The Manuscript

“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell. We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date… When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care. The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”
— Taylor Swift, 2023 TIME Person of the Year Interview

“I might be a little biased — it’s ‘So High School.’”
— Travis Kelce, when asked about his favorite song on The Tortured Poets Department.

In retrospect, we should have seen it coming.

I’m not necessarily saying we should have seen it coming that Taylor Swift would end up dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, or that their relationship would end up becoming her most high-profile relationship to date, making every Chiefs football game appointment viewing for the Swifties and thereby boosting the brand of both the Chiefs and the entire NFL. 

But we definitely should have seen it coming that this relationship would give Taylor the perfect opportunity to provide a beautiful, joyous bookend to the high-school-aged songwriting she did going all the way back to “Our Song” in 2006.

Throughout Taylor and Travis’ more-than-year-long relationship, numerous commentators and think pieces have waxed poetic on the two each representing classic American high school archetypes: Travis the star football player, Taylor the beautiful blonde cheerleader. And while these archetypes were something that Taylor vocally addressed in her early songs, especially on the Fearless album, she addressed them from her teenage status as a social outsider, most memorably on “You Belong with Me,” where she discussed daydreaming on the bleachers while her crush’s girlfriend was captain of the cheerleading squad. And then on “Fifteen,” she assures her fifteen-year-old female listeners that they will do greater things in life than dating the boy on the football team, something that she didn’t understand at that age. In short, like many teenage girls since time immemorial, Taylor dreamed about being one half of a power couple in high school, specifically with a star football player.

And now, more than fifteen years removed from her high school experience, thanks to Travis “very adorably put[ting] [her] on blast on his podcast,” Taylor has found herself in the sort of relationship she very clearly dreamed of as a teenager, and to no one’s surprise, she wasted no time at all in addressing this relationship through music. Specifically, she addressed it explicitly through two songs on her newest (as of this writing) masterwork of an album, The Tortured Poets Department. The absolute best of these, “So High School,” falls almost exactly in the middle of The Anthology expansion of the album, and upon initial listen, provided a sweet reprieve from the heartache-filled lyrics and melodies of the preceding songs. However, upon numerous more listens, “So High School” is far more than just a reprieve or palette cleanser or acknowledgment of her relationship with Travis. It is both one of the best songs on Tortured Poets, one of Taylor’s greatest and purest love songs ever, and I believe it will come to be seen as one of the most significant songs in the entire story of her career.

As the song starts, Taylor and co-songwriter/producer Aaron Dessner immediately situate the song in nostalgia for Taylor’s high school days by beginning it with a high, swelling synth note followed by an electric guitar strumming. The ultimate sound it creates is one that is very reminiscent of the sort of indie/alternative rock popular in the 2000s, when Taylor (and Travis) would have been in high school. For me, the sound of the opening synth and guitar strums instantly evoked the opening of Arcade Fire’s 2007 song “(Antichrist Television Blues)”, surely not a coincidence given that Aaron Dessner’s band The National opened for Arcade Fire in the early 2010s. Following the drums kicking in, Taylor’s vocals, sung in a higher key than many other songs on Tortured Poets, further take the song into an almost dreamlike place:

I feel so high school every time I look at you
I wanna find you in a crowd just to hide from you

Right from the first lyric of the song, Taylor establishes a direct connection between her relationship with Travis and her earlier high school love songs. By simply looking at Travis and seeing his boyish persona and the fact that he is a star athlete, she feels like she is back in high school living out her literal teenage dream. She then begins to paint a picture that lasts the rest of the song, one that seamlessly blends her teenage high school romance fantasy with the reality of her current relationship with Travis, to the point where it becomes almost impossible to tell which is which.

Following that first lyric, she describes wanting to play a game where her boyfriend has to find her in a crowd of people, something that could be played in a high school hallway, or on a football field after a game, whether that be a Hendersonville Commandos (her high school’s football team) or a Kansas City Chiefs game. And certainly, the image provoked for many listeners was that of Taylor meeting Travis on the field of Allegiant Stadium following the Chiefs’ 2024 Super Bowl victory. But yet, the carefree game of hide-and-seek that Taylor sings about playing in a crowd of people is one that she knows full well is impossible with her monumental celebrity status (and the deeply disturbing threats to her safety, like in Vienna), and reflects Taylor’s desire to take Travis and bring him to the relatively normal and carefree life she lived as a high school student in Hendersonville, Tennessee, something she very quickly expands on:

And in a blink of a crinkling eye
I’m sinking, our fingers entwined
Cheeks pink in the twinkling lights
Tell me ’bout the first time you saw me
I’ll drink what you think and I’m high
From smoking your jokes all damn night
The brink of a wrinkle in time
Bittersweet sixteen suddenly

And here is one of Taylor’s most purely sweet and poetic descriptions of infatuation in recent years, harkening back to the infatuation described in “Enchanted” but reflecting both her years of maturity in the interim as well as the security of a committed relationship. Going back to the aforementioned image of Taylor meeting Travis on the football field, you can almost envision her eyes meeting his and then her instantly falling into a daydream fantastical state where none of the considerations of celebrity are a factor and they are simply lovestruck teenagers lying on the field holding hands and staring at each other while the stadium lights shine down upon them.

As Taylor continues to live in this carefree fantasy, she then begins to make more overt references to the nature of her relationship with Travis, telling him to share his story about the first time he saw her, the now-well-known story Travis first told on his “New Heights” podcast about seeing her Eras Tour show at Arrowhead Stadium and failing to get her the friendship bracelet he had made with his phone number. This leads to him presumably sharing his thoughts in shooting his shot with her and making various jokes at his own expense, with Taylor playfully alluding to her love of drinking and Travis’ known use of marijuana in describing this interaction.

Coming back to a sense of awareness of this fantasy, Taylor alludes to the novel A Wrinkle in Time (a work she also alluded to in “Hits Different”), consciously showing how the nature of her relationship with Travis is causing her to feel as if she’s being transported back through space and time to her teenage years, and with that, she is also forced to confront how her high school experience was not at all like this fantasy or her current reality. It is bittersweet for her to consider how her teenage crushes and relationships ended in heartbreak when she was sixteen, even if the art that resulted played an instrumental role in where she ended up today, both as an artist and cultural phenomenon, as well as being in a healthy enough place to date someone like Travis following the unhealthy relationships and heartbreaks she has been learning from her entire life.

I’m watching American Pie with you on a Saturday night
Your friends are around, so be quiet
I’m tryin’ to stifle my sighs
‘Cause I feel so high school every time I look at you
But look at you

What’s particularly noteworthy as Taylor transitions into this verse is how, despite singing all of the previous lyrics in a higher key, she very quickly switches to a lower key here, as if very consciously transporting the listener back to reality rather than her daydreaming fantasies. But even in this reality, Taylor clearly feels as if her relationship with Travis is straddling the line between adult relationship and high school romance. While much attention has been paid to the line about “watching American Pie with you on a Saturday night” as being a classic Y2K youth experience, anybody who knows Travis Kelce knows that American Pie is exactly the kind of movie that he would love, and so it makes perfect sense Taylor would watch that with him and his friends on a Saturday night while sighing over their laughter at the film’s gross-out humor (as well as its more problematic aspects in 2024).

And yet, that is also the kind of experience that Taylor, by her own admission, never really had in high school due to the way her career took off so early and how she never really fit in with others even before her career took off. So once Taylor acknowledges how she feels so high school every time she looks at Travis, her excitement and infatuation builds back up and she switches back into her higher key, soon guiding the listener into the next verse:

Are you gonna marry, kiss, or kill me?
It’s just a game, but really
I’m betting on all three for us two
Get my car door, isn’t that sweet?
Then pull me to the backseat
No onе’s ever had me, not like you

Once again making an overt reference to her relationship with Travis, Taylor very playfully refers to an interview that Travis gave as part of promotion for his short-lived reality dating show Catching Kelce that aired on E! in 2016, where the interviewer Kristina Zias made Travis play a game of “Kiss, Marry, Kill” with Taylor, Katy Perry, and Ariana Grande. Travis then answered that he would kiss Taylor, marry Katy Perry and kill Ariana Grande, an answer choice that many Swifties found hilarious in retrospect, most of all Taylor, who joyously declares she is betting that the two of them will kiss, marry, and kill each other (and…well, we know they have kissed).

Taylor then waxes poetic on Travis’ chivalrous nature, pointing out him doing simple things like opening the car door for her and then pulling her to the backseat once they are both inside, once again invoking a teenage scenario. With Taylor’s imagery, one could imagine this being a fantasy of Travis being her high school prom date and pulling her to the backseat of a stretch limo and making out with her. And while Taylor did in fact get to go to prom in high school (both at Hendersonville High and also a high school in Alabama as part of MTV’s “Once Upon a Prom”, something that truly has to be seen to be believed), seeing how well Travis cares for her and loves her in this moment is something that she knows is special and refreshing after the failure of her previous relationships.

Switching back to her lower key vocal, Taylor continues in her playful high school imagery and overt references to Travis:

Truth, dare, spin bottles
You know how to ball, I know Aristotle
Brand new, full throttle
Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto
It’s true, swear, scout’s honor
You knew what you wanted and, boy, you got her
Brand new, full throttle
You already know, babe

While I am fairly sure that Taylor and Travis have not played “spin the bottle” together, what I am fairly certain is that they have gone to more than one party together that evoked the feeling of a high school party where that would be played (“truth or dare” on the other hand…now I would love to see them play that together). This is evoked further by the following line, the one that perfectly encapsulates their relationship in a single lyric: “You know how to ball, I know Aristotle.” Especially after having been in many relationships with moody British men (including six years with Joe Alwyn, arguably the moodiest and most British of them all), for Taylor to be with a man who is not intimidated by her spotlight and her artistry is so refreshing, and rather than wish he was more intelligent or more into music and art, she can simply bask in his talent for football while he praises her own amazing skill in her field. As Nathan Hubbard put it on the Every Single Album podcast last year, Travis is much more of an overt fan of Taylor’s music than arguably anyone else she has dated, and that is clearly something she celebrates here.

Meanwhile, Taylor makes another nostalgic reference to the 2000s with Grand Theft Auto, a video game series widely popular at the time Taylor and Travis were both in high school. And, like the earlier American Pie reference, the Grand Theft Auto reference is simultaneously a 2000s high school throwback and an acknowledgment of Travis’ personal taste in entertainment. It makes perfect sense that Travis Kelce would enjoy watching American Pie and playing Grand Theft Auto with his friends, and it makes equally as much sense that Taylor would indulge these childlike moments with Travis, as they fulfill decades-long wishes and provide a reprieve from the reality of her celebrity while not feeling like hiding.

Furthermore, Taylor drops a few lines into this verse that reflect a sense of maturity in the midst of her nostalgia and playfulness. The first two reflect back on Travis’ pursuit of her, how he publicly stated his interest in the matter that he did. The manner in which she reflects on this, “It’s true, swear, scout’s honor / You knew what you wanted…” hint at an undercurrent of the relationship anxiety she has expressed before in other songs, but knowing how she got together with Travis so soon after her six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn ended and her intense rebound with Matty Healy ended in her being ghosted, it makes perfect sense that she would have needed reassurance that Travis “knew what [he] wanted,” as anyone who dates Taylor Swift immediately falls under a microscope only remotely comparable to someone running for public office. And while that spotlight proved too much for others, Travis swears and gives his “scout’s honor” that he knew what he wanted when he decided to shoot his shot, and not only did he get it, but he already knows that the relationship is “brand new” and running at “full throttle” (a point Taylor makes twice here) and is full-in on the ride with her.

I feel like laughing in the middle of practice
Do that impression you did of your Dad again
I’m hearing voices like a madman

As Taylor reaches back into the higher key, she reflects on attending practice with Travis and sitting in the stands while he goofs off with his fellow Chiefs players, specifically citing the impression he does of his father, Ed Kelce, well-known from the times he and Jason have done it on “New Heights”. But most importantly, she slyly but powerfully subverts the mental hospital imagery she had used throughout Tortured Poets, “hearing voices like a madman” not because she is actually insane, but because she is dating a goofball who loves to make her and others laugh. It provides a much-needed catharsis for her and others listening to the album in-sequence.

And then, for the rest of the song, Taylor simply allows herself to bask in the peace she has found in her relationship with Travis. She repeats the verses about sinking with their fingers entwined on the brink of a wrinkle in time, watching American Pie with him on a Saturday night, him touching her while his bros play Grand Theft Auto, ultimately ending the song with the verbal reassurance, “You already know, babe.” And as the song fades away, the listener can feel it, too. For the first time in a long time, she has security that no matter how “brand new” this is or how fast it goes, her partner will be there for her, and that is all she could ask for.
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Upon the release of Tortured Poets this past April, “So High School,” like all other thirty songs on the album, charted on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #24, the second-highest charting song from The Anthology expansion behind “thanK you aIMee” (another song about a high-profile person not named Joe Alwyn or Matty Healy). And, like all other fifteen songs off of The Anthology expansion, “So High School” has still not been released a proper single. However, unlike those other fifteen songs, it did (in very partial form) get a prominent placement in the main Tortured Poets set of the Eras Tour once it restarted in its revamped state in Paris on May 9. Just like a snippet of “Illicit Affairs” got a prominent placement at the end of “August” during the Folklore set, “So High School” gets its snippet performed at the end of “But Daddy I Love Him,” the opening song to the Tortured Poets set, and there it provides great closure to the feelings she had when writing “But Daddy I Love Him” and allows for a shared moment of catharsis in the show just as it did on the album:

And if a regular snippet performance in the show was not enough (and, really, for a song this great, it is not), Taylor took it upon herself to include it in a mashup performance during her third show in Amsterdam. As much as I have praised certain mashups she has done on here already (namely “White Horse / Coney Island” and “Teardrops on my Guitar / The Last Time”), the mashup she did on piano that third night in Amsterdam is a work of sheer beauty and brilliance. Knowing full well that Travis was standing there in the VIP tent cheering her on, just as Taylor had done for him that whole past NFL season (and is still doing as of this writing), Taylor constructed a mashup that basically functioned as her love letter to him.

After performing the first two-and-a-half minutes of “Mary’s Song (Oh My My My)” (a song I cannot wait to write about), she segued seamlessly into “So High School,” performing even more of the song than she did during the main Tortured Poets (and singing different verses than the one she does during that main set), and then further segueing into “Everything Has Changed” from Red. She then ends the mashup by combining the lyric “In the blink of a crinkling eye” with the final line of “Mary’s Song,” which states, “I’ll be 87, you’ll be 89…” Yes, 87 is Travis’ number and (19)89 was the year in which Taylor was born. And yes, Taylor originally wrote that lyric in 2006. And yes, Travis got visibly emotional watching this from the VIP tent, as did basically everybody in that stadium, as do I every single time I watch this. It is just perfect.