There is no world in which a Swiftie needs to be reminded to pre-save Taylor Swift’s upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department, which will release on Friday, April 19.
But just in case, Swift, 34, posted a message on Spotify to ensure fans are ready for her 11th studio album.
“Hey Spotify, happy release week of The Tortured Poets Department album,” Swift begins in the black-and-white video. “Make sure to preserve the album and keep checking back for more updates from the department.”
Swift is shown behind her typewriter — the same one she used to tease lyrics from the album last week. On April 8, the day millions of Americans were treated to a solar eclipse, that typewriter wrote, “Crowd goes wild at her fingertips/Half moonshine, Full eclipse,” sending fans into a frenzy.
She followed that up on Sunday, April 14, with a quote on an Instagram post from Target promoting the phantom clear vinyl edition of her album.
“I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all,” Swift wrote in the comments.
It turns out, Swift has been dropping hints about her upcoming album for a while, from a TIME headline in December that called her “The Poet Laureate of Pop Culture” to a photo with friend Jack Antonoff in which the two held up exactly 11 fingers, a nod to her 11th album.
With Swift teasing more “updates from the department” in her most recent video, it’s possible we’ll get more clues about the album in the four days before its release. Better yet, she may have already dropped those clues and is just waiting for eagle-eyed Swifties to pick up on them.
“I’m trying to be a detective to see if there’s any eggs here but it [seems] straightforward,” one Swift fan commented on X.
Another added, “She really is a marketing genius she knows that less is more she just gives us these little tidbits and it drives us crazy.”
Swift first announced the album at the 2024 Grammys, fittingly dressed in a white gown with black gloves to match the album’s aesthetic.
She later called the album “a lifeline,” saying at a concert in Australia that she needed The Tortured Poets Department.
“It sort of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through life and I’ve never had an album where I’ve needed songwriting more than I needed it on Tortured Poets,” she said.
