“Taylor Swift is patient zero for emotional contagion.”
This was an evocative turn of phrase from former L.A. Times columnist Amy Kaufman, in a 2024 article assessing the cultural impact of the whirlwind romance between Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
Kaufman’s column might also have entered into Swift’s songwriting canon, as many of the singer’s fans seem to believe today.
Swift announced on Tuesday that a surprise new single, “Patient Zero,” would come out on Friday. “I’ve been impatiently waiting to tell you that my brand new single ‘Patient Zero’ will be out on September 25 (!!!!!!!!!!!!) and it’s available to pre-order now on my website for 24 hours,” Swift wrote on her social media accounts on Tuesday.
Swift recently popped up in a pretaped skitwith Emmys host and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” star Mariska Hargitay, drolly noting that a rumor she would appear at the Emmys “Isn’t adding up. Our perp has a clear MO. A lot of this doesn’t fit the pattern, and I don’t think everything is a clue.”
Yet Swift, who famously leaves nothing to coincidence in her songwriting and named her cat after Hargitay’s detective character Olivia Benson, may indeed have left some clues.
While neither the track nor its lyrics have been released yet, Swift fans, who typically hit the red-string board upon release of new material, are feverishly pointing back to Kaufman’s column as a possible inspiration for the new single.
Kaufman’s column is a sweet celebration of a coupling that captivated music and football fans alike: “I found myself attempting to describe what I felt was particularly affecting about their relationship: She was finally with a guy who seemed to appreciate her,” Kaufman wrote. “He was famous enough that he didn’t seem intimidated by her superstardom. And they were just so pretty and happy and sweet together … Even if we voyeurs are not kissing Taylor or Travis ourselves, our bodies can still experience the same chemical reactions just from watching them.”
The Times has reached out to Tree Paine, Swift’s longtime rep, to confirm if Kaufman’s column was any sort of source material for the song, and will update this accordingly. In the meantime, Kaufman is as surprised as anyone that she may have entered Swift’s songwriting lore.
“I hope she read it, but if it inspired her song, that’s news to me,” Kaufman, who has been flooded with messages about her piece going viral with the announcement of “Patient Zero,” said in a text message to The Times on Tuesday.
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