Taylor Swift has a simple response to critics who tell her it’s time to step out of the spotlight.
During her Wednesday appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” the 35-year-old singer spoke about the people she can turn to for advice in the industry, saying one of the things she “look[s] up to the most in people is career longevity.”
“Career longevity, friendship longevity, longevity in their relationships,” she said. “‘How do you keep a good thing going?’ I think there are certain corners of our society that really love that and look up to longevity.”
She continued: “There are also corners that are like, ‘Give someone else a turn. Can’t you just go away so that we can talk about how good you were?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t want to.'”
Swift went on to say that there are three people she can turn to for advice, naming singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks, record producer and songwriter Max Martin and her fiancé, professional football player, Travis Kelce, noting, “I can talk to him about any of this.”
The “Anti-Hero” singer also spoke about how 2025 was “a good year” for her, saying she feels “so grateful” after getting engaged to Kelce and getting her masters back in the same year.
“Those two things that you just mentioned, getting engaged to the love of my life, getting my music back, those are two things that just never could have happened,” she told Colbert. “They could have just never happened. It wasn’t like it was a ‘Oh, it’s just a matter of time.’ Both of those things could have just never arrived in my life. I’m so grateful for both of those things happening.”
She then credited her fans as the reason she was able to get her masters back.
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Kelce and Swift announced their engagement on Instagram in August, sharing a joint post that featured Kelce on one knee as the two of them were surrounded by flowers, with the caption, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married 🧨.”
The two began dating after he attended one of her stops during the Eras Tour and later went on his podcast, “New Heights,” to share how disappointed he was not to have met her following the concert.
The Eras Tour was a massive undertaking for Swift. It spanned nearly two years, beginning in March 2023 and concluding in December 2024, during which she traveled to five continents and performed 149 shows, each of which was three hours long.
The singer also revealed that she had the stomach flu ‘multiple times’ during the Eras Tour, and performed despite not feeling well.
“My goal was like, never let them know you have the stomach flu,” Swift said.
Swift explained she felt like a “flickering lightbulb” at the end of every show, and had a very specific routine in place to wind down.
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“I’ll go back to the hotel, get out of the costume, into the bath. Immediately into the bath, mermaid time. And then I get, like, the most amount of room service possible,” she said. “My kind of profession is coming up with ideas for stuff, so if I can kind of turn off the ideas for a second, very exciting.”
Part of turning off the ideas part of her brain involves true crime, with the singer also noting, “I’ll put on my Dateline.” She also admitted to listening to audiobooks, which usually involve a mysterious love story, murder plot or ghosts, or characters who turn out not to be who they initially seem to be.
