Taylor Swift’s easter eggs bring fans together to hunt for hidden clues in her work
When thinking of eggs and Taylor Swift, many may not see the correlation, but diehard fans, nicknamed Swifties, most definitely would. Since the beginning of her career, Swift has been incorporating hidden messages, called easter eggs, within her music as clues to Swifties of what may be coming next. In the early years, this started out as hidden messages within the vinyl jackets and lyric booklets, but now it has evolved into almost everything Swift does. Swifties are constantly analyzing her every move and clowning about what may be her next big project. Recently some have believed that she is coming out with an Eras Tour Documentary, producing a Musical called “Female Rage: The Musical” and most commonly, will be releasing a re-recording of reputation, something that has been long awaited by fans. Although people’s predictions are sometimes incorrect, the easter eggs allow Swifties to dig deeper into what Swift produces, which has allowed a large community of fans to form.
In an interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show in 2021, Swift spoke about easter eggs saying, “How far is too far in advance? Can I hint at something three years in advance?” She also spoke about how she began really obsessing over the easter eggs and having fun with it when she realized the fans really loved it too. This interview inspired fans to keep looking through her work and searching for all the clues they could find. There are large communities on Instagram and TikTok dedicated to deep dives into Swift’s work and theories about what could be easter eggs or not.
Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl is riddled with easter eggs as well. Before it even came out, fans were pouring over everything Swift and her PR team, Taylor Nation, posted. After Taylor Nation posted a cryptic post with the caption “Thinking about when she said see you next era” with a carousel of images of Swift dressed in all orange outfits from the Eras Tour, Swifties immediately predicted a new album would be coming soon. As rollout for the album continues, Swifties are noticing more and more easter eggs Swift has left for the fans. For example, in the New Heights podcast episode where she announced the album, different hints to song titles and album variants were hidden behind where she and her fiance, Travis Kelce, were sitting. Another consistent easter egg is that the Eras Tour stage is the key to unlocking this new album. Swift and her team are constantly hinting at this by posting pictures of keys with the Eras Tour stage. Further, Swift even revealed an easter egg for the new album was that when the tracklist is lined up, it creates the shape of the Eras Tour stage.
Her new album’s first single, “The Fate of Ophelia”‘s music video is full of easter eggs as well. The music video shows different lives of showgirls throughout history. In an interview on Apple Music’s “The Zane Lowe Show” she mentioned that “I had a list of just … It was like, over a hundred easter eggs to put into that video and I was just going through my list and checking them off one by one as we were going through our production design process,” This comment by Swift has led Swifties to analyze this music video with newfound vigilance. Some of the main easter eggs found include: the initials of each song title, references to other song lyrics and much more.
Throughout all of her Eras, Swift has used easter eggs to draw fans into her craft, but in the process, she has helped create a large community of fans who work together sharing theories about what she may be up to next. Day after day, Swifties come together on social media working toward figuring out what Taylor Swift may be up to next.