THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: 10 EASTER EGGS FROM RELEASE WEEK
From the Tortured Poets Department pop-up in LA to the TTPD Timetable video, here’s everything we’ve learned in the week leading up to Taylor Swift’s new album release.
@taylorswift
@taylorswift
There is arguably nobody who does Easter eggs like Taylor Swift. From her early days of hiding capital letters in liner notes to the 1989 era, where she spent hours confirming fan theories on Tumblr, she has more than embraced the chaotic fandom antics — she has leaned into it. She is, you could say, the Chairman. With each new release comes more and more hidden messages, some of which Swift has admitted she’s planted years in advance.
“It’s sort of a tradition that we started a very long time ago,” she explained on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon back in 2021. “I think the first time that I sort of started dropping cryptic clues in my music was when I was 14 and 15 putting together my first album. I wanted to do something that incentivised fans to read the lyrics, because my lyrics are what I’m most proud of. So in my lyrics for my first several albums, I would have all lower case lyrics except for capital letter, capital letter, capital letter every once in a while. And if they circled the capital letters and wrote them down, it spelled out a secret code, a secret passage.”
So how has it turned into the phenomenon that it is today, nearly two decades after Swift started releasing music? In 2014, the release of 1989 came with a new chapter in her relationship with her fans — a social media one. I’m not talking about liking Instagram posts and the occasional comment, I’m talking full-on hours and hours of Tumblr stalking — confirming fan analyses on music videos, dropping clues, and having fun with the rest of us. It is here, presumably, that things took a turn. “When it got out of control was when I started to realise that it wasn’t just me that had fun with this, that they had fun with it, too,” she explained to Fallon. “And I should never have learned that because then I couldn’t stop. And then all I started thinking of was how do I hint at things? How far is too far in advance? Can I hint at something three years in advance? Can I even plan things out that far?”
She explains that the first music video she went full-on Easter egg hunt with was 2017’s “Look What You Made Me Do,” the lead single off of Reputation. And now, here we are, six years later, just as obsessed with her clues as ever.
“I think that it is perfectly reasonable for people to be normal music fans and to have a normal relationship to music,” she concludes by saying. “But, if you want to go down a rabbit hole with us, come along. The water’s great. Jump in. We’re all mad here.”
So dive in as we look at all the clues we’ve gotten from the Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department during the release week of her new album.
Taylor posted a video welcoming us into her “office” of sorts for the new album, and it’s not all fun and games. We begin in the Midnights space — which we previously got a look at during the release of the album back in October 2022 — full of 70s hues, framed photos of her friends (Jack Antonoff and Lana Del Rey), haphazardly placed pens, records, and crumpled paper that appears suspended in air. As if someone yelled “freeze”, the room looks frozen in a moment in time. Yet contrary to the previous video of the space, where it was dark and presumably midnight, there is a beam of light coming through — as if the curtains have been pulled back and reality has seeped in. The clock reads 2 o’clock.
As we exit, we become aware that that room is entirely on its own in its look and feel. When you zoom out, you find that Midnights may not be the reality you thought it was when you were inside, as if you are waking up from a dream, or getting out of the cloud of the “lavender haze”, a phrase referenced in Swift’s lead single for Midnights that describes a type of love bubble that you try your hardest to maintain inside. But what happens when one of you breaks it? Outside, the space feels sterile. A hospital or a psych ward, perhaps. Identical surroundings, blank white walls, drained of colour and without any sign of life. We’re crying, and we’re not even inside the Tortured Poets Department yet.
— Lauren delulu department (@like_a_folksong) April 17, 2024
As we enter the office, we’re greeted by two desks facing one another, each with their own typewriter and papers. Taylor Swift fans are always quick to jump to a “double album” theory — that she might be releasing Reputation (Taylor’s Version) alongside The Tortured Poets Department — but there are endless possible meanings behind this. It could be referencing a “there are two sides to every story” mantra or represent her looking at the same event in multiple ways, or nod to the idea that she couldn’t have gotten through this period of time without the support of others — a team. However, add this to the list of twos we see referenced in this video and at the Grove, and we can be pretty sure there’s something happening. In her speech at the Grammys where she announced the new album, she pointedly held up two fingers in a peace sign motion — one which is mirrored in a figurine in the Grove pop-up.
3. Diana of Ephusus
This is Diana of Ephesus, she is the goddess of childbirth and fertility and the goddess of the moon.
The original statue of Diana crumbled while waiting to be shipped to London in the 6th century due to years of neglect, succumbing to the passage of time and the elements. pic.twitter.com/NcR98FNY5J
This leads us to the pop-up at the LA Grove, where fans are greeted with a library of sorts. Books with her song names as titles, more clocks set to 2, puzzles, globes, and statues fill the space. One statue has been identified as Diana of Ephesus. One fan noted that the original statue of Diana crumbled as it waited to get shipped to London due to neglect. Elsewhere in the pop up reads the lyric, “Even statues crumble if they’re made to wait.” Maybe this is taken from “So Long, London”? Regardless, we’re crying.
Noticeably absent from any visuals surrounding this album is a gel pen. We see quill pens and fountain pens, but no matter how hard we squint, we’re not seeing any gel. If you have no idea what this refers to, Swift explained while accepting the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade honour at the Nashville Songwriter Awards that she categorises her music into three types: gel pen songs, quill pen songs, and fountain pen songs. “I came up with these categories based on what writing tool I imagine having in my hand when I scribbled it down, figuratively,” she’d said. “Most of my lyrics are ‘fountain pen’ lyrics,” she added when speaking with Apple. “They’re modern personal stories, written like poetry, about those moments you remember all too well where you can see, hear, and feel everything in screaming detail.” Quill pen songs are ones that feel like they could have existed centuries ago, written with old-fashioned poetic references and long-gone phrases. And gel pen songs are the ones that make you dance around your bedroom. So if you needed any further proof that this album is going to hit us in the feels, this is it.
Just because we won’t be strutting to the album, doesn’t mean it will all be sad. Swift has mastered the art of the empowering ballad and we can’t wait to hear her confidence and clarity alongside the inevitable heartbreaking lyrics we’ll be crying along to. Evidence? There’s an empty birdcage in the pop-up — a visual that Swift has played with throughout her career. She famously bought a human-size birdcage for her Nashville apartment, and even portrayed herself inside of a birdcage in the “Look What You Made Me Do” music video, but the metaphor runs through nearly all of her albums of the past decade.
In 1989’s “I Know Places” she sings, “‘cause they got the cages, they got the boxes and guns. They are the hunters, we are the foxes, and we run,” referencing trying to keep a relationship from the media and outside opinions that could ruin it. Then, in “So It Goes…” on Reputation, she sings, “Cut me into pieces, gold cage, hostage to my feelings.” She can’t think or focus on anything other than her feelings towards the subject — everyone disappears and it’s just them. It’s romantic and sexy, but the lyrics also signal that this person had a power over her in a way that she hadn’t quite experienced before. Perhaps the saddest example is in folklore’s “This Is Me Trying,” where Swift details a struggle to appear happy and fine when it’s taking all of her to get through the day. “They told me all of my cages were mental, so I got wasted like all my potential,” she sings. Fighting to free yourself from the anxieties and inner cages in your own head while having to put on a face to others who can’t see how hard you’re trying? Devastatingly difficult. Then, on Midnights, she reflects on her hometown as “full of cages, full of fences” in “Midnight Rain” — explaining that she wanted more for herself and her life than the boxes she could have easily fallen into and found a sort of love in.
6. Music video — “Fortnight”? “The Smallest Man That Ever Lived”?
@taylorswift
Moving onto some more concrete information, the TTPD Timetable video did give us some hard facts. For example, we know for sure that a lead single is coming out on Friday at 8pm EST. What song that is, we don’t know, but under the announcement shows tally marks equal to 14. Is she releasing the 14th track, “The Smallest Man That Ever Lived”? Or are the tallies days, referring to two weeks aka a “Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)”?
7. Put Record Store Day on your calendars
Next to release day, we see “Record Store Day” written clearly on the timetable. Something special is happening here… an extra vinyl version? Reputation (Taylor’s Version)? We’re not sure, but put it down in your calendar.
8. Her 35th birthday is going to be a big one
Speaking of calendars, a daily calendar in the pop up has been set to Friday, 13 December — Taylor’s birthday. Guess what day her birthday falls on this year? Yep, a Friday. And let me remind you that three years ago this fall will be three years since Swift joked about teasing something three years in advance. Our guess? She’ll announce Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version) while on tour in the fall — and that it’ll have a release date of her 35th birthday.
A globe at the pop up has a pin in Florida. Prior to this, fans assumed that the forthcoming track “Florida!!! (Feat. Florence + the Machine)” would be about performing in Tampa, Florida around this time last year — shortly after she switched out “Invisible String” from the setlist and replaced it with “The 1”. But this pin is not in Tampa, it’s in Miami. What happened in Miami? Or is this even referencing the track at all? Maybe it’s a clue that she’ll be announcing the birthday surprise while on tour in Miami, October 18-20.
10. Six years of letters
In the TTPD pop up, the mailbox is disguised as an old library card cabinet imo: please do mind its colour… pic.twitter.com/fqvqb7qvv5
Elsewhere in the pop up, there are mini drawers that resemble mailboxes or perhaps serve as the library’s Dewey Decimal System. The number totals to 72 — the number of months in six years, the length of time of Swift’s previous relationship — with a few open. While some fans quickly tried to decode which months were open and just how many, the boxes seem to have opened and closed throughout the day. Perhaps, it simply shows how much love and effort she put in for six years — and how she’s filing away all of her letters and closing the door. Maybe this album is her last message to her past lover.
