The Easter eggs were out there. We have only ourselves to blame for not decoding them all.
Onstage in New Orleans last October, for example, Taylor Swift flashed 10 fingers three times. Then, in the final moments of her Eras Tour in December, Swift, dressed in a glittery costume, exited the stadium not through a stage elevator platform, as she had the previous 148 nights, but by heading in the direction of a bright orange door that had been displayed at the back of the stage.
In August, Swift revealed what those clues were pointing to: her next album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” which comes out on Friday (10/3 — I mean, come on, sheeple!). Its color scheme is centered on a warm, bedazzled orange, and its themes were inspired by Swift’s record-breaking, headline-grabbing tour itself, as well as her eventful offstage life during 21 months on the road in 2023 and 2024.
“I wanted to give a little subliminal hint to the fans that I may be leaving the Eras Tour era, but I was also entering a new era,” Swift said on “New Heights,” the podcast hosted by the football stars Travis Kelce — whom Swift began dating in 2023 — and his brother Jason.
“The Life of a Showgirl” is Swift’s 12th album of new material, and it extends an astonishingly productive run. Since 2020, the star singer-songwriter has released five new studio albums (counting “Showgirl”) and four rerecordings of old LPs; her penchant for stuffing albums with bonus tracks means that even before “Showgirl,” she had released nearly 200 new songs since the pandemic.
These days, Swift tends to drop news via brief social media posts. By going on an extended video podcast — her episode of “New Heights” lasted just over two hours — she gave herself an expansive platform to discuss the project in detail, shaping her fans’ expectations and establishing the marketing narrative for the album.
The next step of her campaign underscored that this era would involve a love story. In images released on social media 13 days after the podcast — of course — Kelce knelt before Swift in an almost-too-fantastical flower garden, and Swift showed off a vintage-style cushion-cut diamond ring. “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” the couple wrote in a joint Instagram post.
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The post Taylor Swift Conquered With the Eras Tour. Now Comes the Victory Lap. appeared first on New York Times.
