*TW: mention of a sexual assault case
As a Lover™️ of literature and lyrics and the pop culture landscape, Taylor Swift is an artist who requires many interpretations and encourages thinking outside the box. Between her lyrics, music videos, streetwear and social media, Swift is constantly innovating new ways to keep her fans engaged, the public intrigued and communicating other important messages too.
Though Swift has been coding messages into her songs and CD packages since her Fearless Era, building a connection with her fanbase. In her reputation era, the Easter eggs started to become almost obvious and word of them reached the mainstream, but I believe that Swift still embeds more subtle messages to fans who care to analyze rather than simply notice.
Let’s look at some definitions to understand the kind of references I am making:
Coding: refers to when something is implied by the inclusion of significant subtext without being stated outright.
Easter Eggs: refers to concealing some kind of mystery from the viewer. A core premise is that it can eventually be known to others.
“MASTERMINDING” THE MUSIC VIDEOS
“LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO” (LWYMMD)
Swift opens the music video showing a tomb reading “Nils Sjoberg”. Swift used this pen name to write “This is What You Came For”, performed by Rihanna and produced by former boyfriend, or beard, Calvin Harris. The pen name was used in a Twitter feud as well. At 0:36, Swift lays in the bathtub full of diamonds with a singular dollar bill, a nod to the sexual assault case she won in 2017. David Mueller, a former DJ, had assaulted her during a photo op… Swift asked for one dollar in damages, wanting to capture her, and other women’s cases not about the money or the exploitation of an abuser, but about the principle. Framing the dollar bill against the diamonds and jewels in the bathtub illustrates how much a one-dollar bill means to her, despite bathing in jewels that are worth millions more.
At 1:21, Another easter Egg people have explored through a queer lens in the LWYMMD MV is the scene where Swift is swinging back and forth in a gold cage. Some call this intertext to Maya Angelou’s, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings which explores lesbianism and other themes. She is also in an orange jumpsuit, reminiscent of the iconic drama, Orange is the New Black.
At 2:06 in the video, Swift bursts out of the closet and she is backed up by a group of effeminate men who are in heels, including a relevant gay figure, Todrick Hall. Especially as these men wear the same shirts that Tom Hiddleston was paparazzied wearing amid their three-month fling. People take it to symbolize that the men who publicly date her, are secretly closeted, or that Swift romantically aligns herself with a more fluid identity. Additionally, there are eight dancers, which people found to be the exact number of highly publicized relationships that Swift had in the public eye up until 2017: Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Cory Monteith, Harry Styles, Calvin Harris, and Tom Hiddleston.
Whatever Swift’s artistic intention may have been, the music video is undeniably campy.
“ME!”
- The music video opens with a slithering snake bursting into a cloud of pastel butterflies, marking the end of her reputation era.
2. As mentioned, during her reputation era, the easter eggs were no longer subtle and Swift was open with telling fans about them. She said that the album’s name was in the music video, which it is, in the form of a huge neon sign reading Lover, and the name of the album’s next single is said…by Brendon Urie, of Panic! At the Disco in the opening dialogue, in French.
CODING THROUGH CLOTHING
- Taylor Swift won Best Female Video for “You Belong with Me” at the 2009 VMAs, as readers might recall, Kanye West took the microphone from her, not allowing her to finish her speech. 13 years later (her lucky number), she wears a striking and similar diamond studded Oscar de la Renta dress while accepting her award for video of the year and decides to announce her 10th studio album, Midnights. 2. During the Eras tour, Taylor wore updated versions of her Speak Now gowns, signalling to fans that the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) was coming soon. The night that she announced 1989 (Taylor’s Version), fans in L.A knew what was coming as she wore blue versions of the outfits from every era. 3. In the “You Need to Calm Down” music video, the setting of the video is a vibrant coloured trailer park neighbourhood. The aesthetic of the neighbourhood emphasizes unity and pride, featuring cameos from LGBTQ+ celebrities, wherein Swift places herself while donning coloured hair (she dyed it herself), in blue, purple and pink, the bisexual flag.
SLEUTHING ON SOCIAL MEDIA
For Swift, no end should be left unexplored. Easter eggs can even be found on her social media, which should come as no surprise as she popularized the trend of artists wiping their social media page and returning with cryptic teasers when readying themselves for a new release…
- On April 27th, she posted a selfie captioning it “not a lot going on at the moment,” which was proven completely false because in July, she announced folklore.
She did it again, posting a photo of her sitting in a cabin, with the same caption and not long after, she announced the sister album to folklore: evermore.
At that point, Swifties knew she was just taunting them.
The phrase, “Not A Lot Going on at the Moment” is now polarized by the “A Lot Going on at the Moment” shirt Swift wears during the Red set at the Eras Tour.
2. The Tortured Poets Department Double Album
When promoting the standard The Tortured Poet’s Department vinyl that was available for pre-order, she put it on her Instagram when there were only 22 hours left instead of a regular full-day, 24-hour period. In her acceptance speech at the Grammys, she said she’d been keeping this a secret for 2 years and put up two fingers. For the first time in a long time, Swifties clownish theories paid off and at 2 am, we were screaming and crying when we got The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.
LYRICAL ALLUSIONS AND INTERTEXT TO HER DISCOGRAPHY AND BEYOND
If you have been media literate for the last few years, you have heard about how a red scarf is symbolic of Swift and Gyllenhaal’s relationship, the egg first fertilized in the lyric, “left my scarf there at your sister’s house”, in “All Too Well”. “left my scarf there at your sister’s House”. You also would have noticed that in the song, Look What You Made Me Do when Swift announces that “the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now…”, she is referencing the doctored Kimye phone call.
But there are more lyrical easter eggs and confessional lyrics that do not quite match her public persona…
- “ivy”
This song is proof of Swift’s mastery of storytelling and embedding imagery and allusions into her lyric poetry. “ivy” has many historical similarities to the life of the poet Emily Dickinson and her life-long romantic relationship with her brother’s wife, Sue Gilbert. This song seems to be told from Sue Gilbert’s perspective, about someone stuck in a loveless marriage and wanting to be with another, pronoun-less person. The only pronoun usage in the song is about the husband, i.e.: “he’s gonna burn this house to the ground” or “he’s in the room / your opal eyes are all I wish to see.”
The lyrics, such as “how’s one to know? / I’d live and die for moments that we stole / on begged and borrowed time” imply the love for the person the speaker longs for in secret. And in lyrics such as “Spring breaks loose, the time is near / what would he do if he found us out?” imply the fear that the lovers have and how illicit their relationship would be, especially in the time that Dickinson was alive.
Additionally, Swift announced the album that “ivy” is featured on, evermore, on December 10th, which is Emily Dickinson’s birthday. She also made “ivy” the tenth track on the album.
But is this all a coincidence when Apple TV’s hit show Dickinson, an anachronistic depiction of Emily Dickinson’s life, played by Hailey Steinfeld (prior squad member), used the song at the end of their final season, after an intimate scene between Emily and Sue?
2. folklore’s Love Triangle
A recurring narrative across three songs in the album, “Cardigan,” “August,” and “Betty.” The songs tell a story from three different perspectives, capturing the complexities of young love, heartbreak, and regret. Two of the characters in the love triangle are named James and Inez which fans quickly noticed were the names of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ daughters. But the third in the love triangle, Betty…was an easter egg for what their unborn daughter at the time, was going to be named.
But the love triangle madness extends further than that…
“Betty” is a song told through the perspective of James, admitting his mistakes and regrets hurting Betty by getting involved with someone else, the girl detailed in “august.” Upon listening, many fans felt the sapphic connotations in the lyrics, most notably, “Yeah, I showed up at your party / Will you have me?/ Will you love me? Will you kiss me on the porch / In front of all your stupid friends?”
In the Long Pond Sessions that Swift aired on Disney + with her collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, she talks about how this was told from a “male perspective” however, many fans did not buy it, see here a Washington Post video of fans discussing the queer coding in folklore, “Betty” and beyond. After all, Taylor Swift did name the characters after all of Lively and Reynolds’ daughters…
In conclusion, Taylor Swift has rightfully labelled herself as a mastermind (Midnights, 2022), who engineers events and communicates facts to the fans who genuinely wish to interact with her work whether it be fashion, audiovisuals, or her lyricism as they do with art and literature, to uncover and understand the layers of her work. Her easter egging and coding have created deep connections with her fans and allow them to relate and see themselves in her multilayered work.