Taylor Swift had seen many of her fans’ theories predicting The Life of a Showgirl — but not all of them were correct.
“There are definitely some theories that are based in absolutely nothing close to reality,” Swift, 35, said during a Friday, October 3, appearance on Elvis Duran’s iHeartRadio show. “But, you know what? There are some that are so fun when they figure them out.”
Swift has been known for lining her social media pages, album covers, song lyrics and more with subtle teasers and various Easter eggs hinting at her music. The Grammy winner released her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on Friday.
“Just yesterday somebody figured out that if you line up the titles of all the tracks of this album in order … in the center of the frame, the shape of the track list makes the same shape as the Eras Tour stage,” Swift said during her radio interview. “That was a real one [and] took a while for them to discover. Finally, they figured it out, and it was really fun.”
However, not all of the fans’ ideas connect back to anything remotely correct.
“There’s some where people thought that somehow sourdough bread was a part of the whole thing,” Swift quipped, referring to her passions for baking. “I bake, I love baking, [but] it’s completely aside from my music. It’s just a hobby I’m obsessed with. There’s not [a song about bread].”
She continued, “It’s been really funny to have people care that much because, ultimately, Easter eggs are always leading toward more art. They’re leading toward lyrics or art that’s coming in the future. I wouldn’t be able to do that if the fans didn’t care so much about the music itself, which I’m very honored by.”
Swift wrote The Life of a Showgirl, her latest album of 12 songs, while performing the European leg of her history-making Eras Tour in 2024. In addition to her record-breaking concerts, the era was marked by Swift’s romance with her now-fiancé, Travis Kelce. The 35-year-old Kansas City Chiefs tight end, who proposed in August, is the subject of a handful of Showgirl songs, including “The Fate of Ophelia,” “Honey,” “Opalite,” “Wish List” and “Wood.”
“My music is … the art of catharsis,” Swift said on Friday. “There will be times where I’ll write the most gut-wrenching song of torment and heartbreak and then as soon as I’m done writing it, I’m done with that emotion. It’s almost been a way of, like, you say a thing and then you can move on from the thing. I’ve learned, as time has gone by, to deal with writing in terms of this character or story or fiction.”
Writing Showgirl, however, was a bit different for Swift, since she’s admittedly still in the same effervescent headspace that she was while recording a year ago.
“One thing about this album that I think is really exciting is that, oftentimes when I make a record, we then take all this time to plan out how we’re going to put it out,” she said on the U.K.’s Hits Radio station in a separate Friday interview. “Oftentimes, your life can change drastically between that point and this other point. With this one, the coolest part is that it is absolutely the place that I am in my life.”
The Life of a Showgirl is out now.
