What is Miss Americana's favorite holiday? The 4th of July, of course.
Taylor Swift has long associated herself with the historic US holiday and elements of American iconography throughout her career. Now, as her wedding to Travis Kelce approaches with a rumored July 4th-weekend date, it feels fitting to take a look back at Swift's affection for Independence Day.
For the average person, getting married over July 4th weekend might seem like a strange choice—after all, guests may have preexisting plans, plus there's the chaos of travel during this high season—but regular wedding rules don't really apply to The Taylor Swift Wedding Weekend Extravaganza. The holiday holds a lot of significance for Swift, and there's almost nothing this woman loves more than important symbols, numerology, callbacks to her previous lives, and the invisible string that links her most momentous relationships.
Below, we explore Swift's history with Independence Day, which might explain why she may have chosen July 4th for her wedding weekend.
The rise of Miss Americana
In 2002, a 12-year-old Taylor Swift gave what was then her biggest public performance to date: singing the National Anthem at a Philadelphia 76ers basketball game. Wearing a long red cardigan and an American flag-printed shirt, she belted out the notoriously hard to sing anthem, and crystallized an earlier time when the name “Taylor Swift” being announced over a loudspeaker did not carry special weight or connotations. That it was an especially patriotic moment feels prophetic for a singer who would go on to christen herself Miss Americana, and who—at various points—has come to symbolize a certain subset of American culture (for better or worse).
Swift has long held an interest in American history, especially where the Kennedys, the South, and the enduring mythology of the American Dream are concerned. Perhaps this was shaped first by her childhood love of country music: Open roads, old pickup trucks, and images of bucolic Americana often made their way into her earliest work. “He said the way my blue eyes shined / put those Georgia stars to shame at night” from her first-ever song, “Tim McGraw,” comes to mind. As she continued to release albums like Fearless and Speak Now, she played with firework imagery—a classic July 4th vibe.
Then, in 2011, she talked to Rolling Stone about her then-new obsession with American history. “I just read a 900-page book called The Kennedy Women, which dates back to the lineage of the first Kennedys coming from Ireland in the 1800s,” Swift told the magazine. “This morning I bought books about John Adams, Lincoln’s Cabinet, the Founding Fathers, and Ellis Island.”
(She also casually mentioned in that interview that she's "been obsessed with Fifties and Sixties music, like the Shirelles and the Beach Boys. Like ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ — if I ever had a wedding, I’d walk down the aisle to that song.” We'll see if that makes it on the Swift-Kelce wedding playlist.)
That Kennedy book, and the family's storied place in American cultural and political life, would end up influencing a whole period of Swift's life and work. On 2012's Red, the song “Starlight” feels very July 4th coded, and it was inspired by the love story between Bobby Kennedy (who was assassinated in 1968) and Ethel Kennedy (who died in 2024). Swift likely heard the story firsthand: In early 2012, Ethel's daughter Rory Kennedy said in an interview with Celebs.com, “[Swift] really took the initiative to reach out and meet my mother because she had read about her and was a fan and admired her. They’ve spent some time together. She’s so curious and interested and been really wonderful. There’s a mutual admiration society between my mother and Taylor Swift.” Ethel added of Swift, "She’s amazing. She’s such good company.”
In summer 2012, Swift even dated Conor Kennedy, who is the son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. Around this time, Swift bought a house in Hyannis Port, very close to the Kennedy compound. The pair reportedly broke up by October of the same year; she reportedly had sold the home by November.
July 4th is an important holiday for the Kennedys as well. Prior to her death, Ethel was known for riding a decorated golf cart in the annual Hyannis Port July 4th parade.
Instagram content
Holiday House and Swift's love of large parties
In April 2013, news broke that Swift had bought a home, for around $17 million, on the coast of Rhode Island, in the Watch Hill neighborhood of Westerly. The history of “Holiday House” and Rebekah Harkness, one of its early owners, would later be chronicled in Swift's 2020 song “The Last Great American Dynasty” (one of the songs she submitted for her Songwriters Hall of Fame induction process earlier this year).
Before that, though, Swift used the home as a central location for entertaining friends, most notably at her iconic July 4th parties. The first one happened in July 2013 and included her Red Tour crew as guests, and activities such as pool tournaments, face painting, corn hole, nap time, a treasure hunt, volleyball, lots of preppy Kennedy cosplay, and even a fireworks display.
"Happy belated 4th of July. Independence Day is one of my favorite holidays of the year," Swift wrote on her blog at the time. “This time around, my touring family joined me at the beach and I wanted to show you some of the pictures because you're the reason we all get to be on tour together. You've seen us all in our show costumes on the Red Tour. Here's what we all look like in RED, white, and blue:).”
From there, she continued to embrace her Gatsby-esque role in bringing friends and family together for July 4th. Her 2014 bash invited celebrity guests to the affair, cementing the “squad” that would become part of her personal and brand identity. Famous friends at the party included: Lena Dunham, Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jaime King, Jessica Szohr, Odeya Rush, Amanda Griffith, Jessica Stam, and Ingrid Michaelson. At the time, Vanity Fair called it “an Abercrombie & Fitch fever dream.”
The 2015 edition really kicked things into high gear. Guests included the Haim sisters, Gigi Hadid, Hadid’s then-boyfriend Joe Jonas, and his brother Nick Jonas, Martha Hunt, Serayah McNeill, plus Swift’s childhood best friend Britany Maack. Swift’s boyfriend at the time, Calvin Harris, also attended. Now-deleted polaroids from Swift’s Instagram showed the group in matching American flag-pajama onesies, playing pool, floating on giant inflatable swans. This is also the party where Ed Sheeran and his childhood friend Cherry Seaborn reconnected; they are now married and count that July 4th as their anniversary.
This brings us to 2016: The setting of the infamous Tom Hiddleston “I <3 TS” T-shirt. By that time, Harris was long gone, and Hiddleston was having a very Taylor Swift summer. Elsewhere in iconic images: Swift, Hadid, and Cara Delevingne posed in matching swimsuits. Swift and Ruby Rose holding an American flag while plummeting down an inflatable water slide. Other guests included Alana and Este Haim, Maack, Hunt, Halston Sage, Abigail Anderson, Harley Gusman, Blake Lively, Karlie Kloss, Uzo Aduba, Sheeran, and more.
By 2017, we get into Swift’s quiet revenge period, and then the rollout of the Reputation album. No more large parties. Perhaps 2016’s bash flew too close to the sun, as it was the last of her July 4th parties until 2023.
In 2019, Laura Snapes talked to Swift about the end of these celebrations, and Snapes wrote, “It wasn’t ‘squad’ strife or the unavailability of matching cozzies that brought the parties to an end, but Swift’s disillusionment with her country, she says.” That same year, Swift reflected on that disillusionment in the Lover track “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince,” penning lyrics like, “American glory faded before me / American stories burning before me.”
But the mythology of the Taymerica parties, as they were dubbed, lives on. And F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby has continued to influence her music in the years since, including her reference to the novel on Reputation, as well as in small ways on songs like “Happiness” and “The 1.”
Independence Day 2023 sets the stage for the future
In a 2023 surprise, Swift brings the July 4th friend gatherings back, and not a moment too soon.
"Happy belated Independence Day from your local neighborhood independent girlies," a briefly single Swift wrote on Instagram on July 7, 2023, alongside a photo of herself with friends Selena Gomez, the Haim sisters, Ashley Avignone, and Sydney Ness. At the time, Swift was still in the (relatively) early months of the Eras Tour, and (relatively) fresh off breakups with her previous two boyfriends (actor Joe Alwyn, and then a few months after that, Matty Healy of The 1975). In her IG post she added, “See you tonight Kansas Cityyy.”
Instagram content
The photo would become a sign of good things to come, romance-wise. And not just for Swift: Gomez began dating Benny Blanco later that year, and Este Haim likely began dating her now-husband Jonathan Levin after this photo was taken—although you can, of course, still be something of an “independent girlie” while partnered.
That night, Travis Kelce stepped into Arrowhead Stadium not to play for the Chiefs, but to watch Swift in action on the Eras Tour. The story he went on to tell on his podcast with his brother Jason Kelce has become legend: “If you’re up on Taylor Swift concerts, there are friendship bracelets, and I received a bunch of them being there, but I wanted to give Taylor Swift one with my number on it,” he revealed. "She doesn't meet anybody, or at least she didn't want to meet me, so I took it personal."
Fortunately, fate—in the form of Taylor's mom, Andrea Swift—intervened. “You said something to the effect of, ‘You gotta start doing something different,’" Swift shared in the Eras Tour docuseries referencing her mom's persuasion technique in getting her to go on a date with Kelce. The rest is history.
Now here we are, three years later, with a likely wedding on the horizon. Given Swift’s ties to July 4th, the way it marked the time of some of her most-discussed romantic and friend relationships, the lore and American drama intrinsic to the holiday… Could her wedding ever have been on any other date than the Fourth of July?
