On August 28th 2022 at the MTV Music Video Awards Taylor Swift received awards for best video, direction, long form video, cinematography, and editing. During her acceptance speech Swift announced the release of her new album “Midnights” that shocked the crowd and most of the country.
After the past few years that Taylor Swift has been re-releasing her old albums and coming out with Evermore the thought of a new album was a surprise to a lot of diehard fans but was not unwarranted based on the hints Swift has dropped in the past. The VMA’s have always been a talking point in Swift’s career since 2009 with the appearance of Kanye during her first win and the sentiment has stuck with her and her fans ever since.
In 2009 Kanye had interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to tell that crowd that Beyonce had one of the best awards, almost insinuating that Beyonce should have won the award over Taylor. Despite this, Swift came back and won multiple awards this year and gave her fans an interesting twist that the VMA producers may or may not have been aware of.
In terms of easter eggs Swift left most of them to fans who had a knack for analyzing things deeper than most. Three years ago Swift made an appearance on the Jimmy Fallon show wearing a dress that resembled what she was wearing at the 2022 VMA show which lead fans to believe that this album release was in the works for longer than originally thought. Along with the hints from her outfit choices she also addressed the fact that she planned things three years in advance which would make this 2022 VMA show three years after her addressing that.
Swift is best-known for her brilliant use of easter eggs to announce her upcoming works. She has even been known to have collaborations with other celebrities, such as Blake Lively, to announce future career advances, album updates, and more. Swift uses these “easter eggs” to lead fans on a trail and make her fanbase seem as if it is in its own universe. What are some of the easter eggs hinting towards her album release? Read these 5 Easter Eggs to find out!
- Outfits and Clothing
Remember how three years ago, Swift appeared on the Jimmy Fallon show? In the segment where she strategically said that she plans things three years in advance, Swift was wearing a silver beaded dress. The beadwork looks very similar to the beadwork she wore the night of the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, in which she announced the release of her new album, Midnights. Swift has been known to use clothing to hint towards easter eggs in the past, like a clip of a red scarf used to hint at the re-release of “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)”. In the beginning of the evening, when social media of the celebrities on the VMA’s red carpet started to surface, fans saw Swift’s all silver-beaded dress and thought that it resembled the “Look at What You Made Me Do” Music video scene of the diamonds in the bathtub. Was this just Taylor Swift trying to throw her fans off the trail to think it was a Reputation album re-release?
- The Lover House
The Lover House is an iconic piece of the “Taylor Universe”, as fans would call it. Swift’s album “Lover” is one of her more recent works, but remains as one of her most successful albums. During the release of Lover, a picture of a piece of art known as the “Lover House” was created. It’s a picture of a house with nine rooms, each room being decorated and colored differently to represent one of Swift’s released albums. Tiktoker @thethriftyswifty posted a video saying that the Lover House was now complete with the Midnight sky. Confirmation surfaced that Taylor Swift liked the video, making fans believe that this album has been planned as a part of the Taylor Universe prior to the release of the Lover album.
- The 9-Grid Timeline
No one works harder than Taylor Swift’s PR and Publicity Team. Months ago, they started posting the “9-grid” style posts, where there are nine zoomed-in pictures of one large picture posted onto an Instagram timeline. On the ninth consecutive post, they will display one large picture of a Taylor Swift album on the Swift homepage. On the night of the album release, fans noticed that not only was one album lined up perfectly in the 9-grid style, but every album was perfectly aligned. This does not just mean that the PR Team had to post the 9 consecutive pictures in order for this to work, but it also means that any other content needed to be posted in a multiple of 9. Superstitious fans knew something big had to be coming when the Swift timeline was aligned, but was this just planned as another easter egg?
- Social Media Hints
We already know that Taylor Swift’s PR Team likes to focus on the small details. Well, they do not leave many details out of Swift’s social media captions. For instance, since May 2022, Taylor Swift has been putting a different font spacing than all other words in her captions on only the word “midnight”. Fans at the time thought it had to hint towards another re-release, but now realize that she was giving away the title of her next album.
- Strategizing Speeches
In the video clip of the Taylor Swift 2022 VMAs acceptance speech, she never directly says the name of the album. However, she does say, “I’ll tell you more at midnight”. Again, this is another scenario of Taylor sneaking in the name drop of the album without fans being able to notice until after the fact. If the public are just now able to find all of the easter eggs regarding the title of the new album, then fans are wondering what clues were hidden in the obvious when the album releases on October 21st.
These 5 Easter Eggs are just the beginning of the path to Taylor Swift’s 10th Released Album, Midnights. Fans are confident that more easter eggs will arise as the album gets closer, or maybe Swift has already given them to us and we haven’t even noticed.
