Singer/songwriter Taylor Swift is known for leaving clues and encrypted messages called “easter eggs”. She does this to engage with her fans, and her fans love it. For months, Swifties have been over analysing every move she makes, theorizing what she might do next, which album she will release. But, on August 12, she made an announcement none of her fans could have predicted: a brand new album.
Speculation of the prospect of new music arose when the “Taylor Swift Official Website” changed from its normal advertising to an orange sparkly background and a countdown to August 12 at 12:12 a.m. On the same day Jason and Travis Kelce announced a surprise episode of their podcast “New Heights” dropping the thirteenth with a “very” special guest. Swift’s fans ran with this idea that the guest would be Taylor, and theories surfaced that the website countdown and New Heights were somehow correlated.
At 12:12 the timer went off and the website crashed due to high demand, and when it resurfaced Swift’s instagram account changed and her profile displayed a turquoise background with an orange lock. A few minutes later a reel appeared, and it was a clip of her interview on New Heights announcing the title of her album, “The Life of A Showgirl”.
At 7 p.m. the next day the “New Heights” podcast aired, and at its height the podcast reached 1.3 million viewers. On the podcast, Swift and the Kelce brothers discussed the “Eras Tour”, football, Swift’s masters, sourdough, and of course her new album. Swift released the cover and tracks of the album, including a song with singer Sabrina Carpenter. Then Swift went on to describe the theme of the album as behind the scenes of the Eras Tour, which was energetic and exciting. She wrote the album while in Europe, and produced it with Max Martin and Shellback who had previously worked with her on “Red” and “1989”. Her focus when writing this album was to include the storytelling aspect of her 8th album, “Folklore” but make it catchy and upbeat, a complete one-eighty from her last album. Swift’s album comes out October 3rd, but until then, fans will have to wait.
In other news, on Tuesday August 27 Taylor and Travis posted to their instagrams announcing they are engaged. They captioned the post “Your English teacher and gym teacher are getting married” the post went viral within minutes, many news sources such as ESPN and CBS reported on the event. Just like “Life of A Showgirl” the fans can not wait to see what is next for Taylor.
