In the opening bars of The Life of a Showgirl’s “Elizabeth Taylor,” Taylor Swift poses a question that both she and the song’s namesake have been ask
In the opening bars of The Life of a Showgirl’s “Elizabeth Taylor,” Taylor Swift poses a question that both she and the song’s namesake have been asked over and over about their respective romantic relationships: “Do you think it’s forever?”
As the world breathlessly watches to see if Swift and Travis Kelce really do tie the knot this weekend, at New York City’s Madison Square Garden or elsewhere, the parallels between Swift and Elizabeth Taylor, the classic Hollywood icon whom Swift has referenced in song and style through the years, even wearing pieces from the behind schedule star’s jewelry collection, have never felt more obvious. Taylor, famously married eight times to seven men in the course of her life, was one of the biggest stars in the world and the source of endless fascination and public scrutiny, especially when it came to her romantic life. Swift, of course, has faced the same appraisals of her own relationships, to the degree that she once “swore off hanging out with guys” and dating altogether in hopes of starving the gossip mill, to no avail. In 2024, one of Taylor’s sons, Christopher Wilding, told The Guardian that Swift was the current celebrity who reminded him most of his mother.
“I can’t tell you how much I admire Taylor Swift. I’m now a Swiftie,” he said. “That reminds me a little bit of the same spirit my mom had.”
That comment, in turn, inspired Swift to write “Elizabeth Taylor,” the musician told Pandora in 2025.
“I was so flattered by that,” she said. “I just immediately started talking to Travis about it. I was just, like, going on and on about Elizabeth Taylor, talking about all the things about her that I love, all the things that made her so glamorous and funny and witty and interesting, how she kept challenging herself late into her life, like, kept taking on roles that were different and brave and raw.”
Tim Mendelson, currently a co-trustee of Elizabeth Taylor’s estate, and Taylor’s friend and right hand from around 1990 until her death in 2011, tells Vanity Fair that he also sees the parallels between the two, and that the chatter around Swift and Kelce’s nuptials evokes “a page out of Elizabeth’s playbook.” More than once, Taylor bundled professional projects and promotion in close proximity to the personal milestones of weddings, similar to the rapid-fire sequence of Swift announcing The Life of a Showgirl, getting engaged, and releasing the album, not to mention whatever up-to-date projects she’s inevitably cooking up behind the scenes. In Taylor’s case, her first wedding, in 1950, to hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton, was a grand affair held just 12 days before the release of her film Father of the Bride. The bride walked down the aisle in a white wasp-waisted ball gown designed by Helen Rose, the film’s costume designer, surrounded by a posse of fellow MGM studio actors as her bridesmaids. Her eighth and final wedding, to Larry Fortensky, held at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in October 1991, was just weeks after the release of her perfume White Diamonds and its massive promotional tour. Taylor sold the exclusive media rights to her wedding photos and used the fee to launch the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. If everyone is looking anyway, might as well leverage it for a good cause.
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