Last night, country-music-it-girl-turned-pop-culture-centerpiece Taylor Swift did something a little different. She announced a new album called The Life of a Showgirl, but not with the usual gravitas she’s become known for throughout her 20-year career. Rather than endless teases, easter eggs, or waiting until she was on stage accepting an award, Swift revealed her 12th studio album on the New Heights podcast co-hosted by her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. It all happened very fast, with much of the pre-announcement teasing happening in the span of less than 24 hours. But despite its brevity, Swift’s rollout felt calculated and littered with the same cheeky nods that send fans into overdrive that she’s come to be known for. Even as a casual Swift listener, I can’t help but respect her love of the literal game.
It all started on August 11 as Swift’s publicity team, Taylor Nation, posted several photos of the singer on her Eras Tour on social media. Notably, each picture shows her in an orange outfit, with orange eventually being revealed as the primary color for The Life of a Showgirl. Miss “Espresso” herself, Sabrina Carpenter, is also in one of these photos, sparking speculation that she might be featured on the album when it launches. The post has the caption, “Thinking about when she said ‘See you next era…’” referencing a line in Swift’s book documenting the Eras Tour. All of this made it clear that Swift was nearing an announcement, but the quickness with which it came was both surprising and a bit of a relief. Kelce’s show posted a teaser for the episode that would eventually feature Swift, which included her silhouette on the thumbnail, but Swift’s usual playful microcosm of marketing came from her own website, and included a countdown that ended at 12:12 a.m. this morning. You get it? 12? Because it’s her 12th album?
The actual New Heights episode will go live on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern, but the album is already up for pre-order, both as a standard CD and on orange vinyl or cassette. Fans haven’t seen the cover or heard a song, and they’re already showing up to buy the album. Right now, New Heights has posted a brief clip of Swift showing off the album, but its cover has been blurred out, presumably to get more eyes on the podcast when it goes up. Even when Swift is going the more straightforward route, she can’t help but make it a waiting game.
Even with less than 24 hours between tease and announcement, Swifties are hard-wired to start the guessing games the second they get a whiff of a hint. Sometimes it sends them down a rabbit hole with a dead end, such as when they spent a year looking for clues about a coveted Taylor’s Version re-recording of her 2017 album Reputation, only for the singer to reveal that she had barely done any work on it, and now doesn’t really need to after she bought back her masters and could leave the Taylor’s Version project behind. The fact that no re-recorded version was even imminent makes creative decisions like Swift changing up her outfit for the Reputation set of the Eras Tour after months of wearing the same thing feel like trolling meant to throw off the most detail-oriented fans looking for any hint that the album might be on the way.
Swifties have been trained to view every creative decision, big and small, as a reference to what’s next. Not everything is a misdirect, and fans have felt vindicated when what seemed like small nods ended up being clues to major reveals. The music video for “Bejeweled,” for instance, has a scene in which Swift’s Cinderella-like character enters an elevator, and each of the buttons has a different color scheme, with each one seemingly corresponding to one of her albums, all of which have noted “main” colors. Fans noticed that the last button on the elevator had the same purple as her third album Speak Now, which seemed to hint that she would be re-recording that record next as part of the Taylor’s Version project. Lo and behold, the remade album was released the following July.
Some of these nods are more subtle than Swift literally pointing at a representation of the next album to be re-recorded. When she announced her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, at the 2024 Grammys ceremony, she put up a “V sign” with her hand when she said that she’d been keeping the album a secret for two years. However, in retrospect, it’s clear this was a knowing nod to TTPD’s status as a double album, which was a closely kept secret until it was released that April and the second half was published on streaming platforms and digital stores two hours later.
To be a Swiftie is to spend every day looking and listening for clues like you’re exploring an elaborate, decades-old escape room, only to decide with each door you open that you’re content to go deeper into the vault, never actually escaping. She notoriously weaves her personal life into her music, crafting a story people are invested in on both a narrative level and a parasocial one. Each album is like a new chapter in an ongoing story, and even when albums like Folklore and Evermore are presented as fictional concept albums, they mask reality, with fans theory-crafting what nuggets of truth might lie behind each song. Swift crafts lore and legacy like a dungeon master spinning a tale for a party waiting with bated breath for the next session. Even if you’re not a fan of her music, you have to respect the game design at the heart of her work.
