If you’d told me three years ago that Taylor Swift would announce her 12th album on a football podcast, I would have laughed.

But after the initial raised eyebrow, I would have believed you, because Taylor never ceases to surprise me.

Now, if you don’t care about Taylor Swift, feel free to skip this column. If her music isn’t your thing, I totally respect it. There are plenty of big-name artists whom I’m not into. (Where I start to have an issue is when people say that Taylor is genuinely a bad musician, songwriter, etc. She has a track record and bank account that provide otherwise. But I digress.)

TS12, The Life of a Showgirl, is on the way, people. On Oct. 3, Swifies around the globe – yes, the globe – will collectively enter a new era entirely dictated by a twelve-song album…Are you ready for it?

Not only that, but from what the most investigative Swifites across social media have sleuthed out, I feel like we’re in for something special. 

Taylor is making some shifts in the direction of this album. For one, it’s being produced by Max Martin and Shellback (plus herself, duh). This trio hasn’t been seen in years, as the producer role has been dominated by Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff for a few albums now. 

Max Martin and Shellback played a huge role in some of Taylor’s early – and incredibly iconic — sounds. Red and 1989 are both often pointed to as some of Taylor’s best work, and both Martin and Shellback worked on those projects. 

This clue – in addition to some other points – are leading many Swifies eager to hear a more upbeat, pop sound than what’s come out of Taylor’s portfolio recently.

Don’t get me wrong, we Swifties will eat up anything that Ms. Swift releases. From documentaries to concerts to short films and photoshoots, if Swift is in on it, we are opening our wallets. 

Just look at the success of the Taylor’s Version initiative. 

(Taylor’s Version)

For anyone unfamiliar, Taylor was repeatedly denied the opportunity to own her own music. After signing a record deal at age 15, Swift did not have ownership over much of her own work. After failing again and again to own her first six albums–albums that Swift poured her heart into and has called her diary–she decided to explore a new avenue.

In order to have autonomy over those first six albums, Swift embarked on a never-before-seen quest. She began re-recording and re-releasing all of her earliest work, adding the moniker “(Taylor’s Version)” at the end, signifying her ownership of it.

Swift has said that this wasn’t really about making a cash grab, but that she wanted to have possession over six heartfelt albums that were the stories of years of her life. And if she couldn’t buy them, well, remaking was the next best thing.

To sweeten the pot, Swift threw in a couple of songs “from the vault” with each re-release. These are songs that she initially wrote for the album but cut from the final version. (Fun fact: it’s rumored that she originally wrote over a hundred songs for 1989, one of her most successful albums.)

Plenty of people doubted that this would work. They told Swift that her listeners are not going to want the same songs released again. But these people doubted the loyalty of Swifties.

The fanbase became intrinsically loyal to the new tracks, dubbing the original releases “stolen versions” and making a unified point to only stream the Taylor’s versions of the songs. This campaign was more successful than anyone had hoped.

And to top it all off, just a few months ago, Taylor’s moment finally came. She purchased back her own work. It all belongs to her now. So feel free to listen to either version of those first six albums now. They’re all hers.

Back to TS12 – and my thoughts on TS11

To circle back, the entire fanbase is eagerly awaiting this new album. But in just the handful of days since its announcement, theories have begun to swirl that this album was originally slated to be Taylor’s eleventh album.

For those not up to speed, let me give you a little rewind:

• On Oct. 21, 2022, Swift released her tenth album, Midnights
• On Nov 1, 2022, Swift announced The Eras Tour (which would go on to be the highest-grossing tour in history)
• On March 17, 2023, The Eras Tour began in Glendale, Ariz.
• On April 8, 2023, Entertainment Tonight broke the news that Swift and her boyfriend of six years, Joe Alwyn, had separated
• On Feb. 4, 2024, Taylor announced her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD), during her acceptance speech at the Grammys

Okay, so that’s a realllllly shortened version. I skipped a lot, such as that she re-released both 1989 and Speak Now during the tour. But the breakup is significant.

During the Midnights era, one of the songs that Swift released was called Bejeweled, and it came with a music video. Swift is well known for dropping hints to future projects in everything she does. And this video has tons of imagery that lines up with the new Showgirl theme. It also showed an elevator with buttons whose colors seemed to correspond to the colors of past albums, and the 11th button was an orangey red.

(You know what else is a copper color? The Life of a Showgirl. Her 11th album, TTPD, is black and white.)

Then she and Alwyn separated. And her plan was derailed – or so I (and the internet) think.

I/we don’t think that TTPD was a part of Taylor’s plans. TTPD is undeniably a breakup album, which would not have been accounted for during the Bejeweled shooting. From tracks like “So Long, London” (Alwyn was British) to  “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” (a story about the struggle of performing during the breakup) and “The Alchemy” (a nod to her new boyfriend, Travis Kelce), TTPD was sudden, fresh and an unexpected drop.

But now its era has come and gone. And it's time for Taylor to get back on track, picking back up with The Life of a Showgirl.

There are genuinely so many more clues and hints that I could rant about for hours, but I think I've done enough. Just you wait for October, because I am committing (in writing, apparently) to doing an album review. Between now and then, we’ll see if any of these theories are further confirmed.