14 Outrageous-But-Accurate Taylor Swift Theories That Prove Swifties Are The Best Detectives
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There are a few things Taylor Swift is known for: writing amazing songs, smashing records, loving wine and cats, and being a massive sneak when it comes to leaving clues for fans.
Of course, this also means that fans can get very...imaginative...with their theories. Some of them absolutely fall flat (ahem, Woodvale), but others actually end up coming true. Let's take a look at the smartest theories which actually were real predictions.
1.The title of the album Lover.
When Taylor released the music video for the smash hit "ME!" she hadn't yet revealed the title of her upcoming seventh album. But she did reveal that its name was hidden somewhere in the background of the "ME!" video.
Fans noticed this "Lover" sign pretty quickly — it is a giant neon sign, after all — and also realized that every time the lyric "lover" was written in the "ME!" lyric video, it was capitalized. Surely "Lover" would be the album title?!
Taylor threw a spanner in the works by tweeting that no one had guessed it yet, but a few months later, it turned out that the Swifties had it right all along.
2.The Lana Del Rey collab on Midnights.
Midnights is a wild ride of an album and I couldn’t be happier that my co pilot on this adventure was @jackantonoff. He’s my friend for life (presumptuous I know but I stand by it) and we’ve been making music together for nearly a decade HOWEVER…https://t.co/jjqUNkGSme
3.The name of Blake Lively's child revealed on Folklore.
4.The identity of the baby voice in "Gorgeous."
5.The identity of William Bowery.
When Taylor surprise-dropped her eighth album, Folklore, there was a songwriter credited on a number of tracks whom no one had ever heard of before. They had no online presence, leading fans to obsessively wonder who tf William Bowery could be.
The three main contenders were Harry Styles (lol), Ed Sheeran (hmm), and her boyfriend Joe Alwyn. Even though he has no background in music, WB being Joe did make a lot of sense. His great-grandfather's name was William, and the Bowery Hotel was one of the first places Taylor and Joe "hung out" before officially dating.
Well, it turns out that it was Joe all along, as Taylor revealed in her Long Pond Studio Sessions later that year. Big-brained Swifties strike again!
6.The secret messages in her album liners.
Big Machine / Via youtu.be
For her first five records, up to 1989, Taylor hid secret messages in the lyric booklets of each album. Fans figured it out pretty quickly, but this was back in 2006 and 2008 before these types of "Easter eggs" would go viral around the internet.
In the lyrics for each song, random letters were capitalized — put them together, and they formed a phrase. It became a cute little message to fans to help them understand each song a little deeper. For example, the hidden message for "Love Story" was "someday I'll find this" and the one for "All Too Well" was "maple latte."
7.The infamous "ME!" mural
8.The "This Is What You Came For" backing vocals.
9.The identity of Nils Sjöberg.
Taylor didn't just provide backing vocals for the song, she actually helped Calvin write it. It was a big mess when the news was revealed — just after their breakup — and I simply do not want to get into it here.
HOWEVER! There was a co-writer listed on the song credits called Nils Sjöberg. No one had ever heard of him, so Swifties just assumed that was Taylor's pseudonym for the track.
Of course, they were right, which she confirmed by putting the name on a gravestone in the video for "Look What You Made Me Do."
She later told Paul McCartney in a conversation for Rolling Stone: "I wrote under the name Nils Sjöberg because those are two of the most popular names of Swedish males." Okie doke.
10.The "Lover" house
This one has caused a few arguments among Swifties, but the base theory here was spot on.
In the video clip for "Lover," Taylor played out a number of scenes in different rooms of the same house, all which had a different color scheme. Fans were pretty quick to realize that each room/color corresponded to each of her previous albums.
You can read more about the reasoning behind each one here; it's pretty impressive.
After Taylor released Folklore and Evermore, fans looked back at this house and thought, "HMMM, THOSE TREES ARE REALLY GIVING FOLKLORE, HUH?" But as we know, Folklore was born out of quarantine, and certainly something she hadn't planned back in 2019.
11.Something's going on with Ed Sheeran.
In the video for "I Bet You Think About Me," Taylor swipes her fingers through a wedding cake, leaving behind two lines that look exactly like an equals sign. The same kind of equals sign that's also the name of Ed Sheeran's latest album.
Swifties predicted that perhaps a collab would soon be released with the two of them. And what do you know, 13 weeks later, they released their "Joker and the Queen" collab. Just like clockwork.
12.And something was coming on May 5.
When Taylor was promoting "The Joker and the Thief," her management team shared a countdown timer sticker on Instagram to get fans excited. But the timer "froze" at 55:22. Though of course, nothing is an accident with Taylor. It was simply a screenshot made to look like a timer.
So, of course, fans were convinced something was going to happen on May 5. Sure enough, the day rolled around, and she surprise-dropped "This Love (Taylor's Version)."
13.A Paul McCartney collab.
It's not just Taylor who is subject to Swiftie scrutiny. When Sir Paul McCartney randomly tweeted 13 dice emoji, Taylor fans immediately knew something was up. Why dice? Oh, because four days earlier, Taylor was in a Capital One ad that had a random pair of dice on the shelves.
It really sounded like quite a stretch of the imagination, but lo and behold, not long after, Taylor and Paul graced the cover of Rolling Stone together.
14."Not a lot going on at the moment."
Honorable mention: the suitcase.
A deeper investigation into whether Taylor Swift is hiding in that giant suitcase or not https://t.co/S7NpET1ifc
And a prediction: Speak Now will be the next re-record.
Alrighty, this one hasn't been confirmed quite yet, but SURELY, SURELY, SURELY. There have been a million teeny tiny hints that Taylor's next re-recorded album will be Speak Now.
But the most compelling piece of evidence is her video clip for "Bejeweled." There are at least 10 references to Speak Now, but Swifties simply can't look past this shot of her pressing the elevator buttons. Each button corresponds to each of her albums, in order, including the re-recorded Fearless and Red at numbers 10 and 11 and Midnights at 12. Number 13 is purple, the color of her third album, Speak Now.
The lesson from all this: If you ever go missing, you want a Swiftie to be the lead on your investigative team.
Apple Music
