Since Kansas City Chiefs future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce and pop music megastar Taylor Swift announced their engagement on August 26, their careers seemed to head in opposite directions.

While Swift’s already explosive career has only blown up even farther, if that’s possible, with her announcement of her 12th studio album, Life of a Showgirl, and the slew of high-profile promotional events surrounding it.

As if she had not accomplished enough in her stratospheric career, on Monday another announcement, this one courtesy of the leading streaming service Spotify, heralded yet one more record-setting accomplishment for the 35-year-old Swift who has already sold an estimated 114 million albums worldwide.

Kelce’s Slow Start to Season

But Kelce, at least on the gridiron, had not seen his accustomed level of success. Struggling through his first three games with just 10 catches for 134 yards and a single touchdown, Kelce made more headlines with his temper — getting into a heated sideline confrontation with Chiefs’ coach Andy Reid — and with his sloppy play.

In the first game of the season, Kelce carelessly collided with a teammate, wide receiver Xavier Worthy, putting Worthy out of action for the next two weeks. In his second game, facing the Philadelphia Eagles in a Super Bowl 59 rematch, Kelce dropped a pass from quarterback Patrick Mahomes just outside the end zone, bobbling the ball into the hands of an Eagles defender.

But on Sunday, the Chiefs faced one of the toughest tests they will face this season, when they took on the Baltimore Ravens, a team often favored to unseat the Chiefs as AFC champions — and the Chiefs dominated. Playing at home they laid a 17-point beating on their AFC rivals, winning 37-20.

Kelce Returns to Form

The big news for the Chiefs was Kelce, who had his breakout game for the season. He caught all five passes targeted for him for 48 yards, second on the team to Worthy who had 83 in his return from the injury inflicted on him by Kelce.

Perhaps it should have been expected, then, that Swift would follow with a major achievement of her own. According to an announcement by Spotify on Monday, as reported by Rolling Stone magazine, Swift’s upcoming Showgirl album has already set a record for pre-saves on the platform.

Swift Sets New Spotify Record

“Leading the pack is Taylor Swift’s upcoming album The Life of a Showgirl, which just became the first Countdown Page to surpass 5 million pre-saves, making it the most pre-saved album Countdown in Spotify history,” the streaming service announced.

Spotify said that Swift had broken her own record, held by her previous album, The Tortured Poets Department, released last year. But Spotify did not reveal how many users had pre-saved the Poets album because until this week, the streaming service kept those numbers under wraps, for some reason.

Spotify has revealed that the Poets album set a record for most streams in a single day, with about 300 million. It now appears inevitable that The Life of a Showgirl with break that record as well.

Spotify also held a “pop-up” event in New York City centered around Swift’s Showgirl release. While Swift had not offered any preview of the music on her upcoming album, or even any information about its themes beyond the title, the pop-up event is said to contain numerous “Easter eggs,” that is, hints for sharp-eyed fans about what sort of material the album will contain.

Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin

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