Taylor Swift Explains Why She Isn’t Playing Super Bowl Halftime

Taylor Swift says she isn’t performing the Super Bowl halftime show because she’s “too locked in” on the Kansas City Chiefs.

Swift’s name rose to the top of the rumor mill for potential performers last month, and the frenzy only grew when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell calling her participation a “maybe.” The talks reportedly fell through because Swift, who earlier this year bought back her entire catalog, wanted to own rights to the performance. The NFL, which has not paid Super Bowl halftime show artists in recent years, did not budge, according to the reports. The NFL announced last week that Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny will headline the show.

Swift denied that she turned down the halftime show because she wanted to own the performance footage during a Monday night appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote her new album.

“Jay-Z has always been very good to me,” Swift said Monday. (Jay-Z’s Roc Nation orchestrates the Super Bowl halftime.)

“Our teams are really close,” she told Fallon. “They sometimes will call and say, ‘How does she feel about [the Super Bowl]?’ And that’s not an official offer or a conference room conversation.

“We’re always able to tell him the truth, which is that I am in love with a guy who does that sport on that actual field.”

Swift went on to describe sport as “violent chess” and “gladiators without swords.” “The whole season I am locked in on what that man is doing on the field,” the singer said of her fiancée Travis Kelce.

“Can you imagine if he’s out there every single week putting his life on the line, doing this very dangerous, very high-pressure, high-intensity sport, and I’m like, ‘I wonder what my choreo should be. I think we should do two verses of ‘Shake it Off’ into ‘Blank Space’ into ‘Cruel Summer’ would be great,’” Swift said.

The superstar said her decision has nothing to do with Kelce, whom she said would “love” for her to do the show. “I’m just too locked in,” she concluded.