Everything We Know About Taylor Swift's Mysterious Seventh Album
Everything We Know About Taylor Swift's Mysterious Seventh Album
It began with a countdown. From the moment Taylor Swift posted the ticking timer last month, it's been all eyes and ears on the former snake queen. And for the initial time in a long time, she's giving us what usually be a customary album rollout, complete with scheduled releases, a slew of radio and print conversations, and televised appearances. If her rule of the Reputation era was "there will be no explanation," the TS7 motto generally seems to be more, "you can't spell 'comment' without 'me!'"
So what do we know about Swift's seventh album for now? Well, not much, conclusively — which is exactly how she likes it. Yet thanks to her restored interest in interviews and her clever easter eggs, there's plenty we can surmise about the closesly guarded project. Check it out below, and keep this page bookmarked — we'll be adding more intel as it comes in.
"ME!" Is probably a diversion
Swift's lead singles are usually red herrings that supply little insight into the album to come (see: "We Are Never Ever Getting Back With each other "Shake It Off," and "Look What You Made Me Do"). Swift admitted in her Entertainment Weekly cover story, "A lot of the time I'll pick a first single because I like the feeling it conveys, knowing that there is a lot more on the album that's very different from that first single."
Expect "ME!", Released in April, to be a similar deflection for an assignment that'll mask the "emotional spectrum," as she instructed them mag. "I certainly don’t wanna have also much of one thing. You get some joyful songs and also you get the bops, as they mention. [And also] "really, really, really, really sad songs."
The deeper stuff, then, will come later, as with Swift's previous eras. She puts the "WANEGBT"'s out first, and saves the "All Also Well"'s for the album.
It'll be more Red than Rep
Swift's fourth album, 2012's Red, bridged her nation and pop eras, and was the closest thing she's given us to a long-established "singer-songwriter" record. Notably, that was a term Swift used in EW any time describing TS7. She explained, "This time around I feel more comfortable being brave enough to be susceptible, because my fans are brave enough to be susceptible with me. Once people delve into the album, it'll become pretty clear that that's more of the fingerprint of this — that it's much more of a singer-songwriter, personalized journey than the last one."
it might would be, then, that her choice to unearth deep cuts on the Reputation Tour — like Red's "Holy Ground," "The Lucky One," and "All Also Well" — was much less a nostalgic trip and more a foreshadowing.
New label, new collaborators?
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Upon the end of her contract with Big Machine Records last year, Swift famously signed a landmark deal with UMG and Republic Records. Naturally, artists aren't confined to their label any time choosing collaborators, yet they're definitely encouraged to work with labelmates, and Republic has some interesting candidates on its roster. Swift's new cohorts include powerhouses like Ariana Grande and Drake — the latter of whom she's long been rumored to collab with — along with some of her own personalized companions, like Lorde, Hailee Steinfeld, and Jonas Brothers. Could one or more of those artists have earned a spot on TS7?
She worked with new people in back of the scenes
Upon the "ME!" Video's arrived in April, it was surprising to be able to see that Swift co-directed the candy-coated dream alongside veteran Dave Meyers. For one, Meyers had never helmed a Swift video before. More notably, it meant that she was broadening her scope of directors — if you'll remember, every video from the Reputation era, and around half from the 1989 era, were directed by Joseph Kahn.
Elsewhere beyond the scenes, "ME!" Marked Swift's first time working with producer Joel Little, a frequent Lorde and Khalid collaborator. Whether she also reunited with some of her go-to producers — like Jack Antonoff and Max Martin — is still TBD, however she did tell Zane Lowe, "I did work with some new people this time around, which is really fun."
It had a tight turnaround
Swift told EW that she made TS7 in much less than three months, revealing that she posted her infamous palm trees pic on IG the day she finished the album. That was on February 24, and she played her final Reputation Tour show on November 21, so there wasn't much time between leaving the stage and hitting the studio.
She recalled to Kiss 92.5, "I pretty much got into the studio If I got off tour and stayed there. I was very prepared to prepare the next thing. I knew exactly what I wanted to prepare next."
Even so, once Ellen DeGeneres asked her this week if the album was finished, Swift gave a surprisingly loosey-goosey answer. "Yeah," she mentioned, "unless I write something else, and then I'll just put it on the album."
You'll require a lot of time to listen to it
Swift told EW that her impending project will be her lengthiest to date, which means it'll be at least 17 songs long (Red, her current lengthiest release, has 16 tracks). She mentioned, "I began to write so much that I knew immediately it would probably be bigger. ... There is a lot of a lot on this album."
That revelation has bolstered the popular fan theory that TS7 would be a double album, or that it'll comprise 30 songs to commemorate her 30th birthday this year. The conspiracies abound!
If art resembles life, there would be a lot of love songs
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Imagine this: For the initial time in her career, Swift is about to drop an album while dating the same person she was with at the time of her last album. (No shade; just facts.) That'd be British actor Joe Alwyn, whom she had already been dating for each year once Reputation arrived in 2017. It's her longest public relationship by far, and although she and Alwyn admirably keep things away from society eye, it might mean we're in for some of Swift's deepest love songs yet.
There are layers upon layers of clues in "ME!"
Swift has a well-documented history of planting breadcrumbs for detective-minded Swifties to discover. Although she could have outdone herself with "ME!", Admitting that there really are "dozens" of references concealed in the vid.
In a Capital FM interview, she explained, "First round is stuff that they can visualize that predicts what will happen in a couple months. There's second-tier easter eggs which will be revealed upon the album. Then there's third-tier easter eggs, which are the most deeply embedded easter eggs, which will be shown on the tour." Exhausted yet?
We already know what the album is called... Kinda
On Twitter, Swift divulged that "the new album title is actually revealed somewhere in the video and thus is the title of the second single." She indicated to Lowe that several fans had picked up the album name already, and there really are lots of popular guesses making the rounds. Among them: Home, Daisy, Heart, Lover, and Kaleidoscope.
New era, fresh aesthetic
Gone are the darkness and snakes that defined the brooding Reputation era. As you've definitely picked up by right now, Swift is embracing a sunnier, more pastel-hued aesthetic for TS7, which fans picked up on back in February with her IG overhaul.
"I really was just attempting to change up my Instagram aesthetic to get ready for the new album," she explained to Fox Melbourne. "I was just posting pastel photographs attempt to go from a dark to a light, and sort of show them what the color scheme could be for the next album."
In a iHeartRadio interview, Taylor further described this era "mischievous", "glittery", as well as a little bit more playful than last time." She echoed that sentiment with Lowe, adding that it's "much more playful and actually inward-facing," and more about her as a person. "It's sort of taking those walls down from around you that I felt like I had to put up."
She owes it all to her fans
The speed with which she made her new album, the positive energy surrounding it, and the lightness of her new aesthetic can all be credited to her Swifties, she says. She explained to Lowe, "I really do credit the fans for the whole resurgence of exuberance and excitement towards music and making new music. And the way that I felt about this enthusiasm towards making new music is what made me get in the studio so fast and just make music really speedily right following the tour. I was looking out into the crowd and seeing so much love and care and these people really, really are so great to me and so they really were the ones that made me feel like no, I'm prepared to put out new music."
She added, "I'm prepared to sort of do it a little more like I used to. I feel more comfortable."
Sounds like the Old Taylor isn't dead right after all.
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