Bill Maher roasts Taylor Swift’s love life, but is the joke getting old?

Bill Maher just couldn’t resist taking a swing at Taylor Swift’s dating history—despite the fact that she’s been in a committed relationship for over a year. During the latest episode of Real Time With Bill Maher, the 69-year-old comedian quipped about the pop sensation’s unexpected streak of relationship stability, saying, “This world is so upside down now. It took [President] Trump three weeks to break up with Ukraine, Mexico, and Canada. And yet, Taylor Swift has the same boyfriend for over a year.”

The joke, a clear dig at Swift’s relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce, is just the latest in a long line of public figures making her love life the punchline. But at this point, are these cracks about her dating history just lazy, outdated, and—dare we say—boring?

Taylor Swift: The Industry’s Favorite Punchline?

Swift’s relationships have been comedic fodder for years. From late-night monologues to Netflix series, the narrative of her being a “serial dater” has been played on repeat—despite the fact that she was in a six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn before her romance with Kelce.


Recently, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl caught backlash for implying that Swift doesn’t perform live, and Dance Moms alum Abby Lee Miller even mocked her dancing skills. But it’s the dating jokes that keep coming. Comedian Hannah Berner took a particularly crude shot at Swift’s relationship with Kelce during Netflix’s Torching 2024: A Roast of the Year, saying, “Who knew besides Travis Kelce that you could become so popular with women by shooting loads into a billionaire?”

The recurring theme? A fixation on reducing Swift’s wildly successful career to her romantic relationships.

The ‘Same Old Sexist Joke’ Debate

Swift’s patience with these jabs seems to have worn thin. In 2021, she publicly slammed the Netflix series Ginny & Georgia for a joke that suggested she “goes through men faster than Taylor Swift.” Calling out the double standard, she wrote on X, “How about we stop degrading hard-working women by defining this horse s–t as FuNnY?”

She also criticized Netflix directly, reminding them that after producing her feminist documentary Miss Americana, this kind of humor was a “bad look.”

Swift’s $1 billion empire, record-shattering tours, and undeniable influence seem to be the least interesting part of the conversation when jokes like Maher’s resurface. But if anything, the fact that people are still recycling the same outdated tropes about her love life just proves one thing: Taylor Swift has long outgrown the punchline.