Reaching New Heights: The podcast is Taylor Swift’s latest way to control her narrative

NEW YORK – The transformation of podcasts from a niche audio format to a linchpin of celebrity press tours is complete: Taylor Swift has finally appeared on one.

The American pop star’s guest spot on New Heights, a video podcast about American football and pop culture co-hosted by her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, amassed nearly nine million views in about 12 hours on YouTube. That set a record for the show and cemented its place among modern media properties.

About 1.3 million people tuned in simultaneously to a live stream of the episode before it was felled by a technical glitch. The episode has since attracted 14 million views. 

By comparison, an October episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with US President Donald Trump reached about 11 million views in its first 12 hours on YouTube.

Released on Aug 13, the New Heights episode served as a long-form album announcement of The Life Of A Showgirl for Swift, 35, who has never taken a particularly traditional approach to delivering such news.

When not dropping surprise albums, she has opted for announcing albums on tour stops, on Yahoo live streams or in the middle of awards shows.

Rarely does she sit for an interview too. Exceptions include in-depth conversations for Apple in 2020, Variety in 2022 and Time in 2023.

That her first proper podcast interview was conducted beside her romantic partner speaks to both her personal reluctance to engage with mainstream media and a larger truth about podcasting: For prominent figures, it has become a friendly space where unchecked conversation can flow freely.

Silicon Valley founders and White House officials have embraced two- or three-hour conversations with American podcaster Rogan.

Athletes and musicians talk about their mental health on Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard. American actor Jason Momoa just made his podcast debut on SmartLess, disclosing a near-drowning, while American actress Dakota Johnson chose to make her debut on Good Hang With Amy Poehler, holding her new puppy in her lap.

“Not only do these podcasts have massive reach, but they’re also places where you can have a very nuanced, long-form conversation,” said Mr Josh Lindgren, head of podcasts at Creative Artists Agency, which represents some of Kelce’s business.

“The editing tends to have a fairly light touch, and so it’s a place where you can go and have a conversation and expect that that’s more or less what’s going to get transmitted to your audience.”

While these interviews may seem journalistic in nature, most stars of new media do not consider themselves journalists.

In their celebrity interviews, they reject the blunt questions of 1990s network broadcasters and the literary sensibility of 1970s magazine scribes. They foster a sense of safety. Their goal is intimacy, not necessarily accountability.

“We’re not a ‘gotcha’ show,” said Michael Bosstick, chief executive of podcasting network Dear Media. He and his wife interviewed Ms Ivanka Trump, the elder daughter of Mr Trump, in her second podcast appearance. Her first was with Lex Fridman, a podcaster focused primarily on science and technology, whom Ms Trump described as a “friend”. Neither show was a place where she would have expected to be grilled on her father’s policies or her role in shaping them.

“It’s about making the guests feel comfortable that we’re going to actually let them tell their story,” said Bosstick, who spoke to Ms Trump about skiing, workout supplements, her morning routine and her interest in artificial intelligence.

Alex Cooper, the host of Call Her Daddy, said in 2024 that when interview subjects arrived at her studio “terrified” that the internet would pick apart their words, she reassured them that “we’re good” and “it’s chill”.

Sean Evans, the host of Hot Ones, told Vulture in May that he believed his show should be an “extension of the guest”, assuring one actor that he was in “safe hands” while eating spicy wings.

“I would assume talent gets bored doing the traditional press junket, so this feels fresh and exciting,” said Kareem Rahma, host of Subway Takes, who has interviewed guests including Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and Mr Zohran Mamdani, New York’s Democratic candidate for mayor, while riding the city’s transit system.

“From a more practical perspective, the average American spends seven hours a day looking at his phone, so it makes sense to meet the audience there.”

Much energy has been devoted to positioning internet-native shows like Hot Ones or Subway Takes as the new version of late-night talk shows – a long-declining format – particularly in terms of the clamouring by celebrity publicists to book their clients. (Evans has also been public about his desire for a prime-time Emmy statue.)

But late-night TV appearances have always been short and sweet, marked by canned anecdotes or contrived games. Even glossy magazine covers, once pursued like a golden ticket by publicists, have lost some of their appeal.

Agents are still eager to see their clients swathed in high-fashion brands and shot by big-name photographers, but podcasts are simply “much quicker to execute, and they offer the talent the chance to speak in an unmediated way”, said Charlotte Owen, editor of Bustle, which publishes both podcasts and more traditional cover stories.

But to Owen, who hosts One Nightstand, a podcast on which guests talk about their favourite books, it is not only celebrities who benefit from these lengthy video interviews.

“I’m often having more robust, intimate and revelatory conversations than I do when sat in a restaurant with a voice recorder between us,” she said. “And for guests, it’s like being in a batting cage for an hour. You’re going to hit something in that time.”

New Heights will certainly benefit from Swift’s appearance at a crucial moment for the podcast.

In 2024, podcast network and publisher Wondery acquired the rights to distribute and sell the show’s advertisements, negotiating a reported US$100 million (S$128 million) deal with Kelce, 35, and his co-host, his older brother Jason, 37. But this month, Wondery was broken up by its parent company Amazon.

The Kelces have since been funnelled into a new department, Creator Services, as the company focuses less on traditional audio podcasts and more on deploying its splashy video-friendly talent across its platforms.

Before the latest episode’s release, after days of teasing the interview with Swift, New Heights reached No. 1 on Apple Podcasts’ chart. It had held that spot before, but not consistently.

Previously, the brothers’ most-watched YouTube video had about 8.6 million views. That was a 2023 interview with Jason Kelce’s wife Kylie Kelce, the 33-year-old creator and host of her own podcast Not Gonna Lie, which debuted at the top of podcast charts in December 2024. NYTIMES