International superstar and enigma Taylor Swift has once again driven the internet mad with a cryptic post teasing details about the upcoming re-release of her 2012 album Red.
Posted on 5 August 2021, Swift’s post features a red vault (unsurprisingly) against a red background with autumn leaves falling around it. The vault door then opens out which a series of letters come out.
Now Taylor Swift isn’t the first artist to tease fans with hints through social media about upcoming albums before they come out. Beyoncé famously teased the title of her album Lemonade with a series of posts featuring lemons the year before.
However, she has certainly mastered the art of dropping hints. For example, the cover for the Red re-release was featured in the Spotify video for a song off her last original album evermore and Swift’s fanbase (Swifties) are notorious for their detective work.
So what exactly did Swift post?
At 3pm GMT yesterday, Swift dropped the first post of the day featuring the video of the vault. The video left many fans bewildered. Swift had done a similar video as a promo for the re-release of her album Fearless. That tease featured the words of unreleased songs on the album jumbled-up.
However, fans were quick to realize this was not the case with Swift’s latest video. Many complained in the comments they could not decipher the meaning. In the video, a distorted version of her track ‘All Too Well’ can be heard and the caption “casually cruel in the name of being honest references the song’s lyrics.
Nevertheless, the words remained a mystery. That is until Swift dropped another hint in the following tweet.
Eagle-eyed fans suspected this was a reference to song lyrics on the original album. One Swiftie posted below that they believed the tweet was specifically about a lyric from the title track ‘Red’ — “a crossword and realizing there’s no right answer”.
Swifties break it down on TikTok
Compiling all the letters into a word search (we’ll forgive Swift on the accuracy of her clues here), a TikTok shows how all the letters together reveal clues about unreleased songs on the album.
The TikTok, posted by @dannyhig, goes into depth about various clues hidden in the video. He points out there are “autumn leaves falling” which is another ‘All Too Well’ reference. They conclude that there are “30 total songs on Taylor’s version” and there are “11, maybe 10” unreleased songs that will be on the album.
Here is a breakdown of every clue they’ve found so far on the crossword. Is there any they’ve missed?
When is Red (Taylor’s Version) being released?
Red (Taylor’s Version) will be released on 19 November. Swift’s posts yesterday coincided with an announcement that the album was available to pre-order as a CD or digital album. There appears to be no option for vinyl yet.
The album will likely be a success with the cryptic posts causing Taylor Swift to trend at number 1 worldwide on Twitter. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) had the biggest opening day for an album on Spotify in 2021, tallying more than 50 million global streams in its first day on the service. According to Universal, the album earned over 1 million units in its first week globally.
Taylor Swift is currently in the process of re-recording all of her albums up until her 2019 album Lover. This is because of a dispute between her and former manager Scooter Braun over the rights to her old music. Swift is yet to announce the re-release dates of Taylor Swift, Speak Now, 1989, and Reputation.
Words by Ed Barnes
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