Taylor Swift has finally addressed the ongoing rumors about why she won’t take on the Super Bowl halftime show, and it has nothing to do with her fiancé, NFL star Travis Kelce.
Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on October 6, Swift set the record straight after Fallon asked if she really turned down the Super Bowl “because of performance footage.”
Her response: a firm “No.”
“Jay-Z has always been very good to me,” Swift explained. “Our teams are close, and sometimes they’ll ask how I feel about certain things, but that’s not an official offer. The truth is, I’m in love with a guy who plays on that field, and it’s already stressful enough watching him.”
Swift admitted she couldn’t imagine planning choreography while Kelce is out there “playing violent chess” every week. “That’s gladiators without swords,” she said. “The whole season, I’m locked in on what he’s doing. Can you imagine him out there, and I’m like, ‘Should we do two verses of Shake It Off into Blank Space?’”
Taylor Swift addresses rumors she turned down the Super Bowl over ‘performance footage’ on @FallonTonight:
— Pop Base (@PopBase) October 7, 2025
“Jay-Z has always been very good to me. Our teams are really close, they sometimes will call and say ‘How does she feel about the Super Bowl?’
pic.twitter.com/xj2p0lmmyc
The pop icon emphasized again, “This is nothing to do with Travis, he’d love for me to do it. I’m just too locked in.”
Swift’s comments finally shut down months of speculation linking her relationship to her absence from the halftime stage, a performance opportunity fans have begged her to take for years.
Her appearance also came as part of the promotional run for her record-breaking new album The Life of a Showgirl, which dropped October 3 and quickly became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in 2025.
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