It’s a love story baby, and Taylor Swift said yes.

Just in case you missed it (although let’s be honest, you definitely didn’t), Taylor announced her engagement to her long-term boyfriend Travis Kelce this week – and the news quickly sent Swifties into complete and utter overdrive, breaking an Instagram record in the process.

After 11 albums covering love, heartbreak and all the highs and lows in between, our ultimate Lover girl is about to get her happy ever after with the Kansas City Chiefs football star.

If that sounds like a story only mastermind Taylor herself could have written, well, that’s because she pretty much did (remember the You Belong With Me music video?)

But the happy news has also left some fans pondering the same question… how is marriage going to change the way the pop icon makes music?

It’s no secret that Taylor loves love, and she’s written many lyrics about proposals and marriage over the years.

From early cuts like Love Story, (“He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring”) to more recent offerings like Lover (“ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand?”), Paper Rings (“I like shiny things but I’d marry you with paper rings”) and even But Daddy I Love Him (“and, no, you can’t come to the wedding”), you don’t have to dive all that deep to find the perfect Swiftie-coded Instagram wedding caption.

But some critics are wondering what her music will sound like now that she’s about to get everything she’s seemingly ever wanted.

While some people have been expressing uncertainty about what this new life milestone could mean for her music, there are plenty of fans out there attempting to quash such doubts.

An influx of recent radio segments, online articles, fan discussions and Reddit threads have, for the most part, been trying to dispel misconceptions that Taylor could be about to lose her songwriting spark.

In fact, it’s a real disservice to Taylor’s talents as a songwriter to claim that tumultuous relationships and devastating breakups are her only source of inspiration, and that she might be suddenly struck with writer’s block once she’s found lasting love.

After all, she notably wrote her seventh album, Lover – which she once dubbed her “love letter to love” – while dating Joe Alwyn, and even songs on the otherwise dark and brooding Reputation, took inspiration from the early days of that relationship, after the actor seemingly guided her through a difficult time in both her personal and professional life.

Let’s not forget, either, that she was still in that same six-year relationship when she wrote Folklore and Midnights, both of which won Album Of The Year at the Grammys.

Speaking of Folklore, have those sceptical fans forgotten both that album and its sister record Evermore, aren’t even technically autobiographical, with many of its songs taking inspiration from three fictional characters she created in lockdown, called Betty, James, and Augustine?

Folklore is completely narrative-based, rather than taking influence from her own experiences, yet includes some of the very best and most relatable lyrics of her career, converting many casual listeners into full-on Swifties. We can only hope that there’s more of that in Taylor’s future.

Taylor’s music is often interpreted as both biographical and chronological, but it’s important to remember that there are no rules when it comes to art.

If she wanted to take inspiration from her own life, her future albums could revisit her childhood and teenage years, hook her next “era” around her exciting next chapter of marital bliss, or even look ahead to her retirement.

Plus, let’s remember that feelings do linger as memories. Taylor literally wrote Midnights based on “13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life”. Even the various Vault tracks from her Taylor’s Version re-releases have brought us right back to a different time, so who’s to say that Taylor won’t tap back into some of the pain and heartbreak that gave us her magnum opus, the 10-minute version of All Too Well?

Then, there’s Taylor’s forthcoming 12th album The Life Of A Showgirl, which, by the sounds of it, is about her just living her best life on tour

And as The Guardian remarked in a recent column, “women have been known to have interesting interior lives even over the age of 35”.

All of that is to say that female musicians are more than their relationships. More importantly, let’s all try to stop being so literal about art and keep the faith that Taylor will continue to deliver as a once-in-a-generation songwriter, musician and touring artist just as she always has.