Speaking of newlywed Taylor Swift taking a break from music. Did I start sleeping and waking up in the 1950s? | | Laura Snapes

No speculation is very harebrained when it comes to the marriage of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Are they getting married at Madison Square Garden? What once sounded crazy, turns out to be true. Will they do it? Paul McCartney? All bets are off – and given the amount of secrecy, we’ll probably never know what happens.

Just one recent report got me going: yeah, like. A gossip site DeuxMoi says Swift he recently met with 50 national radio executives to present his upcoming album, a return to his roots 20 years after the start of the genre. This makes me wonder: even the world’s most famous artist is happy when needed, as is the case in the company he loves in Nashville. But the report added that the rumored album – Swift’s 13th, known as her lucky number – would be her last “for a while”, possibly because of her impending wedding. Much of the discussion about the couple’s wedding focused on what it would mean for Swift’s career. Will he retire to “enjoy” the family? Will it change his desire? Will his songs be difficult?

As of 2020, Swift has released five original albums, four remix albums, two live albums, a Toy Story 5 soundtrack and collaborations with Ed Sheeran, The National and Gracie Abrams. He took the first billion dollar fundraising tripwhich produced a film of the concert, a second film of the concert (showing changes to the middle series) and a documentary. He was photographed leaving a recording studio in New York City two weeks ago. It is impossible to imagine that this hard-working and successful man is pausing in his work while living a married woman – called the idea “incredibly disappointing” last year – and yet the idea seems to be sticking.

I don’t read sports, but I don’t think anyone is asking questions about his American football partner. The wedding brings up some wonderful Stepford questions, taking us back to the 1950s when a newlywed mom might leave her good teaching/library job to plan a nursery, then return to covet the wedding silver. I want to hear any music Swift can make from her Betty Draper – housewife – full of 11am vodka gimlets and barbiturates – but I’m not seeing it from her. (Also, a true title would say: they already made a record that sounds like that, and it’s called Midnights.)

The idea that happiness makes boring work comes from the pain of boredom, as if there are not millions of talents for home entertainment – it’s sad. Just for triptych starters, how about Beyoncé’s (randy) self-titled album, Lemonade (controversial) and Everything Is Love (relationship) with her husband, Jay-Z? And if there aren’t many songs by famous women about married life, it’s less because it can’t be written than the few performances of Swift and Beyoncé who have kept their careers at that level of life. In an era of highly manufactured pop, marriage was a point where labels could accuse a female pop star of being a dumper. How are fans supposed to seduce you with a ring on your finger?

After all, any idea that marriage is a unit happy what happened to you makes you wonder what some commentators think it means: a plastic family on top of a physical cake, stuck in a constant state of bliss? Perhaps these lines of inquiry reflect the desperate clinging of the collective imagination. The mysticism from hetero pessimism — written in Swift’s friend Sabrina Carpenter’s weary lyrics about the eternal disappointments of men in love — have made straight relationships seem more like inevitable doom than mutual joy. Swift and Kelce’s queen bee/football star dynamic is some kind of drug that millions want to believe. But I don’t know any millennial or gen Z moms who are getting married thinking it’s another way to happily ever after, myself included.

I didn’t answer because I thought it would fulfill all my dreams. For years, I could name all the reasons why I didn’t want to get married, sure how hard it would be and that I wasn’t a woman. Then one day I realized: what if not knowing What if there was a good reason to jump? To achieve your goals? To be honest, if someone can help me get a few months off to enjoy a new life at the end of this year, I can wipe the candlesticks for a chance – although, sadly, I can’t see it either. Swift’s wedding may be planned according to military schedule, but perhaps the most interesting thing is that no one – neither the happy nor the interested – knows what the marriage will mean to them.

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