Taylor Swift's Biggest Music Easter Eggs Over the Years

Being a Taylor Swift fan is hard work, and she doesn't make it easy. Ever since the beginning of her music career, the singer has constantly left Easter eggs within her work to leave fans guessing. Whether it be hidden messages in lyric booklets or teasing albums months in advance, Swift has been the queen of teasing fans since day one. 

"It's sort of a tradition that we started a very long time ago," Swift said to Jimmy Fallon about the origins of her Easter eggs. "I think the first time that I started dropping sort of cryptic clues in my music was when I was 14 or 15, putting together my first album." 

About her debut album, the singer continued, "I wanted to do something that incentivized fans to read the lyrics because my lyrics are what I'm most proud of out of everything that I do... When I was a kid, I used to read through CD booklets and just read the teeny, tiny print and obsess over it." 

Swift is most excited about fans' theories when it comes to decoding her clues. "I've trained them to be that way," she said to Entertainment Weekly in 2019 about Swifties' detective work. "I love that they like the cryptic hint-dropping. Because as long as they like it, I'll keep doing it. It's fun. It feels mischievous and playful." 

With Red (Taylor's Version) breaking two Spotify streaming records upon arrival, the joy of deciphering her hidden clues has become mainstream as more and more people are speculating on what Swift might do next. In honour of Swift's 32nd birthday today, L'OFFICIEL rounds up how the singer's love of secret messages has evolved over the course of her career. 

While Swift stopped this tradition during the Reputation era, she had a habit of hiding messages in her old work. Specifically, she would hide liner notes in the lyrics of each of her songs in her CD booklets. From Fearless to Red, all of her lyrics were lowercased, and the message could be deciphered through the capitalized letters. For 1989, she did the opposite. 

During these eras, Swift's dating life was often much more publicized than it is now. The singer even used her music to address her romances, from hidden messages to pointed lyrics. Some of her references were more obvious, as the liner message for "Should've Said No" just said the name "Sam" repeatedly, addressing a former boyfriend who allegedly cheated on her. Others were more subtle, like the liner note for "Last Kiss" being "Forever and Always," a reference to a song title from her former album that is said to be about Joe Jonas. 

Swift discontinued her hidden messages during the Reputation era, stating in the album's prologue letter that she was tired of gossip sites and "the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test...There will be no further explanation. There will just be reputation." 

As the Reputation album kicked into full gear, the music video for her lead single, "Look What You Made Me Do," was full of Easter eggs. Since she wasn't doing interviews during this era, Swift said it was her way of communicating and staying connected to fans. "Literally the whole video is just an Easter egg," she said to Entertainment Weekly. "There are thousands of Easter eggs. There are some that people still haven't found. It will be decades before people find them all." 

When the singer released "Me!" in 2019, the singer directly told fans that the music video would be full of Easter eggs, with some that will "take a minute to reveal their meaning." The two biggest Easter eggs were that the video revealed the title of the next single, "You Need To Calm Down," but also the title of the new album (Lover), as it was written briefly in the background of a scene. 

One of Swift's biggest Easter eggs came in the form of an Instagram post in April of 2020, when she shared a photo of herself with the caption, "Not a lot going on at the moment." Given that this was during the height of the pandemic, fans did not consider this an Easter egg at the time. Of course, once the singer revealed she was releasing her eighth studio album, Folklore, all became clear. 

As Folklore's release had fans scrambling to figure out all her Easter eggs, one major one was "William Bowery," who was credited on two Folklore tracks and is later credited on three for Evermore. Swifties were quick to figure out that "William Bowery" was a pen name for Swift's boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, as his great-grandfather's name was William Alwyn, and the Bowery Hotel was where Swift and Alwyn first hung out in 2016. Swift confirms William Bowery's identity in her Disney+ film, teasing that "William Bowery is Joe, as we know." 

If we thought 2020 was Taylor Swift's year, we were definitely mistaken. The superstar has taken 2021 by storm with the start of her re-releases. Starting with the announcement of Fearless (Taylor's Version), the singer released an anagram-filled video from "the vault," which referred to all of her unreleased songs from the album. "The vault door is about to be as unhinged as you'll think I am after you watch this video," she said on social media. "Level Expert. Happy decoding!"

If the devil works hard, Swifties work harder and faster, as fans managed to decode the titles to the six new vault tracks and the name of one of her collaborators, Keith Urban, who is featured on a song. 

Quickly after the re-release of Fearless came her announcement for Red (Taylor's Version), which has taken the entire world by storm. And, like all of her albums, it came with a whirlwind of Easter eggs. With 2022 nearing the horizon, Swifties are continuously speculating on which album she will release next, and social media is convinced that Speak Now (Taylor's Version) is making an entrance soon due to the Easter eggs that came with Red. 

As Swift released a music video for her vault track, "I Bet You Think About Me," fans discovered that the marriage-centric storyline is similar to Speak Now's title track, which follows Swift crashing a wedding. Another giant riddle came on Red (Taylor's Version) release day, where she thanked fans for continuing to support her.