The animation finds viewers exiting a Midnights room and entering the pop star’s new era down the hall.
Taylor Swift announced Tuesday night (April 16) that her new music video is set to drop shortly after her 11th studio album The Tortured Poets Department arrives later this week — but she didn’t stop there. The pop star also posted a cryptic video on Instagram filled with what appears to be Easter eggs about her new era, leaving Swifties scrambling to decipher them in time.
The mysterious clip begins with an animated, first-person view of a room full of crumpled papers, colorful vinyls, photos and more items alluding to Swift’s most recent album, Midnights. It then simulates the viewer exiting the room, walking down a stark hallway and entering another wing labeled “The Tortured Poets Department,” in which a wall-hanging calendar reveals that the singer’s new visual will drop at 8 p.m. ET Friday (April 19), 20 hours after Tortured Poets arrives on streaming services.
The calendar doesn’t specify which of the 16 songs on Swift’s new record is getting the music video treatment, but it does provide a possible clue. Toward the bottom, someone jotted down 14 tally marks, potentially indicating that the song in question comes 14th on the tracklist, aka “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.”
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Or, it could be a reference to track one, “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone. (How many days are in a fortnight? That’s right, 14.)
The video comes as Swifties continue to pore over clues hidden at Spotify’s Tortured Poets library pop-up in Los Angeles, which is adorned with texts, dried flowers, figurines and more. Most enticing is a book of stationary on display in a clear case, the pages of which are turned on an unknown schedule to reveal one new lyric at a time. Recently, it bore the message, “One less temptress, one less dagger to sharpen.”
