Taylor Swift made her highly anticipated podcast debut on New Heights, hosted by boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce.

The pop superstar used the appearance to announce her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, and give some updates on her life since the Eras Tour, which ran almost two years and spanned five continents before ending in December.

More than 1.3 million tuned in live for the programme as Swift offered insights into her relationship with Travis, the notorious easter eggs she plants in music for fans and even titbits on her sourdough-bread-baking hobby.

It marked a change for megastar, who is notorious for not giving interviews and instead sharing updates on her life through song lyrics, which frenzied fans analyse and piece together.

The American football star brothers offered a warm welcome to Swift, calling her “Tay Tay” and running through a list of her many awards.

Teaser clips of the New Heights podcast went viral before her episode aired, including one video clip where Swift unveils a briefcase with “TS” on it and pulls out her new 12th studio album, which will be available 3 October.

The record was simultaneously made available for pre-order on her website – which also had a countdown clock to the moment when she would appear on the podcast.

Here is some of what we learned from her appearance.

As the countdown clock ran down on her website and the podcast started, Swift’s website updated with the cover of her 12th studio album.

The Life of a Showgirl features Swift wearing a dress emblazoned with diamonds lying in turquoise green.

She is seen submerged in the water, with only her face above the surface.

The website to pre-order the album started crashing as soon as the podcast began, with some users receiving error messages. It will be released 3 October, according to her website.

Swift explained that she wrote the album while on her Eras Tour and said she would frequently return to Sweden while doing concerts in Europe, in order to record it.

“I was basically exhausted at this point in the tour, but I was so mentally stimulated and so excited to be creating,” she said.

Travis added: “Literally living the life of a showgirl.”

Swift went on to read out all 12 track names, including the title track which features Sabrina Carpenter.

Travis said the album is “upbeat” and will make people dance – a true pop album. He called it a 180 degree difference from her last album, The Tortured Poets Department.

“Life is more upbeat,” Swift said in response, smiling and looking at Travis.

She said it’s also unlike her last album due to the number of tracks – making clear it will only include 12 tracks and that is it.

Swift said the album tells the story of “everything that was going on behind the curtain” of her time on tour. The colour orange was chosen because it’s a colour she likes and felt energised by, she added.

Toward the beginning of the show, Swift was asked why she chose to appear on the podcast, which caters primarily to sports fans.

“This podcast has done a lot for me. This podcast got me a boyfriend,” she said, accusing Travis of using the podcast as his “personal dating app” before he met her.

Before they started dating – or even met – Travis famously gushed on the podcast about attending one of Swift’s concerts and being saddened when they couldn’t meet. He talked about making her a beaded friendship bracelet, which were popular during the Eras Tour, and said he wanted to give her his phone number.

She said the clip, which went viral, felt almost like “he was standing outside of my apartment, holding a boom box saying, ‘I want to go on a date with you'”.

She said this was exactly the moment she had “been writing songs about, wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager”.

“It was wild, but it worked… He’s the good kind of crazy,” she said, calling her boyfriend “a human exclamation point”.

She said she was circling back to the podcast show as a way to say thank you.

The episode began with a screaming introduction from Jason, the former Philadelphia Eagles player, who runs through a long list of his brother’s girlfriend’s accomplishments, including being the only artist to win the album of the year Grammy four times.

Swift sat beside Travis, chuckling along before thanking Jason for his enthusiasm.

She then went on to poke fun at her appearing on a podcast that typically caters to American football fans.

“As we all know, you know, you guys have a lot of male sports fans that listen to your podcast,” she said.

“I think we all know that if there’s one thing that male sports fans want in their spaces and on their screens, it’s more of me,” she deadpanned, looking straight into the camera.

Swift’s appearance at Kansas City Chiefs games caused a frenzy over the years. In 2023 when the pair started dating and she started making appearances, game cameras looked for the singer in the stands – cutting to her more than a dozen times during some games.

The NFL promoted her appearances at games heavily on social media, posting videos and tweets about the singer and her celebrity entourage that often accompanied her.

Some football fans weren’t happy with the new focus.

Swift was booed by NFL fans during her appearance on the jumbotron screen at the Super Bowl last February, which drew headlines and even social media posts by President Donald Trump.

But despite the criticism, Jason assured her that she has been the “most requested guest on the podcast”. Other recent guests on the show include basketball stars Caitlin Clark, Shaquille O’Neal and LeBron James, and actors Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Bill Murray and Adam Sandler.

She also spoke about all the ways she uses easter eggs to tease her music and plant hidden clues for fans.

She said she has rules for the hidden clues in her music and performances.

“I’m never going to plant an easter egg that ties back to my personal life. It’s always going to go back to my music,” she explained, joking that some of fans have gotten so good at decoding her that it’s almost gotten a bit “zodiac killer”.

The hidden clues are “something that you don’t know I’m saying for a specific reason, but you’ll go back and be like ‘Oh my God!'”

She said that her favourite example was a speech she gave when she received an honourary doctorate.

“I put so many lyrical easter eggs in that speech that when the Midnights album came out, after that, the fans were like, ‘The whole speech was an easter egg!'”

She spoke about her love of numbers and dates. “I love math stuff,” she said, calling out 13 as her favourite number. Travis, she said, is “87” – the number he wears on his jersey during games – and she noted that 13 plus 87 equals 100.

Some of her hidden messages are so complex, she said, they are crafted “upside down, backwards in Braille”.

She added one of her biggest clues for fans came at the conclusion of the Eras Tour.

Every performance of the tour ended with Swift leaving the stage by descending through an elevator. But for the final show, she took stairs and walked through an orange-coloured door – which she admitted was one of her easter eggs.

“I wanted to give a little subliminal hint that I may be ending the Eras Tour era, but I may be entering a new era,” she said.

The new vinyl record, she showed, is a sparkly shade of orange.

Swift said that she knew nothing about football before their romance began.

“I didn’t know what a first down was,” or a “tight-end,” (which is the position Travis plays), she said.

She said she appreciated Travis’ patience and understanding when they started dating and introducing her to his world.

She’s now found herself personally invested – citing an episode where she found herself interested in a recent player trade. She recalled thinking to herself: “Who body snatched me?”

Travis told her that he will be “forever grateful” that she dove fully into his world “wholeheartedly”.

In May this year, it was announced that she had bought the rights to her first six albums, ending a long-running and highly publicised battle over the ownership of her music.

After her original masters sold, she vowed to re-record all six albums, which became known as “Taylor’s Versions”.

Swift grew emotional as she explained the process by which she purchased her master recordings, after trying for an entire decade to secure the rights.

She said she was not interested in the financial “returns” the albums would bring.

“For me it’s not ‘I want to own this asset because of its returns’,” she said. “I want this because it was my handwritten diary entries from my entire life.”

She said that her mother and brother talked with with Shamrock Capital, a Los Angeles-based investment firm, about purchasing her music.

When her mother called her, saying “You got your music,” she said: “I just very dramatically hit the floor. For real.”

“Bawling my eyes out, and just weeping. And just like ‘Really? Really? What do you mean?'”

“This changed my life,” she continued. “I can’t believe it still.”

She also thanked loyal fans for listening to her re-recorded albums, saying they reacted to the dispute over rights to her music with the Western cowboy expression, “We ride at dawn”.

She also said that it was through her fans that she was able to buy back her music.

“The reason I was able to purchase my music back is, they came to the Eras Tour,” she said.

She was also asked which versions of her albums her fans should listen to – now that she owns both versions.

“I think a lot of the vocals I did on the re-records were better than the original,” she said, adding that she is especially fond of the remake of her 2012 album Red.

Speaking about her Eras Tour, which ended in December, she immediately drew comparisons to football.

“It was a lot of physical therapy. It was a lot of being in a state of perpetual discomfort,” she said.

“I’m not getting hit by huge 300-pounders. But the heels!” she said.

She also talked about life after the tour. She and Travis spoke fondly about their love, describing how they bake sourdough bread together.

His dough winds up with chest hair in it, while hers has extra cat hair, she joked.

“I had never experienced something so mesmerising on stage, and then so real and beautiful in person,” said Travis.

Jason then joked that maybe he should leave, and give them some privacy, as Swift swooned.

“Yeah I think so, honestly,” Swift responded. “At this point, I think everyone should leave.”

While Swift has at times been shy about discussing her relationship in public, Travis has been more outspoken. Before the podcast aired, he told GQ in an interview, “I love being the happiest guy in the world”.

He also praised Swift for her athleticism, comparing her three-hour long concerts to his football games.

“That is arguably more exhausting than how much I put in on a Sunday, and she’s doing it three, four, five days in a row,” he said.