends the New York City premiere of Poor Things starring Emma Stone and Margaret Qualley, sitting alongside Suki Waterhouse and Robert Pattinson in the theater.
December 9, 2023: Never one to make an overt political statement, Swift attends Poor Things star Ramy Youssef’s charity stand-up show with Selena Gomez, Cara Delevingne, Zoë Kravitz, and Anya Taylor-Joy, who co-starred in Amsterdam with Swift. The Brooklyn Academy of Music show donated all proceeds to the American Near East Refugee Aid, which supports the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Jordan.
December 13, 2023: For her 34th birthday, Swift gathers her least low-key friends at a nightclub in Soho. Gigi Hadid, Blake Lively, Jack Antonoff, Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams, Este Haim, Alana Haim, Zoë Kravitz, Antoni Porowski, and Keleigh and Miles Teller. Travis Kelce doesn’t attend, as he has a job.
December 22, 2023: No. 1 Christmas fan Taylor Swift celebrates the holidays with the Kelces in Kansas City, joined by her brother, Austin, and his girlfriend, Sydney Ness.
January 7, 2024: Selena Gomez forgets she’s a major celebrity speaking to a major celebrity in a room full of cameras at the Golden Globes, and she’s caught gossiping with Swift. Both of them forget Keleigh Teller’s there, who appears to ask “With Timothée?,” seemingly referring to the Wonka star a few tables over with Kylie Jenner. Gomez emphatically nods but later says she wasn’t talking about the most-talked-about couple in Hollywood; she was gossiping about someone else.
January 13, 2024: Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan go on a date in L.A. and People has pics. They reportedly met that September at Paris Fashion Week, then were seen out for dinner in December. The squad gets a spin-off.
January 21, 2024: The Kansas City VIP box is packed at the AFC Divisional playoffs with Cara Delevingne and Jerrod Carmichael joining Brittany Mahomes, Swift, and the Kelces. “That’s my best friend, Taylor’s my best friend,” the Poor Things actor would tell Jimmy Kimmel two months later. “Like, I’m not her best friend, but she’s my best friend. Can you think of a better friend to have than Taylor Swift? I called my former best friend, I was like, ‘You’re out, Taylor’s in. You never invited me on your jet to a game.’ She’s very smart and interesting.”
(If your first foray into Carmichael’s personal life is his new HBO docu-reality series, just know there’s a photo of he and Swift hanging out at Lena Dunham’s wedding in 2021 that he admitted to using on Grindr.)
February 4, 2024: Midnights wins Taylor Swift her fourth album of the year at the Grammy Awards, but whatever, she’s onto the next-next one, announcing Tortured Poets Department. Ed Sheeran, former colluder, has no idea what’s going on. She attends with Lana Del Rey, whom she ruthlessly beats out (but brings onstage with her), and meets up with Antonoff, Qualley, and the Boygenius gang. Phoebe Bridgers is the only person with more awards than her that night, so it’s only a matter of time before Swift makes her a (more?) permanent part of the crew. Have the Gaylors even considered the ramifications?
February 11, 2024: Who gets into the Super Bowl suite? Ashley Avignone, Lively, Ice Spice, the Tellers, Lana Del Rey, and, of course, the Kelce clan. Swift meets Travis Kelce on the field and they have their storybook ending.
February 21, 2024: Swift, Carpenter, and her tour entourage visit the Sydney Zoo, then go out for dinner. By the looks of Carpenter’s grin, she enjoys her pap walk with Swift to Pellegrino 2000. Yes, it’s Italian.
(BTW, Katy Perry is at the show tonight. Remember her?)
February 22, 2024: Travis Kelce arrives Down Under and Swift takes him to none other than the Sydney Zoo, too.
February 28, 2024: Antonoff promises to ride-or-die in print to the L.A. Times. “I’m a little bitch sometimes,” he says. “But you come after my friend Taylor, you’re toast to me.”
March 3, 2024: Keoghan is obsessed with Carpenter’s “Nonsense” intro while attending the Singapore Eras shows. The rest of the concerts will be opened by another Swift pal, Hayley Williams’s band Paramore.
March 11, 2024: She wants to be one of Madonna’s girls so bad, Swift and Kelce fly from the Eras Tour in Singapore to make it to the party at Guy Oseary’s Hollywood Hills home after the Oscars. Lily Gladstone, Jennifer Lawrence, Salma Hayek, Robert De Niro, Matthew McConaughey, Lenny Kravitz, and the Queen of Pop herself attend. Earlier in the evening, new bestie Ramy Youssef gets to use her coming to his show as an opportunity to plug his HBO special. “I got to hang with Taylor a few times,” he tells ET. “She’s incredibly kind, really funny. Easily could hang in comedy.”
March 13, 2024: Keoghan and Kelce have a himbo hangout at a Justin Timberlake concert in L.A.
March 14, 2024: In New York, Swift’s friends Gigi Hadid, Antoni Porowski, and Bradley Cooper dine at Via Carota for the Queer Eye member’s birthday. Tan France is there, too.
March 17, 2024: Two days after the Eras Tour film premieres on Disney+, Bob Iger casually runs into Traylor at the members-only Bird Streets Club in West Hollywood. (I am not rich enough to figure out how their website works to confirm whether they serve Italian or sushi.) “Bob jumped up from his seat the minute [Taylor] walked in,” says a “Page Six” source.
March 20, 2024: Swift and Kelce do the Bahamian tourism board a favor and spend a week on the island. In a pre-recorded podcast out the same day, Kelce discusses his travel essentials in a credit card ad. That’s her man.
March 24, 2024: Back in California, she opts for her second-favorite cuisine, sushi, at Nobu Malibu with Travis.
April 4, 2024: Swift and her high-school bestie Abigail Anderson Berard reunite for Abigail’s birthday, sources confirm.
April 12, 2024: She’s wearing a red letterman jacket to grab (guess what?) sushi with Trav. “It seems Swift’s clearly makin’ a point by going here BTW …” TMZ speculates. “Sushi Park’s a super high-visibility spot for celebs — so, it seems clear she’s telegraphing her intentions for Coachella’s first weekend.”
April 13, 2024: Coachella welcomes Swift to the largest crowd she’s been among in years (not counting the stadium shows where she’s the center of attention). She and Travis only make it out for Saturday, missing Jack Antonoff’s cameo with Lana Del Rey the night before — plus Sabrina Carpenter’s and Suki Waterhouse’s sets — but catch him with Bleachers on day two. They’re also in the crowd for Ice Spice, who performs her verse on “Karma,” and Carpenter, who’s Irish fling is in attendance. Swift is wearing a New Heights hat so any photographs, approved or unapproved, will support her new boyfriend.
More on Taylor Swift
- Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department Hires Dead Poets
- Is The Tortured Poets Department Really About Matty Healy?
- The Internet Is Full of Tortured Poets
