Taylor Swift is front and centre this week, with her highly-anticipated 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, set for release on Friday.
The 35-year-old singer broke the news during a recent appearance on boyfriend Travis Kelce’s ‘New Heights’ podcast. And with Swift teasing the track list and cover art in advance, theories have been going viral.
This week, it was a surprising fan theory that caught the headlines, as Swifties found significance in one of the singer’s previous Eras tour concerts.
The concert in question took place in Cardiff in June 2024 – the only city in Swift’s Eras tour to get a one-off show. And now, fans believe, there might be a reason, with theories that the gig was one big Easter egg.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
First, there were the fashion nods, with Swift debuting a brand new outfit during the 1989 era of her show – a green and orange skirt and cropped top combination. And later, in her acoustic set, the singer wore an orange dress, with both looks foreshadowing the very colour scheme of The Life Of A Showgirl.
And a recent report by BBC Wales went on to note the relevance of Cardiff Bay, with Swift dropping multiple Easter eggs that it could link to the upcoming album in some way.
The first clue was a photograph Swift posted as part of her stand-out Eras tour moments, showing her pose in a cleaning cart that she used to enter the Welsh venue, in front of a photograph of Cardiff Bay. And later that year, when she toured in Vancouver, Canada, Swift posted another photograph in the same cart – this time in front of a painting of Cardiff Bay, by Welsh artist Rachel Rasmussen.
“For ages, we thought [the Cardiff Bay pictures] were so random [and that] she must really like Wales,” one dedicated Swiftie, Charlotte Dykes told the outlet. “Only now we realise the Cardiff show… was maybe an Easter egg all along.”
This certainly wouldn’t be surprising, with Swift renowned for leaving ‘Easter eggs’ for fans in her music. And when announcing her upcoming album, the singer even spoke out about the long-standing tradition.
“The art of the Easter egg is that there’s dos and don’ts,” she explained during her podcast appearance. “Like, I’m never going to plant an Easter egg that ties back to my personal life. It’s always going to be towards music – something I’m coming up with, something I have coming up, a plan I have coming together. Something that you don’t know I’m saying for a specific reason that you’ll hear later and you’ll go back and be like, ‘Oh my god.’
“I think the best messages are cryptic ones,” Swift has previously explained of the tradition in a past interview with Entertainment Weekly. “Easter eggs can be left on clothing or jewellery. This is one of my favourite ways to do this because you wear something that foreshadows something else, and people don’t usually find out this one immediately, but they know you’re probably sending a message. They’ll figure it out in time. Lots of examples of this exist through the history of my career.”
We will continue to update this story.
The Life of a Showgirl is available to pre-order now, set for release on 3 October 2025.