Taylor Swift’s song “Opalite” is her fiancé Travis Kelce’s favorite on The Life of a Showgirl, and it turns out, he was a major source of inspiration for it.
“He loves that one,” Swift, 35, said of Kelce, also 35, during a Friday, October 3, interview on the U.K.’s Capital FM radio station. “I have favorite words, favorite phrases [and] things I’ll put in an endless file of lyrics that I’m constantly going to go and cherry-pick from when I’m writing.”
At one point, Swift added “opalite” to her list.
“I had learned that it’s actually a man-made opal,” she said on Friday. “Opal can be man-made just like diamonds, and so, Travis’ birthstone is an opal. I’ve always fixated on that, [and] I’ve always loved that stone.”
Swift continued, “I thought it was kind of a cool metaphor that, like, it’s a man-made opal and happiness can also be man-made, too. That’s what the song is about, the juxtaposition of those two.”
Swift dropped “Opalite,” the third track on The Life of a Showgirl, on Friday.
“I had a bad habit of missing lovers past / My brother used to call it, ‘Eating out of the trash,’” Swift sings, presumably mentioning her sibling, Austin. “It’s never gonna last / I thought my house was haunted, I used to live with ghosts / And all the perfect couples said, ‘When you know, you know,’ / And, ‘When you don’t, you don’t.’”
She adds, “You were dancing through the lightning strikes / Sleepless in the onyx night / But immediately the sky is opalite / Oh, oh-oh-oh-oh, oh, my Lord / Never met no one likе you before / You had to make your own sunshinе.”
Swift recorded The Life of a Showgirl in 2024 during the European leg of her Eras Tour, which corresponded to her romance with Kelce. The pop star and Kelce started dating in summer 2023 before getting engaged in August.
“Opalite” is not the only Showgirl track with references to the Kansas City Chiefs athlete. “Wish List,” “Honey,” “Wood” and “The Fate of Ophelia” also highlight the couple’s love story.
“This song has some of my favorite moments in it, like, there’s a post-hook section that goes, ‘Keep it 100 on the land, the sea, the sky / pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes,’” Swift said on the U.K.’s Magic radio station on Friday, specifically discussing the “Fate of Ophelia” and its twist on the Hamlet character. “When we wrote that, I was like, ‘Yes! This is why I do beat.’ This is a song about feeling for a long time that you might have met a similar fate to Ophelia, who was driven mad over the years, slowly, by love.”
She continued, “Instead, we reference her fate, but we talk about someone saving you from that fate and how euphoric that feels to look at … and feel like you’ve been rescued by this fortuitous turn of events where you end up finding a person that changed that for you.”
The Life of a Showgirl is available immediately.
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