Swifties won big on GRAMMY night, with Taylor Swift announcing her 11th studio album. After the 34-year-old old singer won the Best Pop Vocal Album award for Midnights, she delighted her fans by revealing that her next album, The Tortured Poets Department, will be available Apr. 19.
After her acceptance speech, the singer took to Instagram to share the cover art for the album. The black-and-white pic shows Swift lying on a bed, surrounded by pillows.
The second slide of the post featured a handwritten page of what appeared to be lyrics, which read, “And so I enter into evidence / My tarnished coat of arms / My muses, acquired like bruises / My talismans and charms / The tick, tick, tick of love bombs / My veins of pitch black ink.”
At the bottom of the page, Swift wrote, “All’s fair in love and poetry – sincerely, The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department.”
The announcement was a shock to fans, as many assumed that Swift’s next release would Reputation (Taylor’s Version). Swift has both Reputation her self-titled debut left in her ongoing rerecording project.
Swift’s fans have been eagerly awaiting an announcement regarding Reputation, which made waves with its original 2017 release. At the time, it served as a scathing response to the star’s highly publicized falling out with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, led by the fiery single, “Look What You Made Me Do.” The album also featured several hits and fan-favorites, including “…Ready for It?,” “Getaway Car,” and “Don’t Blame Me.”
One of her Reputation era love songs — “End Game” featuring Ed Sheeran and Future — has also seen a recent surge in popularity among Swift fans, as they’ve taken to affectionately speculating that Swift has now found her relationship “End Game” in current boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce.
It was famously at the 2016 GRAMMYs when Swift, while accepting the Album of the Year trophy for 1989, seemed to reference West name dropping her in his single, “Famous.” In the song, West rapped, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.”
“As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the GRAMMYs twice, I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame,” Swift pointedly said in her acceptance speech at the time. “But if you just focus on the work and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you’re going, you will know it was you and the people who love you who put you there, and that will be the greatest feeling in the world.”
Swift claimed she never consented to West’s lyric in reference to her, though the rapper and his then-wife, Kardashian, insisted the singer signed off on the line. Kardashian later went so far as to release an edited video of a phone call between the artists that seemed to show the moment Swift OK’d the line. However, when the full clip of the call was later dug up by Swifties, it became evident that the pop star had only been told about a different lyric.
In the unedited video, after West tells Swift to “brace herself” to hear his proposed line, Swift asks, “Is it gonna be mean?”
“No, I don’t think it’s mean,” West replies.
He then shares the lyric, rapping, “I feel like Taylor Swift might owe me sex,” with Swift laughing in response and saying, “That’s not mean.”
At no point in the video is the line “I made that b**ch famous” discussed, and in fact, Swift expresses her worry that West was going to call her a “b**ch” in the song.
“It doesn’t feel mean,” she says again of the line, “but like, oh my god, the build-up you gave it. I thought it was gonna be like, ‘That stupid, dumb b**ch,’ like, but it’s not.”
Recently, Swift called the incident a “fully manufactured frame job” in an interview with Time.
“[It was] an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” she recalled in her 2023 Person of the Year feature. “Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me… I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life.”
She continued, “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before,” Taylor she said of the public feud. “I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
Though Swift has made no public statement about her intent to release Reputation (Taylor’s Version), eagle-eyed fans thought they noticed several subtle hints in recent months.
Among those was Swift’s wardrobe, which has been comprised almost entirely of green, black and brown clothing during her public outings in recent months — particularly during her visits to famed New York City recording studio, Electric Lady.
Earlier this month, she was photographed in what appeared to be a Reputation-coded outfit that included sneakers from Beyoncé‘s Ivy Park line and a fleece zip-up by Adidas. Coincidentally, (or perhaps not) Adidas is the brand that dropped West in 2022 for his anti-Semitic comments.
The ongoing color scheme appeared to serve as an homage to the snake imagery she previously used to promote her 2017 studio album, when she took a similarly tight-lipped approach to its release.
“There will be no further explanation. There will just be Reputation,” was the tagline she coined at the time.
Swift’s last rerelease, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), came out in October and became her biggest album sales debut ever. The feat made her the first ever artist to score six No. 1 album debuts with over 1 million units sold.
Now, with her Midnights chapter and the 2024 GRAMMY Awards in the rear view, Swift’s focus is on resuming her Eras Tour in Tokyo, Japan, on Feb. 7. She’ll play a four-night stint at the Tokyo Dome before, presumably, making the quick trip back to the United States to cheer for Kelce in the upcoming Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11.
After Japan, Swift is set to perform in Australia, Singapore, France, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Austria.
In the fall, she’ll return to North America for shows in Miami, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Toronto, and Vancouver.
“Taylor and Travis are doing really well,” a source recently told ET. “They try to spend as much time as they can together. Travis also makes it a point to make sure Taylor feels as comfortable as possible at his home. They have discussed their future as a couple and are excited at the idea of it.”
The 2024 GRAMMY Awards aired on Sunday, Feb. 4, at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount+ from Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Follow along at ETonline.com for full coverage from music’s biggest night, including performances, GRAMMY winners and more.
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