‘evermore’ Easter eggs: How We Could Have Guessed Taylor Swift Had Another Album Coming
In case you’ve been out of WiFi or had a huge old lie-in, you’d have heard about Taylor Swift announcing the release of her ninth studio album, evermore, overnight. Alongside a music video for the song “Willow”, both dropping at midnight US time, so 4pm AEDT. The surprise album, set to include 15 tracks, comes just five months after the release of her surprise eighth album, folklore.
Naturally, Swifties (us) had a field day with the announcement, wondering what they’d done to deserve such a blessing, clearing their whole weekend and spending several hours mulling over the million dollar-question: was there any way we could’ve known this was coming?
As it turns out, yes, there was. Taylor Swift, queen of Easter eggs, had dropped a few clues in the lead-up to announce. We’re cracking them all open here:
Taylor Swift’s “Not a lot going on at the moment” tweet and IG post
Back before folklore’s release, Taylor shared a photo with the caption: “Not a lot going on at the moment”. Which, we now know, was clearly a little jibe. Fast-forward to just a few weeks ago and Swift shared another photo with the exact same caption. How did we miss this?!
Those nine Christmas trees
Here’s another hint: just a day before announcing the release of evermore, her ninth album, Taylor posted nine Christmas trees. Damn, she good.
Her hint at the first single’s name, “Willow”, in a tweet
Last week, Rolling Stone released its ranking of the top 50 albums of 2020 and (naturally) folklore came in #1. Tay Tay’s response? She tweeted: “throws self to the base of a willow tree by a reflection pool at midnight.”
Of course, fans reckoned she was just being heaps grateful (if not slightly dramatic), but now, though, it’s all clicking. “Willow” is the name of the track she’s using from the album for her first music video. Geddit?
Taylor Swift told us she was “on a video shoot”
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly published on Wednesday this week, Taylor Swift spoke about being “on a video shoot” she was directing with Rodrigo Prieto when she heard about the results of the 2020 US elections. Fans now surmise that “video shoot” was for evermore. We feel stupid.
So what can we expect from evermore?! Well, there’s a fan theory floating around that it could include some tracks that nod to poet Emily Dickinson.
Dickinson’s birthday is December 10, the date she’s releasing the album (technically, though it’s dropping at midnight). Also, one of Dickinson’s poems ends with the word: “forevermore”. Plus, On folklore’s bonus track “The Lakes”, Tay Tay also sings about poets – specifically, the Lake Poets from the early 19th century England (where her beau Joe Alwyn is from – England, that is, not the 19th century).
In hindsight, it feels like Taylor Swift was definitely trying to tell us about her releasing some new material. Still, though, just five months after the release of her other surprise album, and with all the hype around her re-recordings too, no one could’ve predicted we’d be this lucky. Cheers Taylor.
evermore is available for pre-order now at Swift's online store.
Written by Sangeeta Kocharekar, an American-born, Sydney-based writer at MTV. Photos from her pre-COVID-19 days as a travel writer are here.
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