Donna Kelce gives her verdict on Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department: ‘Best work yet’

Donna Kelce, mother of Super Bowl winner Travis Kelce, is clearly a fan of Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department.

The American footballer is the singer’s current boyfriend.

“I listened to the whole album, and I listened to it all morning long when it was released,” she told People magazine at QVC’s Age of Possibility summit in Las Vegas.

Swift dropped her 11th studio album with 16 tracks on 19 April and then announced a surprise “2am version” with 15 songs a few hours later.

“I was just very impressed,” Kelce added.

“She is a very talented woman, and I think it is probably her best work.”

Asked if she had any advice for the multi-Grammy-winning pop titan, Kelce said, “She doesn’t need my advice on anything. In fact, I hope she will give me advice.”

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The Tortured Poets Department has been anticipated since Swift announced it at the 2024 Grammys where she took home top prizes, including Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album, for 2022’s Midnights.

While fans speculated that the new album would be a postmortem of Swift’s six-year relationship with English actorJoe Alwyn, it appears to spend more time reflecting on her short-lived romance with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy.

However, one of the tracks on the first part of the album, “The Alchemy”, appears to be the first song Swift has released about Travis Kelce, who plays tight-end for the Kansas City Chiefs.

The song has plenty of references to American football, including the lines: “So when I touch down/ Call the amateurs and cut ‘em from the team/ Ditch the clowns, get the crown/ Baby, I’m the one to beat.”

She also seems to refer to her British ex-boyfriends, singing: “These blokes warm the benches/ We’ve been on a winning streak.”

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There is also, possibly, a reference to the triumphant moment the Chiefs won the Super Bowl in February, during which Kelce made sure to celebrate with Swift before accepting the trophy.

“Shirts off, and your friends lift you up, over their heads/ Beer stickin’ to the floor, cheers chanted ‘cause they said/ ‘There was no chance trying to be the greatest in the league’/ Where’s the trophy? He just comes, running over to me,” Swift sings.

The Independent’s Helen Brown gave the new album five stars, praising Swift’s storytelling power.

“In keeping with the literary (if ungrammatical) album title, Swift is on her most piercingly polysyllabic form here.”

The album features collaborations with rapper Post Malone and Florence Welch of English band Florence + the Machine. Physical copies of the album will include an original poem from Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks.

In a message to fans on social media when the album dropped, Swift wrote: “This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed.

“And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.”