Taylor Swift can turn just about any situation into a song, including one in which she’s made out to be the villain.
The artist, 34, who fans believe sang about her relationship with boyfriend Travis Kelce, 34, on her tracks So High School and The Alchemy, think she may be referencing the NFL star in The Albatross as well.
The lyrics ‘Cautions issued, he stood / Shooting the messengers / They tried to warn him about her,’ seem to refer to some of the vitriol aimed at the Grammy winner when she began attending Kansas City Chiefs games to support her guy.
Many NFL diehard fans were irritated at all the cutaway camera shots of the hitmaker in her skybox and expressed their irritation online, often in memes mocking her.
‘Cross your thoughtless heart / Only liquor anoints you / She’s the albatross / She is here to destroy you,’ goes the chorus.
Some Taylor Swift fans believe The Albatross may be about the backlash she received by some NFL fans upset about the media attention the singer received when she began attending games to support boyfriend Travis Kelce (Pictured in Baltimore, MD in January)
‘Why is no one talking about The Albatross is also a Travis song? one TikTok user asked.
‘Everybody was telling Travis, ‘Be careful, don’t get with her. She’ll ruin your career,’ the fan continued.
‘Don’t get with her, she’ll ruin your career. Are you paying attention to football? Is she weighing you down? Is he no longer good because he’s dating Taylor Swift?’ she queried.
‘That was the entire middle part of their relationship,’ the poster claimed.
‘The first verse talks about someone warning a suitor about dating her. Love is fragile, don’t let the winds that come with her fame snuff it out,’ another fan posited on X, former known as Twitter.
‘The second verse,’ the poster continued, ‘is about how she is shut away for the good of her potential partners. She’s the bad seed and the temptress, so shutting her away reduces the danger (less dagger to sharpen). But she escapes confinement anyway to visit her partner (who dgaf about the danger).’
Yet another lyric investigator claimed the track is about ‘men are scared of falling for her because she is a “man-eater” and “serial-dater” but then they DO fall for her.’
‘Given everyone warned Trav he was distracted all because of her, the football dudes made her feel she was the albatross around his neck,” author continued, adding that Kelce ‘never made her feel that way and cast off all the doomsayers. In fact, he played better when she was there.’
‘Why is no one talking about The Albatross is also a Travis song? one TikTok user asked. ‘Everybody was telling Travis, ‘Be careful, don’t get with her. She’ll ruin your career,’ the poster claimed (Pictured in January)
Many NFL diehard fans were irritated at all the cutaway camera shots of the hitmaker in her skybox and expressed their irritation online, often in memes mocking her. However the league reported regular season viewership was up 7-percent from the year before (Pictured in Las Vegas in February)
The NFL reported regular season viewership was up 7-percent from the year before.
The song seems to be a literary reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The albatross was considered good luck until a sailor killed it and was forced to wear the dead bird around his neck as punishment.
Toward the end of the song, Swift changes the chorus to the first person, singing ‘So I crossed my thoughtless heart/Spread my wings like a parachute/ I’m the albatross/I swept in at the rescue.’
Deep dives into the lyrics such as this have helped catapult The Tortured Poets Department to instant success. It sold around 1.4 million copies on Friday and enjoyed more than 300 million streams in Spotify.