Photo courtesy of New Heights podcast.
THURSDAY 10:16 AM AUGUST 14, 2025 UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
As of Thursday morning, more than nine million people had watched Taylor Swift’s hotly anticipated appearance on the New Heights podcast, hosted by her boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason. There, as you probably know by now, Swift announced her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, out October 3rd, and reflected on her own life as a showgirl, from the record-breaking Eras Tour to her embattled attempts to reclaim ownership of her master recordings (which she did, to the tune of approximately $360 million). Like her or not, Swift is a big as it gets. So our editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg, unfamiliar with the lore, joined our digital editor Jake Nevins, Interview’s resident Swiftie, to spiral about the pop star’s latest era.
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MEL OTTENBERG: Hey, Swiftie.
JAKE NEVINS: How are you doing?
OTTENBERG: Are you in the office? I’m saying I’m in an undisclosed location.
NEVINS: I am. It’s a quiet one today.
OTTENBERG: Tears were shed in my house last night. To be clear with everyone, I’m not a Swiftie. But the people that I summer with are Swifties and they tried to turn me into a Swiftie by playing “All Too Well” and “August.”
NEVINS: Two of her five best songs, I would say.
OTTENBERG: I’ve never been into Taylor Swift. I don’t give a fuck about Taylor Swift, but Taylor Swift is the moment. And after watching the podcast yesterday, I thought it would be fun to talk to you about it. Are you excited? Do you think The Life of a Showgirl is going to be a double album?
Taylor Swift, photographed by Mert & Marcus.
NEVINS: Well, she was pretty clear on the podcast last night that this is a tight record. 12 songs, with no more coming. But I have to say, it’s this very intimate, demented relationship that she’s cultivated with her fans and I don’t know that I trust her. Like, she’ll drop an album at midnight, and then at 3 AM go, “Here’s another 15 songs!” But personally, I’d prefer a tight, focused record. These days, in the streaming era, pop stars are pumping out 25-song records and it can be hard to discern any kind of artistic vision. So I’d like to see how she operates on a smaller scale.
OTTENBERG: Absolutely. Look, I’ve been thinking about albums. Some of the great pop albums recently, they’re usually 11 or 12 songs and you could still be like, “Wow, if they only had the hindsight to just make it a nine-song album, it would be the greatest thing of all time.” You know what I mean?
NEVINS: One-hundred percent. Madonna’s albums are always between 10 and 13 songs, right?
OTTENBERG: Yes. I think True Blue has 12 songs, and I feel like that should be the North Star. But hold on, I will say that “August” is a good song. Everyone thinks that way, right?
NEVINS: One of my favorites.
OTTENBERG: That’s all I can acknowledge. And then I think the Mert [Alas] and Marcus [Piggot] pictures are good.
NEVINS: Go on, ‘cause you’re more of a visuals guy than me.
OTTENBERG: Listen, everyone’s done showgirl, so everyone thinks they own showgirl. But it’s really fun for the hot, blonde, six-foot-tall woman to do that. She is living the life of the showgirl that everyone’s obsessed with, the way that she’s in this relationship and does the biggest tour of all time, the most successful tour of all time with the most cities, blah blah blah. And then she’s going to… what’s that fucking restaurant?
NEVINS: Via Carota?
OTTENBERG: No, that one on Houston and Broadway. The Corner Store? Anyway, she was there wearing a full look. And some, including all of her fans, would say the hair, the makeup, or the shoes are always wrong in some capacity. I’m not saying that because I can’t remember what the shoes and the hair and the makeup even were and I don’t understand who she is, but she really is loving life. She really is living the life of a showgirl.
NEVINS: Totally. And I’ve been listening to her music since her first album in 2006, when I would’ve been like, 11 years old. So when you develop your obsessions as a young person, you’re kind of ready to go to bat for your favorite pop stars, right? To anyone who slanders them I’d be like, “You don’t see the vision.” But I’ve become a little less militant now. I can see how her quest for world domination and her transparent greed would rub people the wrong way. And I think that the relationship with her fans, which is a very unique thing, veers close to manipulation. Like, “Here are four different versions of the same album. You can buy them all in a bundle for $80.” And the concert tickets are obscenely expensive. But what I’ll always go to bat for is the artistry. I think she’s got an insane, once-in-a-generation gift for melody and and songcraft and she’s obviously a very savvy businesswoman. But I’m curious to hear you talk more about what your block with her is, ‘cause I know you do stan some pop stars. You’re a Madonna girl.
OTTENBERG: Well, that’s true. Such a good question. I was Rihanna’s stylist for eight years and I’d always see Taylor Swift backstage. And I am just never going to be a Beyonce girl or a Taylor Swift girl because I worked with Rihanna and had the best time working with her. We pulled things out of the hat that would change the world. And Taylor would look great, don’t get me wrong, but she’d be in a beautiful runway dress by Versace and I was just like, “All right, but we’re something different.” That doesn’t mean hate. Her proportions are amazing. She was truly the definition of statuesque, but it just wasn’t really my thing. Anyway, because I didn’t know the music, I was always like, “Why is this woman attacking us all the time with a new album or redoing the music?” I hate it when you’re listening to something on Spotify and you’re like, “Wait, they’ve rerecorded the song?” It’s just so horrible. The idea of that seems really gross to me. However, I feel a little bit more chill about it recently. I’m not a hater. I wouldn’t have ever gone to the Eras Tour, but I’m bummed I never went to the Eras Tour movie to see people screaming in the movie theater. How many times did you go to the Eras Tour?
Taylor Swift, photographed by Mert & Marcus.
NEVINS: I went once, and I want to tell you the story because I think it’s kind of funny. Obviously, it was prohibitively expensive. And my sister and I both love Taylor Swift. I’m not on TikTok, but my sister’s on TikTok, and the date of the Philly and New York shows were approaching and my sister tells me that these Swifties are on TikTok saying the price of the tickets start to nosedive a few hours before the show. This was May 2023. So we drove to Philly on a Friday afternoon and parked in the lot of a Catholic church about a half-mile away from Lincoln Financial Field. We fire up the personal hotspot and, lo and behold, ticket prices start to drop at like, 5:30 PM, so we pull the trigger. It was a very, very special night because I’m stone-cold sober singing songs with my sister that we used to sing when I thought I was in love with a boy in high school. But that’s not to say that the appeal of Taylor is entirely nostalgic. It’s more that the music has just always been there at every stage of my life. But to go back to the re-recordings, I’m curious what your impression of the project is now after seeing her talk about it on the podcast last night.
OTTENBERG: Well, I’ve never seen her talk period before last night, and I am actually pretty convinced. I thought that her explanation of it was really strong. And listen, Taylor Swift is a genius. It’s pretty obvious. And there’s a ravenous appetite for the different versions and the pre-order links and new box set and all that. I thought that the way she described the reasoning behind wanting to own all of her songs and why it’s really important to her was succinct. I believed it. And also, when she was talking about watching all of these people screaming the words to “All Too Well,” a song that I don’t know the words to—but I know that it’s the Jake Gyllenhaal scarf song—I thought, “This bitch is cool. She’s got big balls.” And I believe Taylor Swift when she says that everyone in the media and the people around her were saying, “This is a bad idea. It’s cannibalizing the songs. There’s not an appetite for this.” I love that she just did it anyway. But I’ll also say that I do have a good friend that thinks she’s the biggest bitch on earth. I have also heard stories from people who really like her. But I bet if she doesn’t like you, she will cut you hard.
NEVINS: She’s a vengeful girl. We know that. Kim Kardashian knows that too.
OTTENBERG: Yes, right. Wait, who is “Bad Blood” about?
NEVINS: The lore there is that it’s about Katy Perry, who apparently sabotaged one of Taylor’s tours by hiring all of her backup dancers out from under her just before her tour was about to start. But they’ve apparently squashed the beef.
OTTENBERG: She never squashed the beef with Kim Kardashian, right?
NEVINS: No, I think Kim is in the doghouse for eternity.
OTTENBERG: But didn’t Taylor say it was cool? Didn’t Kim and Kanye say that they called Taylor about “Famous” and Taylor said she was cool with it?
NEVINS: So that song came out and Taylor released a statement that she found the lyric about Kanye making her famous belittling. And then Kim and Kanye countered with a recording of the phone call showing Kanye calling her and her approving it. The thing is, they clipped the call and cut out the part where Kanye asks for permission to say, “I made that bitch famous.” And Taylor’s like, “Well, that part I don’t love.” So I guess Kim and Kanye manipulated it to make it seem like she had given her consent.
OTTENBERG: Oh, they edited the phone call.
NEVINS: Yeah. So Taylor came out of that one pretty unscathed. But to your point, I found it interesting what you said, how all of her advisors recommended against the re-recording project. The thing that’s cool about Taylor is she’s like, “No, no, no. You guys don’t get it. My fans are going to eat this up.” Like, “You must not understand the relationship that we’ve cultivated over the years.” I like that she bets on herself.
OTTENBERG: Yeah, I like that.
NEVINS: When you watched, what were your impressions of Taylor and Travis?
OTTENBERG: First of all, I’ve never watched that podcast before. But I am a definite Jason Kelce fan now.
NEVINS: He’s sexy.
OTTENBERG: He just has an amazing face. And I love the screaming. He seems like a good enough guy to me. The Travis Kelce thing is so cool too. I don’t relate to any of these people, but it’s so sick to go on your podcast and yell about how you want to date this chick who’s the most famous and most successful singer and then she’s his girlfriend. All that’s lore too, right?
NEVINS: Totally.
OTTENBERG: Anyway, the way he’s looking at her is really cute. For all I know, Taylor Swift is on that podcast every week and I’m just not aware of it. But apparently, the things that we saw her talking about and the body language that we saw last night was news, news, news. No one’s seen it before. I’m so unaware of these people that they could be on TikTok Live all day long together and I just would not know it because I don’t care. But I think Taylor and Travis Kelce are hot.
NEVINS: Did you like his GQ cover, styled by Law [Roach] and shot by Ryan McGinley?
OTTENBERG: I did, yes. People are saying that it looks very January 6th and they hate that. But also, I really liked the January 6th guy’s outfit. I don’t like anything that he stood for, but I did like that outfit. And I like seeing Law style something like this. People are hating on it. But I really like it, so fuck it.
NEVINS: You’re not here for January 6th. But are you here for October 3rd?
OTTENBERG: What’s October 3rd?
NEVINS: [Laughs] That’s the release date.
OTTENBERG: Without you reminding me that it’s her release date, I would not know. My house was like, “Mel, if this album drops tomorrow, your summer has changed.” And I was like, let it drop, because it’s a rainy day here in this undisclosed location and I would love to listen to the album. October 3rd, I’ll still be at Fashion Week, that’s probably around when the Chanel show is or when the Addison Rae concert in New York is, which I want to go to. So who knows how I’ll feel then? But I’m saying now that I want to listen to it and we should do a part two when it comes out.
NEVINS: Absolutely.
OTTENBERG: Can I just riff on two other things? My thoughts on the showgirl thing is that she’s the showgirl of now. She’s the hardest working woman in show business. Love it or hate it, friend or foe, she’s the one that has it all. If I was working that hard, I’d want to die. So she just makes us all look subhuman. I heard yesterday how she would practice for the tour on a treadmill for four hours doing all the songs. This bitch works hard. I also found it interesting on Instagram yesterday how everyone’s dropping all their showgirl stuff. Am I going to drop all my Rihanna 2013 showgirl “Pour It Up” shit? No. Even if Taylor might be wearing maybe the exact same bra that I used 12 years ago, so what? It’s a good showgirl bra. It’s good pop to take a 20th century archetype like the classic showgirl and redo it right now. And I think it’s good to have a big, expensive photo shoot by Mert and Marcus right now. I don’t see much of that coming from the pop world. I’m here to say that I like it.
NEVINS: Yeah, yeah.
OTTENBERG: It’s 2025, we’re far enough away from the pandemic. Some real glamour is good right now. America’s in a shit-hole disaster.
Taylor Swift, photographed by Mert & Marcus.
NEVINS: It’s a nightmare, man. I have another thing to say, though.
OTTENBERG: Tell me.
NEVINS: To your point about the showgirl shoot. For this new generation of pop stars, Taylor kind of spearheaded the idea of eras and of constant transformation. Which is not to say that all of the great 20th century pop stars weren’t constantly reinventing themselves, but I do think that this era culture we’re living in now was kicked off at least a little bit by Taylor and the way that she went country to country-pop to full-blown pop, then to folksy acoustic stuff and now back to pop. I think that she set an expectation that all the girls need to be on their toes. And even though Taylor can be really on the nose, I like the way she fully commits herself to whatever the new era demands of her. Like, with folklore and evermore, her pandemic albums, she’s in the woods with her plaid wool coat and her French braids. Now she’s having Mert and Marcus shoot her in the full showgirl fantasy. Does that make sense?
OTTENBERG: It does make sense. But I throw up on the idea that Taylor is leading the idea of different eras. That makes me fucking sick. But I’m so glad you brought it up because we should be fighting. Wait, hold on. Let me ask my housemate. [To housemate] Do you think that Taylor Swift is guiding the idea of really having eras?
ANONYMOUS HOUSEMATE: She is the person who has taken the baton from Madonna in the ability to do that the most.
OTTENBERG: God, I’m so sick.
ANONYMOUS HOUSEMATE: I know. But it’s the state of culture.
OTTENBERG: Oh, god. Her? She does it better than other people?
ANONYMOUS HOUSEMATE: Yeah. You just have to accept that we get what we deserve and this is what we deserve.
OTTENBERG: Oh wow. Did you hear that?
ANONYMOUS HOUSEMATE: I have one more thought on that subject. Taylor Swift’s superpower is her words, so if she says that she has a new era, everybody just falls in line. She writes it into existence. So sure, the visuals are not good. The costumes are not good. The woodland is cheesy. But because she’s like, “This is my new era, this is the vibe,” everybody just falls in line and it works.
NEVINS: Yeah, it’s a bit self-fulfilling. You’re right.
OTTENBERG: I guess I have to pay more attention to Taylor Swift as I am the editor of a magazine and I pay attention to culture. Not that I could imagine Taylor being on the cover of Interview because I think she’s just too controlling and wouldn’t really want to have fun with us. But also, Taylor’s always invited to be on the cover of Interview.
NEVINS: Always.
OTTENBERG: But also, I think that shoot is good. People are probably going to be like, “Why the hell are you saying that shoot is good?” But I think it looks good.
NEVINS: I think that some of the other shots are better than the cover shot in the bath water.
OTTENBERG: The one other thing that’s interesting is how many images there are, but that’s just the way the world is, right?
NEVINS: Well, yeah. It’s also the way Taylor Swift is because it’s like, you’re not getting one album, you’re getting four different vinyls with different cover art. And they each cost $17.99 plus shipping, and if you get them all together it’s $80 and you are a bone fide mega fan.
OTTENBERG: I understand what you’re saying. To be a mega fan you need to get all four Taylor Swift The Life of a Showgirl covers with all the different outfits and all the different hair and all the different setups.
NEVINS: I guess.
Taylor Swift, photographed by Mert & Marcus.
OTTENBERG: There’s a rhinestone Diamante look with a Rene Caovilla shoe that, for the record, Rihanna’s been wearing for 100 years. And then there’s the bathtub water one that’s sort of like Antonio Lopez meets Showgirls. I see the reference. Visuals do matter. And I think it’s smart business to get a great team together to really pump it.
NEVINS: Well, we’re about six weeks away and you might have to clone yourself so that you can be at the Addison concert, the Chanel show, and at the office Taylor Swift listening party at the same time. But you’ll figure it out, Mel.
OTTENBERG: I’ll figure it out.
