Taylor Swift’s fondness for dropping clues and making sleuths out of her most dedicated fans is on full display this week after she announced her upcoming 12th album, “The Life Of A Showgirl.”
The pop sensation has left quite a few blank spaces for fans after announcing the album title on her website at 12:12 a.m. Tuesday. Swift’s website was then updated with the option to pre-order the record on vinyl, cassette and CD.
When will the album be available?
Swift has not yet revealed when “The Life Of A Showgirl” will actually come out.
The pre-order description on her website said orders will be shipped by Oct. 13, 2025. But made clear that this was not the release date.
New music typically releases on Fridays, in part to maximize how well a song or album does on the charts. That means Swift’s new album could release any week between Aug. 15 and Oct. 10.
What does the album cover look like?
It’s clear based on the album rollout so far that her new era will be defined by the colors orange and mint green.
Taylor Nation, the social media accounts associated with Swift’s team, posted an Instagram carousel Monday with 12 photos featuring Swift wearing orange. Her website was later updated with a countdown for the album reveal with an orange glitter background.
When “The Life Of A Showgirl” pre-orders dropped, however, no album art was shown. A mint green rectangle with an orange lock was put in the place of any cover art, which Swift later made her social media profile picture.
Swift could reveal the album art during Wednesday’s episode of the “New Heights” podcast, hosted by boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother, Jason.
In a teaser clip posted Tuesday morning, Swift is speaking to Jason Kelce when she pulls out a vinyl case with “T.S.” in orange on it. She then pulled out what appeared to be the record with the artwork blurred out.
“This is my new brand new album, ‘The Life of a Show Girl,” Swift said, as the retired Philadelphia Eagles center screamed in excitement.
Fans are doing their best Sherlock impressions
With so little — but so much — to go on, fans are in a tizzy trying to decipher what clues Swift may have dropped about the new album.
Her website updated Wednesday with a countdown four and half hours before 7 p.m. ET, the podcast release time. The screen showed a door in the spotlight slowly lowering to a small glitter orange square with a lock on it.
It’s the same orange lock seen over the album cover on the pre-order. The door is also the same one seen in visuals during “The Eras Tour” at the end of the show when Swift performed “Karma.”
The padlock appears to have an imprint of a key in the same shape as “The Eras Tour” stage.
Swifties, the self-proclaimed title for the singer’s fanbase, have already reflected on the most obvious Easter eggs she left behind. The singer’s tour performance of “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” had a showgirl theme.
There were also many instances where she wore orange throughout “The Eras Tour,” as made obvious by the Taylor Nation post on Monday.
Fans also pointed out that the last show of the tour was Dec. 8, or 12/8, and that the album was announced Aug. 12, or 8/12.
Eagle-eyed sleuths are speculating that either the album or a lead single will release Sept. 12, because the Taylor Nation carousel was posted at 9:12 a.m. on Monday.
Swift’s profile on Spotify uploaded a new playlist, titled “And, baby, that’s show business for you,” around the time of the album name reveal Tuesday.
The playlist featured all the songs Swift made with producers Max Martin and Shellback in alphabetical order. Swifties believe this could be the sign she’s diverging from her good friend Jack Antonoff, who has been the producer on her most recent albums, for “The Life of a Showgirl.”
The phrase “And, baby, that’s show business for you” also appeared when you googled Swift’s name on Tuesday. Some suspect that will be a lyric on the album.
