Too locked in.
After it was announced that Bad Bunny would be the headliner for the Super Bowl LX halftime show in February, reports surfaced that Taylor Swift had turned down the NFL over a dispute over ownership of the show.
The whole drama started after her recent appearance on the New Heights podcast alongside Travis and Jason Kelce, when Swifties began speculating that the pop superstar was dropping easter eggs that she would be the performer for the halftime show of Super Bowl LX in February.
During one portion of the episode, Taylor Swift discussed her granny hobbies, sharing that she enjoys painting, cooking, sewing, and, most recently, taking up baking sourdough.
“I have a different baking obsession every six months. Right now, we’re very deep in a sourdough obsession that has taken up my life.”
What does that have to do with the Super Bowl halftime show? Well this year’s Super Bowl will be held at Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers…whose mascot is Sourdough Sam.
Swift is obviously the biggest artist in the world, and there’s no doubt that the NFL would love to be able to land her as the halftime performer, something NFL commissioner Roger Goodell admitted today during an appearance on The Today Show:
“We would always love to have Taylor play. She is a special, special talent. And obviously she would be welcome at any time.”
When pressed on whether there was anything in the works for this year’s halftime show, which is produced by Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation, Goodell wouldn’t confirm that they were in talks with Taylor – but he didn’t deny it either:
“I can’t tell you anything about that. It’s a maybe.”
But last weekend, the NFL announced that Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny would instead be the headliner of the halftime show for Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium.
So what happened to Taylor Swift?
Well, according to gossip journalist Rob Shuter, Swift had some demands that the NFL refused to meet.
Taylor reportedly requested that she be able to retain ownership of her halftime performance – meaning that she, and not the NFL, would control how video and re-airings of the performance would be used. And she also wanted slots during the broadcast to promote her own projects, both conditions that, according to Shuter, the NFL reportedly “flatly refused.”
But according to Taylor, she had other reasons for declining to perform this year.
During her appearance on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, Swift was asked about the reports of a dispute with the NFL, and she quickly shot those down – while confirming that she did turn down the opportunity to perform the halftime show, albeit for different reasons:
“Here’s the thing. Like, Jay-Z has always been very good to me. Our teams are really close. It’s, like, they sometimes will call and say, ‘How does she feel about…?’ And that’s not, like, an official offer or an official, or, like, a conference room conversation. Like, our teams are really close. ‘How does she feel about it in general?’
And we’ve been, we’re always able to, like, tell him the truth, which is that, like, I am in love with a guy who does that sport on that actual field. Like, that is violent chess. That is gladiators without swords. That is dangerous.
The whole season, I am locked in on what that man is doing on the field. Can you imagine if, like, he’s out there every single week, like, putting his life on the line, doing this very dangerous, very high-pressure, high-intensity sport, and I’m like, ‘I wonder what my choreo should be. I think we should do two verses of Shake It Off into Blank space into Cruel Summer would be great.’ And this is nothing to do with Travis. He would love for me to do it. I’m just too locked in.”
So there you have it. According to Taylor, she’s just more focused on watching Travis play than worrying about putting together a halftime show – and it sounds like she wants him to have his moment without overshadowing him on his own field.
Although after the Kansas City Chiefs lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars tonight to fall to 2-3, I’m not sure if she’ll have to worry about Travis playing in the Super Bowl this year anyway…
