by Liz Keating '24 on September 18, 2022
A&E Staff
Arts & Entertainment
August has officially slipped away, leaving Swifties to anxiously await Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album, Midnights. Fans have been scouring Swift’s social media and her media appearances, hoping that she drops one of her infamous Easter eggs. If you have been a fan of Swift over the years, you know that she loves leaving secret clues to her fans hidden throughout her work, whether it be in a social media post, an interview, music videos, or even on the booklets of her album covers. These aptly titled “Easter eggs” allow Swift to connect with her fans on a level that mainstream artists have never before accessed in this capacity. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Swift says, “I love that they like the cryptic hint-dropping. Because as long as they like it, I’ll keep doing it. It’s fun. It feels mischievous and playful.” So, in the spirit of Midnights, and the Easter eggs that will (hopefully)come from this era, here is a look at three of Taylor Swift’s most interesting Easter eggs over the span of her career.
The “Look What You Made Me Do” Music Video
In 2017, Swift came out of hiding with her lead single of the album Reputation, “Look What You Made Me Do.” Swift is quoted as saying “Literally the whole video is just an Easter egg, there are thousands of Easter eggs. There are some that people still haven’t found. It will be decades before people find them all.” LWYMMD was released as a response to the infamous drama between Swift, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye West regarding West’s “Famous” music video. Easter eggs in the video include a nod to her ex Tom Hiddelston and the “I heart T.S” tank top, her pseudonym Nils Sjöberg on the gravestone, the one-dollar Swift won in her sexual assult trial, the infamous 2009 VMA speech, and the Junior Jewels shirt from her 2009 “You Belong With Me” music video.
Liner Notes in Lyrics
If you are a longtime fan of Swift, you would know of the liner notes in her CD booklets. Swift capitalized certain letters in the booklet to spell out one main word or phrase. Sometimes these linear notes would just be a cute phrase, like “Someday I’ll find this” in the lyrics for “Love Story.” Sometimes she decided on something more pointed, like the name “Sam” spelled out over and over in the lyrics for “Should’ve Said No.” Swift, unfortunately, discontinued these notes in her Reputation era, opting for the album to speak for itself, but it was a nice treat for the fans who took the time to look at her work in depth.
“Betty”
Taylor Swift is known for her close and public relationships with her friends, one of her closest friends being Blake Lively. On the track “Betty” from her 2020 album folklore, Swift includes the names of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ daughters as the characters of the love story she is singing about. Since their children James and Inez were already known to the public, Swifties theorized that the name of their new daughter would be Betty. Fans turned out to be correct as Swift released the song in August 2020, saying, “I named all the characters in this story after my friends’ kids.”