Taylor Swift gave one of the most revealing and unguarded interviews of her two-decade career this week, and she did it completely on her own terms.

The world’s biggest superstar has always been masterful at controlling the narrative around her art and her personal life, but as she embarked upon the rollout of The Life of a Showgirl on the New Heights podcast with boyfriend Travis Kelce on Wednesday, she didn’t even try pulling any of the usual levers of the mainstream media landscape, circumventing them entirely instead.

To be fair, it’s been years since Swift’s had to employ the traditional album rollout strategy that a smaller artist may be beholden to. She doesn’t have to lock a Rolling Stone cover, nor does she need to rub elbows at listening parties or meet and greets (one of which turned traumatic for the budding popstar in 2013). And given her track record on the awards circuit, she could reliably announce her newest era during a Grammys telecast or the VMAs or whenever she so chooses.

But the New Heights’ appearance sets a new standard. She didn’t even have to go through the likes of the new media guard, such as Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy. With Travis by her side, this was safe. No moment carried any risk. Anything Swift didn’t want out in the world won’t ever see the light of day. And so, Swift could relax. As some Swifties online wrote, she dropped the “interview voice.”

Whether what we saw this week was the real Taylor Swift or yet another meticulously guarded layer for the world’s savviest pop star is unclear. But her fans have certainly bought in.

“This is the most we have ever learned about this woman in a single day, ever,” reads the top comment on Swift’s subreddit discussion of the New Heights episode. “ Still can’t believe we were like, allowed to listen to her talk that openly. I feel like I was eavesdropping,” another fan wrote. 

Never has Swift managed to grant so much of herself to the public while relinquishing so little of her own control. Has there ever been a pop culture figure as famous as Taylor Swift who’s been less reliant on traditional media to share their message? 

Even beyond the bounds of a traditional journalistic interview, Swift still managed to reveal lots of news, from how she sent her brother and mother to negotiate with Shamrock Capital first for her masters, to her return to working with legendary songwriter Max Martin on her upcoming record.

From a marketing level, the result was an overwhelming success. As Swift herself said on the podcast this week: “I’m always trying to figure out how to make music into more of an event. How do we make it romantic?”

With 1.3 million live viewers, it was the most-viewed podcast premiere in YouTube history since the platform launched podcasts back in 2023. The episode itself already has over 15 million views in just two days. The episode drove enough traffic to cause a mini-crash toward the end of the premiere.

The rest of the media world followed suit, too, with news outlets feverishly breaking out stories on every individual soundbite she gave, from the throwaway lines about her affinity for baking sourdough to the love story of Kelce’s early days courting her on the very podcast she was now gracing.

Agency over her legacy has been the throughline of Swift’s 2025 thus far. Following a six-year battle in what became one of the biggest controversies in music industry history, Swift finally gained ownership of her masters back in May. “All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me,” Swift declared in a triumphant letter she posted on her website.

And with that acquisition, she’s beholden to no one. Swift is the architect of her own musical world around her, a situation most of her contemporaries only dream of. As she revealed to the Kelces this week, it’s a move she’s been saving up for since she was a teenager. The master rights on every one of her 12 albums (and four Taylor’s Version re-records) are hers alone, as are the drawings and journals from her childhood. She has long retained her publishing and runs her own management company, with most of her team acting as Swift’s employees.

With just under two months until The Life of a Showgirl will inevitably take over the world, we’re still only at the beginning of the marketing whistles she’ll ring to build the hype around her next era. But this week makes it as clear as ever: the media needs Taylor Swift. But Swift has everything she needs all on her own.