“I love to communicate via Easter eggs…I think the best messages are cryptic ones.” – Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is known by her fandom for foreshadowing her next era or album through the use of small hints or clues. These hints can be as obvious as a lyric in a song or as dismissive as the color of her nail polish.
While the Swifties have become experts in uncovering such cues, to the average person, they may be harder to decipher. For example, take a look at the image below. What Easter eggs, if any, do you notice? What do you think they mean?
To name a few, the “Calm” pin and the rainbow heart pin are a reference to the Lover album single “You Need to Calm Down,” which had yet to be released at the time of the Entertainment Tonight shoot. Next, the “Dixie Chicks” pin is a nod toward the future Lover song “Soon You’ll Get Better” that features the band. Third, the pins of characters from the show “Friends” are also referencing a to-be-released song, “It’s Nice to Have a Friend.” Further, to see if you got other pins correct click here.
As you can see, Taylor’s attention to detail is immersive and deliberate. There is little to no aspects of her media presence that aren’t planned out ahead of time to foreshadow new music or projects.
Most recently, Taylor has been re-recording her discography that she doesn’t own the Masters too (shoutout Scooter Braun). And for Easter eggs, this means that Swift has been dropping all kinds of clues in her social media posts about the order in which she is re-recording the albums, when the singles are going to come out, and what songs will be on the track list.
Red (Taylor’s Version) comes out on November 12th, and in accordance, Taylor chose to release the list of new songs making an appearance on the album through a cryptic word scramble.
Dare to give it a try? The revealed tracks are here.
*presses post*
*cackles maniacally*Level: casually cruel in the name of being honest pic.twitter.com/Tf0ahCMql8
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) August 5, 2021
To conclude, I leave you with the most recent Red (TV) egg, a Tumblr video of Taylor gushing about fall. This video has sent the entire fandom into an investigative frenzy, will you join them in solving the puzzle?
View this post on Instagram
If you figure it out, feel free to comment your thoughts below and be sure to…
Tell Me Why.
Taylor is truly such a mystery I could never keep up with how many easter eggs and puzzles she leaves her fans. Maybe if I get bored someday I’ll give a stab at decoding her plethora of easter eggs.
Taylor always leaves so many Easter eggs and especially with her own version of the rerecords many of them can be really fun to try to figure out. My cousin and I have sat down before and tried to figure out her codes for both Fearless and Red, and it is always really fun. I am also really looking forward to the Red rerelease!!
I didn’t realize that Taylor Swift used Easter Eggs to hint at her albums’ content! The analysis of the album art reminds me of a much older music controversy: Paul is Dead (the conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney died and was replaced with a look alike). Yes, it is as crazy as it sounds. However, just like with Taylor Swift’s Easter Eggs, Beatles’ fans picked through all of the album art and even played records backwards trying to find evidence of this crazy theory. I think that the work of fans to eke out the meaning of Easter Eggs shows fans’ love and respect for the artist and their work.
Her use of Easter eggs is crazy. It amazes me that there are so many people that can pick them out because I never could. When I first saw the tumbler post video reenactment I watched it because I thought it was entertaining. I had no idea there were Easter eggs in it, or that she was sending a message.