Did You Miss These Obvious Easter Eggs Taylor Swift Dropped Throughout the Years?

Fans often read into minute details of Swift’s social media posts (don’t bring up the five holes in the fence to any hardcore Swiftie), but really the meaning is often right in front of our eyes. When the Eras Tour returned to the United States in October 2024, Swift posted this video of her walking toward section A12 in a stadium. Swifties focused on counting the number of steps she took, when the biggest clue might, in fact, have been that she walked toward that specific section. There’s a clear link between section A12 and August 12, the date she announced The Life of a Showgirl.

At the end of the Eras Tour each night, Swift sang her last song, “Karma,” then headed off the stage via a lift. Fans noticed a graphic of an orange door would drop down each show, and at the end of the last show, she walked through it. A countdown clock appeared on Swift’s website ahead of her New Heights appearance, and along with it, a familiar image of an orange door. During the podcast, she confirmed her stepping through this door was an Easter egg she used to signify to fans she was onto the next era.

In another case of using clothing color to signify something, the “Shake It Off” singer wore all blue outfits throughout her Eras Tour concert on the day of her 1989 (Taylor’s Version) album announcement, which happened to fall on August 9 (yes, 8/9 is another Easter egg).

Related: Watch The Eras Tour on Disney+

Fans spotted Swift wearing Anthropologie’s Aimee claw hair clip in October 2023. That was six months before she released The Tortured Poets Department, which features a track called “thanK you aIMee.”

Don’t forget her red carpet looks: When Swift announced The Tortured Poets Department at the 2024 Grammys, she donned a white dress with black gloves, a nod to the album and one track in particular, “The Albatross.”

In the vertical Spotify version of the “Delicate” music video off the reputation album, you’ll catch a glimpse of Swift’s pastel nails. This turned out to be a hint for her next album, Lover, which is known for its soft pastel color palette. The video was released in March 2018, and Lover didn’t drop until the next August.

Along with changing her style, one major clue Swift is about to enter a new era is her hair. Her look for her debut album features her naturally curly hair, which changes every album cycle. During the final shows of her Red tour, the musician debuted the now-trademark short hair of her 1989 era.

Swift’s music videos are filled with easter eggs. Case and point: the “Look What You Made Me Do” video, released in 2017, is so full of easter eggs that Swift has said it will take years to find them all. The video features dozens of references to Swift’s earlier eras, opening with Swift crawling out of a grave in a dress similar to the one she wore in the video for 1989’s “Out of the Woods,” a grave with the name Nils Sjöberg (a pseudonym she used to help write the Calvin Harris and Rihanna song “This Is What You Came For”), and a dollar bill referencing the $1 she was awarded in her sexual assault case against a former radio DJ.

“Me!” was the first single off of Swift’s seventh album, Lover. The music video was released ahead of the album and even before its title was released. “I trust them to eventually unravel all of [the Easter eggs], even if it isn’t until they hear the full album,” the pop star told the The Independent. “That’s how I designed these clues, so that different ones would reveal themselves over time.”

Eagle-eyed fans immediately noticed many clues, like the pastel pink-and-white snake bursting into butterflies to signify the end of the reputation era; a gallery wall featuring pictures of chicks as well as one of the three women in The Chicks, hinting at a collab between the band and Swift; and a group of 13 clouds. But, according to Swift, there was one major thing people weren’t finding: the album title. Maybe it was too obvious, but the Lover neon sign wasn’t the first guess fans made as to the album’s moniker.

In 2021, Swift began releasing re-recorded versions of her first six albums, known as Taylor’s Versions, alongside her new music. Fans combed her music videos for hints on the order of these releases and found some major clues. The video for the Midnights track “Bejeweled” offered many, with the most telling being the S and N clips in her hair (for Speak Now) and her pressing the purple “3” elevator button followed by the elevator arriving on the blue fifth floor. Putting these together, fans correctly picked up this meant Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) would be the next release followed by 1989 (Taylor’s Version).

This phrase has popped up throughout Swift’s career. In her music video for “22” she wore a shirt with the phrase “Not a lot going on at the moment.” Then in April 2020, she posted a selfie to Instagram with the same caption. Three months later, she released a surprise album, folklore. In November 2020, she again posted a picture to Instagram using the same caption and released both Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions and folklore’s sister album, evermore, shortly after. A variation of the phrase appeared again in the Eras Tour: “A lot going on at the moment” was emblazoned on one of the shirts she wore during the Red set.

As Swift was leaving hints for her 11^th album, The Tortured Poets Department, fans initially speculated she was leaving clues for the re-record of reputation, as both albums have a similar color scheme. However, in the second photo of this Instagram post celebrating her No. 1 song “Cruel Summer,” Swift is holding up one finger while music producer and co-writer Jack Antonoff is posed celebrating with all 10 fingers up. Fans now suspect their combined 11 fingers were a tease to TTPD given that the photo appears to be taken in a recording studio.

Ahead of the release of Red (Taylor’s Version), Swift posted a video to Instagram where she reimagined a 2014 old Tumblr post of the things she loved about fall. In the video, she can be seen writing lyrics in a notebook: “just between us did the love affair maim you too?” Fans eventually learned the line was from “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault).” She’s also accessorizing with a ring that contains the album name, which pops up again in music videos and even during the Eras Tour.

In 2022, Swift was awarded an honorary doctorate from New York University and delivered the commencement speech, filled with what else but Easter eggs, such as “Breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out,” which turned out to be a lyric from her forthcoming album Midnights, which hadn’t been announced at the time.

“I put so many lyrical Easter eggs in that speech that when the Midnights album came out after that the fans were like, ‘The whole speech was an Easter egg,’” Swift said on New Heights. “And for me that’s really fun because they find it fun.”