Taylor Swift previously hinted at keeping The Tortured Poets Department secret for two years before its release — and fans are digging up the evidence.
“What was #taylorswift doing #two ✌🏽 years ago? Promoting her short film #atwtv at tribeca film festival dropping #eastereggs for #ttpd,” one TikTok user wrote on Monday, April 22.
The video began with footage of Swift, 34, announcing her 11th album on stage at the 2024 Grammy Awards in February. She flashed the No. 2 with her fingers as she unveiled her new project. (Fans have since been fixated on the significance of the number and gesture, which popped up several times before the double album’s Friday, April 19, release.)
“Rewinding back to the TTPD clues 2 years ago,” read text overlayed on the clip. “Let’s go back to 2022.”
Swift appeared at Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022 for a screening of her All Too Well short film starring Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink.
“People often greatly underestimate how much I will inconvenience myself to prove a point,” she teased in footage from the panel discussion. When the interviewer joked that the comment should be used as Swift’s next album title, she quipped, “It’s a little long. … We’ll just [use] the initials.”
@yosemitesamity What was #taylorswift doing #two ✌🏽 years ago? Promoting her short film #atwtv at tribeca film festival dropping #eastereggs for #ttpd
The TikTok creator pointed out that the name of Swift’s new record is abbreviated. (Swift revealed on Friday that TTPD is a double album, dropping The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology with a total of 31 songs.)
In another clip from her Tribeca Film Festival appearance, Swift described the process of choosing “the head of each department” involved in creating the All Too Well film. In promoting her latest album, Swift referred to herself as “the chairman” of The Tortured Poets Department.
The final piece in this fan’s puzzle was Swift noting during the panel that she had created a “massive manuscript,” which is also the name of a TTPD variant. “The Manuscript” is the last song on the extended version of the album.
It’s unclear whether Swift left these Easter eggs intentionally, but social media users were quick to cosign the theory in the comments section. “TAYLOR SWIFT I CANNOT WITH YOU 🖤🤍,” one fan wrote, while another added, “She’s so crazy I love it.”
TTPD was largely inspired by Swift’s split from The 1975 singer Matty Healy, who she dated from May to June 2023 after ending her six-year relationship with ex Joe Alwyn. (Swift and Healy were first linked in 2014.) While celebrating the album’s release on Friday, Swift reflected on her “sensational and sorrowful” journey.
“This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up,” she wrote via social media. “There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.”
