A new Taylor Swift album cycle is officially upon us, and with that comes plenty of fan theories. Swifties are buzzing over what TS12, formally known as The Life of a Showgirl, will entail. Who produced the album? What's it about? Does Travis Kelce make an appearance? What's with all the orange and mint green?
Swift dropped the news after a countdown on her official website, which ticked off the hours until 12:12 a.m. on August 12. Then, she unveiled the album title in a 12-second video clip from her upcoming appearance the Kelce brothers' podcast, New Heights, much to the delight of Travis and his older brother Jason.
We don't know when The Life of a Showgirl will officially drop, but until then, fans are busy putting on their detective hats to crack any clues and Easter eggs. Ahead, check out some of the most compelling fan theories about the 12th Taylor Swift album, The Life of a Showgirl.
Theory 1: A Vegas residency for The Life of a Showgirl
Ever since Britney Spears made the Las Vegas residency cool, celebs have flocked to the desert casinos for long-running or limited-time shows, including Lady Gaga, the Backstreet Boys, and Adele. Is Taylor headed to Vegas? The “showgirl” of it all has some fans thinking she could be making the Sphere her new home base for awhile. She did tour the globe for literal years on the Eras tour, so maybe she wants something a bit more permanent for the next tour.
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Theory 2: Copper oxidation as a metaphor
Yes, you read that right. Some Swifties brilliantly posited that the orange-and-mint theme is a reference to the passage of time, or possibly how pretty, shiny things can tarnish before our eyes.
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Theory 3: TLOAS is a Midnights sister album
Was The Life of a Showgirl supposed to be released after Midnights, not The Tortured Poets Department? Maybe! Some fans believe she's been teasing Showgirl much longer than we thought, including with her orange-and-green outfit in the “Anti-Hero” music video and all the sparkly costumes she wore in the “Bejeweled” video and to red carpets around that time.
After all, this is what she said about the making of Tortured Poets during the Eras Tour: “Tortured Poets is an album — I think more than any of my albums that I’ve ever made — I needed to make it. It was really a lifeline for me. Just the things I was going through and the things I was writing about. It kind of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life, and I never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it on Tortured Poets.”
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Theory 4: The return of Max Martin
This one is less “fan theory” than a “Taylor started it,” as the artist herself dropped a new playlist called “And baby, that's show business for you” of songs produced by the legendary Swedish producer Max Martin and his producing partner Shellback, both of whom have worked on some of Swift's most popular songs.
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Theory 5: The soundtrack of a new documentary
Given that the Eras Tour ran for almost two years, it would make sense if Swift turned the record-breaking show into a documentary. (There's already a concert movie.) Some fans think that the title The Life of a Showgirl sounds like a natural fit for a doc, and the new music would appear as the soundtrack.
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If we know anything about Swift, it's that she loves to keep us guessing and is always more than a few steps ahead, so consider us on Taylor Watch until The Life of a Showgirl drops… which could be very soon indeed.
