Is Travis Kelce dumb?
An investigation
In case you’re living under a rock, you know that Travis Kelce’s girlfriend (maybe you’ve heard of her) is releasing her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, on October 3. She announced this on Kelce’s podcast, New Heights (which he co-hosts with his brother Jason), which was Taylor Swift’s first-ever podcast appearance. I’m sure it’s already the biggest podcast episode ever in the history of podcasts1, which isn’t going to help the podcast industry. Instead, it’ll just create unrealistic expectations from places like Amazon (which now owns Wondery, which produces New Heights) and create more million-dollar payouts for celebs to host podcasts, who will, in turn, get big celebs on their podcasts. There’s a lot of talk about how traditional media is dead (more on that in a bit), but podcasts are also in a state of flux. Imagine launching a successful new podcast without a celebrity name attached! Imagine interviewing a pop star about anything substantial? Thank god for Popcast, which is doing great work in that regard, but every other podcast tour stop for pop stars is thinly veiled PR. Actors, however, actually love to talk about their craft, so you can expect to still see them pop up on interview shows. They seem to hate the annoying PR shit, unless it’s a late-night show, but those are gonna be replaced by podcasts anyway, aren’t they? But only the thinly veiled PR ones!
Btw, sources tell me that the video portion of Swift’s New Heights appearances went through 20+ rounds of edits before it was approved. Regular podcasts, even the big ones, do not have time for all that.
Throughout the length of their relationship, Kelce has been referred to as a “golden retriever” boyfriend. Far be it from me to defend men, but I wondered if this was a good thing when I first heard it. Apparently so!2 But really, it’s a nice way of calling someone a himbo. A sweet, loyal one, but a himbo nonetheless. Meaning, he’s dumb and kind of illiterate. I pointed this out online the other day, and people rushed to tell me he’s dyslexic. Okay, so is Anderson Cooper, and he can presumably read and write books. I have a feeling we’re infantilizing Kelce more than we would the average man just because his girlfriend is Taylor Swift and everything in her orbit is a-ok! Like her flying on her private jet back and forth from Stockholm to record this album with Max Martin and Shellback during the European leg of her tour. Fuck carbon emissions, am I right? But actually, I’m personally fine with it since that means Jack Antonoff is AntonOFF this latest album, and she’s back working with the producers behind 1989 and the majority of my favorite Swift album, Reputation3.
Apropos of nothing but really fucking good pop music, if you’re a millennial who only listened to Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” circa 1999 and not the entire album, it fucking slaps? Desperately need to hear “Man of the Year” in the club.
Anyway, back to Swift’s man. The podcast episode was fascinating to watch not only because Swift rarely gives interviews, but because watching a power couple of this magnitude give an interview is almost unheard of. Sure, you’ve got Dave Franco and Alison Brie trying desperately to become America’s Sweethearts on their press tour for Together. But they’re running through interviews like the Tomb Raider. Swift and Kelce’s interview is the Pay-Per-View main event.
It was also fascinating to watch for hints at whether Kelce’s golden retriever act is just that: an act. Yes, we’ve seen the tweets from 2010 (classics like: “I just gave a squirle a peice of bread and it straight smashed all of it!!!! I had no idea they ate bread like that!! Haha #crazy”), so we know he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed (now I’ve got Smash Mouth stuck in my brain, not sure why I’m on a 1999 alt rock TRL countdown kick today).
At one point, Swift refers to Folklore as “esoteric” (which, sure, I’d argue The Tortured Poets Department is her most esoteric work, given fan reaction versus general critical consensus) in comparison to The Life of a Showgirl, which is presumably more mainstream pop-oriented4. Kelce interrupts to say, “She’s so hot when she uses big words.” “You know what esoteric means,” Swift responds. “I know, it means for a specific following,” Kelce says. “He knows what that means,” Swift says, speaking to Jason. She then goes on to say that Kelce loves to do an “I don’t know what that word means” thing, but he does know what most big words mean.
So, is it all an act? One might presume that the golden retriever bit is an act, but let’s parse his use of “esoteric.” There’s a possibility he learned the word on his own, but more than likely, Swift explained the word to him. And knowing Swift, if she’s referring to Folklore as esoteric, then this is a talking point she has devised for her promotion of her new album. Which means he probably overheard this at some point, then asked her what it meant. So it doesn’t necessarily mean that Kelce is going out of his way to educate himself in his new relationship, but it does mean he’s at least asking questions when he’s confused. Which is how you become smart anyway, so maybe he is a lot smarter than he appears to be. Swift seems to agree, because she also course-corrects when he acts like “fortuitous” is a big word. More than likely, Kelce is a golden retriever of a boyfriend, but Swift is using the podcast to let people know that he’s actually kinda smart, too. He knows what big words mean, he just pretends not to! In a way, this acknowledges that Kelce is “acting” in his public persona. Most celebrities would shy away from this. But Swift is banking on the fact that it comes across more as self-deprecating than as an act. And besides, everyone knows she’s a showgirl. Why can’t he be a showman?
Further insight into Kelce’s mind appears in the September issue of GQ, which he covers, styled by Law Roach. Interviewed by Sean Manning, this description of Kelce has made the rounds on social media:
Still, the Travis Kelce I spend time with is different from the Travis Kelce I expected. Though no less ebullient, he is more introspective. “That football is shaped funny,” Kelce says with Yogi Berra–like sagacity. “That thing can bounce your way, and it can not bounce your way. There’s a lot of fortune that goes into playing this game.” It’s this slightly philosophical bent that complicates the carefree, club-hopping Midwestern bro persona that has made him so relatable and beloved. “I’m starting to phase out of wanting to be known as the party guy,” says the guy who emcees a namesake music festival in Kansas City that draws 20,000 spectators to see the likes of Diplo and Lil Wayne, the guy whose post-playoff victory routine is a guttural rendition of “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!).”
But there does seem to be some moderate introspection from Kelce. He worries about partying too much. Or rather, being perceived as partying too much. Which, girl, same! He worries that he let his team down in the Super Bowl because he didn’t practice enough and was busy shooting movies. That’s the real meat of the interview with Kelce, which sadly, we don’t get a lot more of. The interview focuses a lot on his upbringing and the standard “my parents worked hard” stuff that will surely be in his biopic someday. But I didn’t really learn anything about Kelce from the profile. There’s a point when he describes watching Swift perform and says, “I get to be the plus one. I get to go and be that fan. Because I am a fan. I’m a fan of music. I’m a fan of art.” One might expect a follow-up question to be… what kind of music? What kind of art? But Kelce’s interests remain a mystery.
But I will congratulate GQ on landing the interview. In a time when everyone has declared media dead, magazines should exist as collector’s items. And this issue seems like it would be prized memorabilia not just for football fans, but also Swifties. I’m not generally a fan of GQ as a magazine these days (it feels like an inessential part of culture, aside from its Man of the Year party), but it’s at least creating positive buzz for Condé Nast instead of whatever the hell is going on at Vanity Fair right now.
Though… I’m not sure if the cover is something I’d want to put on my wall. It’s far from my favorite Law Roach styling, though I get the idea of attempting swamp glamour with Kelce. Because he lives in Orlando, I guess? He’s from Ohio. He has a condo in Orlando, but I don’t tend to associate Kelce with the swamp. And the article doesn’t delve much into what his life is currently like living in Florida, so the whole MAGA adjacent vibes seem kinda put on? If anything, the styling seems like an attempt to reposition him as more masculine, given the fact that he’s generally seen either as a dumb jock or a pop star’s boyfriend. The dumb jock archetype should be seen as masculine, but pop culture has given us too many Finn Hudsons in Glee types to buy dumb jocks as macho men anymore. They’ve got hearts of gold and untapped emotions.
At one point during the New Heights podcast, in another attempt to prove Kelce’s intelligence, Swift mentions apropos of nothing, “he may not have read Hamlet, but I’ve explained it to him.” To be a himbo, or not to be? That is the question.
Edit: I said the New Heights video went through 30+ rounds of edits, it was 20+ per my source.
According to Pop Crave, it brought over a 3,000% increase in new listeners to New Heights. I’m sure they’ll all stick around lol.
I still don’t think Kelce needs Dunkin’ in his Instagram comments, calling him a golden retriever, just so they can piggyback off engagement from Swift’s album. It’s lame.
And my favorite Swift song, “Dancing with Our Hands Tied.” That’s a masterpiece, chile.
Except for “Down Bad.” That’s a Reputation era jam.
Great investigative report Ira!TS calling Travis a “human exclamation point” was both endearing and accurate. I stan!
I loved reading this