in Music & Gigs

Taylor Swift Drops New Banger, And These Are Our Favourite Album Theories

Love her or hate her, you can’t deny: Taylor Swift is one clever (and bloody cryptic) woman.

Using the NFL Draft to announce a new song, collab, and music video are to be released within the next 24-hours? Weird flex, but brilliant.

Collabing with Brendon Urie (a la Panic! At The Disco), who is not only on a pop charts roll, but has also said he wants to collab with Swift, and has been one of her fan’s most highly requested duets. Inspired.

Releasing a sickly sweet bubblegum pop track called ‘ME!’ and an accompanying pastel-packed music video, that’s 1) fun; 2) loaded with Easter eggs, and 3) allegedly reveals the name of the next single and album? Genius.

Swifties were ready to pounce when the song and video were released on Thursday evening, and it hasn’t taken them long to break a bunch of records.

YouTube’s record for the highest female and solo 24-hour debut for any music video.

The video racked up a massive 65.2 million views on YouTube (and has almost hit 100 million as I type). ‘ME!’ took back the crown from Ariana Grande’s ‘Thank U, Next’ music video – which earned 55.4 million at the end of last year – that had beaten out Swift’s ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ (43.2 million views).

She’s set a new record or all solo artists. Male or female. So this is a pretty big deal. And before anyone claims this isn’t legit because ‘it’s a duet’; that maybe so, but Swift is the lead vocalist, so she gets the kudos.

ME! also broke two streaming records on Amazon

One for most first-day streams, and another for the most on-demand voice requests with Alexa than any other single debut on Amazon Music.

Alexa, can you applaud?

Wow.

Taylor Swift is not here to play. Neither are her fans, who racked up the numbers hunting for clues to the title of her next single and album.

I fell deep into the rabbit hole that is TS7 conspiracy theories and emerged the other side dazed and confused. My head’s still spinning. So to save you the trouble of looking yourself and losing hours of your life, here are our favourites.

‘Lover’ = the album title

One of the most obvious eggs was a neon pink ‘Lover’ sign, with a heart similar to the ‘💗’ emoji Swift’s been using all over her social media

She’s going back to her country roots

Not only did Swift include a portrait of the country girl group the ‘Dixie Chicks‘ (amidst a wall of ‘cool chicks’, in another scene she’s donning a pair of white cowboy boots, which was enough to have fans dreaming of ‘Fearless 2.0′.

Butterflies, Kaleidoscopes, Butterflies are Kaleidoscopes

I wasn’t kidding when I said these fans go deep. At the beginning of the video, a snake (Swift’s former spirit animal, thanks KKW) explodes into a bunch of shiny, rainbow butterflies. Fans did a little more digging, and found that a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope

A release date???

This is how keen the fans’ eyes are, and how strongly they believe in numerology (I mean, Swift did tell them to pay special attention to these scenes).

Fans counted the briefcases circling Swift’s head – that’s 7 – and the number of clouds in the lobby – Swift’s lucky number, 13. These numbers have fans guessing something big is going to happen on July 13. Maybe an album release?


Other keen-eyed fans noticed a clock. A clock. which is set to 8:30, and have concluded that TS7’s going to drop on August 30. Maybe?

Honestly, it’s anyone’s guess, but you can guarantee that the calendars have been marked and the countdown is on for Taylor Swift’s epic return.

Images: Giphy; Twitter (@taylorswift13)

&MEBrendon UrieTaylor SwiftTheoriesTS7

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