Taylor Swift has announced her next album, The Life of a Showgirl.
Swift is known for dropping hints and clues for her fans ahead of announcements and this one was no different. On Monday night, a countdown to 12.12am eastern time on 12 August appeared on her website, transformed to a glittering orange.
On Instagram, Taylor Nation – a branch of Swift’s official marketing team – shared a carousel of 12 images from the Eras Tour, writing in the caption: “Thinking about when she said ‘See you next era … ’”
It was also announced that Swift will appear on her partner Travis Kelce’s podcast New Heights on Wednesday. Eagle-eyed Swifties noticed the silhouette of Swift was taken from her Variety Directors on Directors appearance, which premiered on 12 December 2022. The Variety recording was connected to All Too Well: The Short Film, which was released on 12 November 2021.
At 12.12am Swift’s website briefly crashed, before reappearing with scant details about The Life of a Showgirl. The album has no confirmed release date. Swift’s website states that it will be shipped before 13 October, with the caveat: “**THIS IS NOT THE RELEASE DATE, OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE TO BE ANNOUNCED**.”
The New Heights podcast later shared a clip of Swift’s appearance, in which she opens a briefcase and takes out a blurred vinyl. “This is my brand new album, The Life of a Showgirl,” she said, while Kelce’s brother and co-host Jason screamed.
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The 35-year-old is among the world’s bestselling musicians, selling an estimated 200m records globally and holds the record for most No 1 albums in the US by a female artist in history. Her global Eras tour became the first billion-dollar tour in history, selling 2.4m tickets in a single day, and made more than US$2bn over 21 months. Forbes estimated Swift earned $10m-$13m (£8m-£10m) a night.
Her last album, 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, set a streaming record on Spotify – 300m in one day and 1bn in five – and made her the first artist in history to secure the top 14 spots on the Billboard Hot 100.
In May, Swift bought back the master recordings to her first six albums, giving her control over her entire catalogue for the first time. The singer signed with her first label, Big Machine, in 2005, at the age of 15, giving them the rights to her master recordings. In 2019, label head Scott Borchetta sold those six albums to music executive Scooter Braun, who sold them to the private equity firm Shamrock Capital for a reported $300m.
To regain control over her catalogue after the sale to Braun – and to devalue his investment – Swift embarked on a project to rerecord all six albums, rebranding each one as “(Taylor’s Version)” and adding “From the Vault” tracks from the original songwriting sessions that hadn’t made it on to the original albums.
“I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away,” she wrote in a letter to fans in May, after buying her catalogue back from Shamrock Capital. “But that’s all in the past now. All of the music I’ve ever made … now belongs … to me.”
Reputation and Swift’s self-titled debut album, from 2006, are the only albums not to be rerecorded, with fans speculating as to their possible release dates for years.
Despite the project now being essentially redundant, it is likely both will have a Taylor’s Version released anyway as Swift remains one of the biggest and most lucrative musical acts in the history of music.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com ’
