A map to the Easter Eggs.
How Taylor Swift began to incorporate Easter Eggs into her work and the most important Eggs to date.
artwork by Sally North
Taylor Swift drops a music video, and thousands of people are suddenly analyzing each frame. If you’re not one of the millions caught up on every bit of lore, it can be difficult to understand the all-consuming fascination with a four-minute music video. Taylor Swift has completely changed the format of the modern music video—and the entire music industry—by planting hidden clues known as Easter Eggs.
This tradition of using visual hints to promote her music began with her debut album, Taylor Swift. Swift capitalized random letters in the album’s prologue to send a message to fans. This pattern continued through her Fearless, Speak Now, Red, and 1989 eras. The Red era saw an expansion of her visual hints by incorporating Easter Eggs into her outfits, tour visuals, websites, and of course, her music videos. Swift began to hide her lucky number, 13, throughout her work, and fans started looking for thirteen in her outfits, shows, releases, prologues, and videos.
In her reputation era, swift wrote, "There will be no further explanation. There will just be reputation." Swift began hiding her Easter Eggs. The singer kicked off this particular era with the single “Look What You Made Me Do” and an accompanying music video, which threw shade at, well, everyone. In one scene, Swift donned bleach-blonde hair and a leopard-print outfit in reference to Katy Perry, with whom she had a highly publicized feud dating back to 2014. Swift subtly fired a shot at Perry by holding a Grammy. At the time, Perry had not earned a single Grammy while Swift had earned 10. The New York Times was next on her list. Swift referenced a 2015 Times article that called her friend group, “the Squad,” a cult. In the video, the Squad is represented by robots with Swift as the leader. Another scene of Swift drinking tea from a gold throne is theorized to reference an Instagram post by Kendall Jenner captioned “Tea time”. Jenner is the half-sister of Kim Kardashian, another of Swift’s very public adversaries.
But The Eggs don’t stop there. The opening scene of “Look What You Made Me Do” shows Swift waking up in a casket wearing her dress from the 2014 Met Gala (around the height of her 1989 era), firmly signaling that the old version of herself had “died.” In another sequence, Swift lies in a bathtub of jewels and a single dollar. In 2017, Swift successfully sued a man for blatant sexual assault, seeking just $1 in damages. While she could have easily won more from the suit, the singular dollar was meant to bring awareness to the rampant problem of sexual assault while delegitimizing her assaulter’s accusation that Swift had financial motives for accusing him. Other Easter Eggs include an “I <3 TS” shirt that her ex-boyfriend Tom Hiddleston had worn and a tombstone engraved with the name Nils Sjoberg—a pseudonym that Swift had written several songs under.
The most obvious Easter Egg is the literal mountain of “Taylor Swifts” from the past. We see a Taylor in an outfit from her Red tour, another in the pajamas from her “We Are Never Getting Back Together” music video, and one in the dress from her “Out of The Woods” music video—alongside many others. She references the “You Belong With Me” video by wearing her iconic “Junior Jewels” t-shirt, this time with the names changed to Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Selena Gomez, and Gigi Hadid. That was all just one music video.
While every other music video, Instagram post, or even awards show attendance could earn a similar deep dive, there is only one Easter Egg as significant as the legendary music video: her rerecordings. Fearless (Taylor’s Version), the first re-recorded album she released following her 2019 masters dispute, began the tradition of opening “The Vault:” a set of Easter Eggs hidden in puzzles. When Swifites successfully cracked the Vault, they learned the names of unreleased songs that would appear on the album, new artists that would be featured, and the album’s release date itself. In an Instagram post announcing Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swift returned to using random capitalization to reveal the release date of April 9. Later, Swift replied to Billboard in a Tweet that contained four red hearts, which hinted at the upcoming announcement of Red (Taylor’s Version). She continued to use Easter Eggs to hint at her re-recordings with Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), the announcement of which was indicated by the sequence of colors in an elevator in the music video for “Bejeweled,” a single from Midnights. The music video for “I Can See You,” the only video of the Speak Now TV era, included a bridge sign that outright spelled, “1989 TV,” leaving yet another hint about her future direction.
Throughout her enormous Eras Tour, Swift used her outfits and surprise songs as Easter Eggs for each new album release. Swift even incorporated Easter Eggs into an Era’s Tour pop-up shop in Los Angeles. Fans noticed a book titled “Us” in the shop’s decor, which was a reference to an upcoming collaboration with Gracie Abrams. In an Instagram photo with producer Jack Antonoff on October 23, 2023, fans noticed the total number of fingers the two collectively held up. Though seemingly insane, the photos were indeed an Easter Egg for Swift’s eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. At the 66th Grammy Awards, where she would officially announce the album, Swift’s outfit included a watch choker that mirrored a popular photo of actress Clara Bow. “Clara Bow” would later become the final track on the base version of Tortured Poets. Swift also began holding up two fingers at random points throughout the Eras Tour, leaving fans confused. In the previously mentioned pop-up shops, random lyrics from the upcoming album were released for fans. After the album's midnight release, fans noticed some of the lyrics weren’t found in any song on the album. Concurrently, Swift shared a countdown toward 2 AM on her Instagram story. All these Eggs pointed to a secret double album, which was released at 2 AM as The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. Even still, there are hundreds of theories about Swift’s next release, some positing that the colors of her outfits during the 1989 set of the Eras Tour are Easter Eggs, some seeing clues in the “Fortnight” and “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” music videos.
On The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Swift again admitted to hinting at projects years in advance through Easter Eggs, which, of course, has led fans to “[go] down this rabbit hole” with her. There are dozens of Eggs that I’ve missed in this deep dive, and there are more that even the most devoted Swiftie hasn’t deciphered. I invite everyone to join Swifties in the craziness that is the Easter Egg Hunt.
edited by Justin Walgren.
artwork by Sally North.