Travis Kelce is sharing his thoughts on “Wood,” one of the most buzzed-about songs on fiancée Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”
On Wednesday’s episode of the “New Heights” podcast, the NFL player kept his cool while discussing the track with his brother, Jason Kelce.
“It’s a great song,” he said curtly.
True to form, Jason Kelce wasn’t about to let his sibling off that easily. The lyrics of “Wood” feature a number of not-so-subtle sexual innuendos, with Swift alluding to a lover’s “Redwood tree” and “magic wand.”
“Girls, I don’t need to catch the bouquet … to know a hard rock is on the way,” the 14-time Grammy winner sings on one of the verses, before coming in on the chorus with: “His love was the key that opened my thighs.”
And as if to minimize any doubt that “Wood” is about Travis Kelce, Swift even name-drops her fiancé’s podcast with a cheeky line about the “new heights of manhood.”
Still, when Jason Kelce asked if “Wood” made him feel “cocky” in any way, specifically given its nods to an “appendage,” Travis Kelce shrugged off the implication.
“I love that girl, so what do you mean?” he said. “Any song that she would reference me in that way … I think you’re not understanding the song. No way.”
Similarly, Swift herself has downplayed much of the speculation about “Wood,” describing it as a “very sentimental love song” that references “popular superstitions.”
“I brought this into the studio, and I was like, ‘I want to do a throwback, kind of timeless-sounding song,’ and I have this idea about, like, ‘I ain’t gotta knock on wood,’ and we would knock on wood, and it would be all these superstitions,” she said in an appearance on “The Tonight Show” this week. “And it really started out in a very innocent place. You know, it started out… I don’t know what happened, man.”
Not surprisingly, “The Life of a Showgirl” hit the cultural zeitgeist jackpot after its release last week. According to Billboard, the album sold 3.5 million copies in its first week, shattering a record previously held by Adele’s “25.” An accompanying big-screen film, “Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” came in at No. 1 at the box office last weekend.
Still, reviews have been startlingly mixed, particularly when compared to many of Swift’s recent releases. Though Rolling Stone hailed Swift’s “new, exciting sonic turns” and “incisive storytelling,” The London Evening Standard likened it to “parody” that was “hallucinated by some porn-addled AI.”
