Not all that long ago, Taylor Swift and her superstar boyfriend Travis Kelce were on top of the world, professionally and personally. Lately, though, that picture seems to have shifted dramatically.
Roughly two years ago, Swift was the most popular artist on the planet, riding the wave of her record-shattering Eras Tour while also making history by breaking a Grammy record with yet another Album of the Year win. At the same time, Kelce had just captured his second straight Super Bowl title, with his superstar girlfriend cheering him on from the stands.
Fast forward to the past several months, and the narrative looks very different. Swift’s Eras Tour has officially wrapped up, bringing an end to what may have been the defining achievement of her career. On top of that, she has been shut out at the last two Grammy Awards ceremonies. Last year, she failed to win a single award. This year, she didn’t receive a single nomination and isn’t even attending the show.
Kelce has not fared much better. After what was statistically the worst season of his career, he and the Chiefs were blown out by the Philadelphia Eagles in last year’s Super Bowl. Swift was there, but instead of celebrating another championship, she witnessed a lopsided loss while being booed loudly by the crowd and later mocked by United States President Donald Trump. This season has been even worse, as the Chiefs failed to make the playoffs altogether.
At this point, it’s hard not to notice that the tide appears to have turned against Taylor Swift, and that shift is showing up in her popularity as well.
Earlier this month, the pop icon received some discouraging news when YouGov reports revealed that her popularity had fallen to its lowest point since the firm began tracking the metric in 2020. Her current popularity rating sits at 46.7%, a notable drop from 55.4% at the same time last year. Meanwhile, the share of people who say they dislike her has climbed from 23.5% to 29.2% over that same span.
Making matters worse, this survey was conducted before some unflattering texts from the pop star became public amid the ongoing legal battle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. As a result, her popularity and favorability are likely even lower than the numbers indicate.
Needless to say, this is pretty horrible news for her, and it led to a lot of reactions on social media.
“I always thought it was weird she had to do so many variants to break records other artists made with one album on like four types of media. She’s very famous, but doubt she’s as popular as she, and her cult, wants people to believe,” one fan wrote in the comments of a Reddit post.
“I swear she’s putting all her billions into seeming like she’s more loved and famous than she actually is!!!!! So infuriating!” someone else wrote.
“Taylor is definitely popular, but she’s not as popular as the media (or her team) paints. I think it has a lot to do with how much her PR team pushes out articles and inflates events like the Eras tour into something so much bigger than it really is. I can name 10 other artists who can sell out as many, if not more, stadiums than Taylor. The only difference is that their PR teams are not on a frenzy to keep them in the news cycle,” another fan added.
“She did it to herself by playing the perpetual victim even at age 36, her music which you think would get more soulful and meaningful as she got older, only got worse and more infantile. And now with the release of the blame Lively texts we can see that she thinks much too highly of herself. She’s always been annoying,” another commenter wrote.
“The harder she and her team try to make her seem popular, the more cringey and off putting she becomes,” someone else added.
Still, Swift remains nearly as famous as ever, with 97.6% of respondents saying they have at least heard of her. However, she may have some work to do to win back a larger share of public favor.