Will Taylor Swift’s domestic happiness harm her songwriting, ponders Miles Salter.

By Miles Salter

Feature photo by Eva Rinaldi (Licence)

Some time ago, I read an account from Nick Cave, who writes the enigmatic and stirring Red Hand Files, dispensing wisdom from a life that has been full and sometimes difficult. Cave said he once spent a night at the home of pop crooner Bryan Ferry. The home was luxuriously appointed, as befitting a millionaire. When Ferry told Cave that he had not written a song for a long time, Cave wanted to know why. ‘Well, look around you,’ said Ferry. In other words, comfort and luxury does not lend itself well to the creative muse.

Whether or not Taylor Swift is aware of this is not known, but she may be about to find out. On 26 August 2025, she announced her engagement to American football star Travis Kelce, who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, and the news spread around the world instantly. Instagram went proper bonkers.

Much of Taylor’s oeuvre, shall we say, is based on discontent. Lovers have been silly, immature, irritating men. ‘I don’t even want you back,’ she complained in The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, from The Tortured Poets Department. Then there’s We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, I Forgot That You Existed, Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve or, from her first album, Cold As You.

In fact, Taylor has made a career out of romantic disenchantment. On Spotify, you can, if you wish, listen to a playlist titled Taylor Swift songs about hating men. As the novelist Kate Atkinson once said, when asked about writing about happy families: ‘well, what is there to say?’

Discontent fuels most writing, and most songs. Yes, there are happy songs (Happy by Pharrell Williams, the irresistible and perennial Walking On Sunshine by Katrina and The Waves alongside numerous others), but generally there are far more songs about anger, jealousy, betrayal and generally being pissed off because a significant other has been a knob, cheated, lied, or been an unreliable, egomaniac loser. As there are quite a few unreliable, egomaniac losers out there, songwriters are not short of material.

Or the songs might display a wider discontent, not necessarily linked to romance. The Boomtown Rats didn’t like Mondays. REM lost their religion. Pink Floyd railed against education. ‘Rape Me,’ sang Kurt Cobain, invitingly. Morrissey wanted us all to know how miserable he was. You get the picture. Most songs deal in disappointment and frustration. As Nick Cave (again) articulated it so well: ‘We live our lives with a sense of incompleteness, of abandonment, a feeling of something lacking.’ 

Once Taylor walks down the aisle, she may find her songwriting dries up. Her and Kelce are well matched – both born in 1989, both all-Americans. But watch out, Kelce. If you do something annoying, it may soon turn up in a hummable new tune, such as You Left The Toilet Seat Up Again, or No, I Am Never Ever Going Back To The Superbowl.

Taylor’s waspish side has been on display plenty of times in the past, so it will be interesting to see where things go from here. In wider terms, it hardly matters. The world will carry on without another Taylor Swift album. She is fabulously wealthy, and could devote herself to domestic happiness, a family and charitable giving, if she wished. But for somebody as driven as Swift, this seems unlikely. Good luck to Travis and Taylor. I look forward to the I’m Happy Now album.

Miles Salter is a writer and musician based in York. He fronts the band Miles and The Chain Gang.