It’s happened, y’all. Taylor. Is. Back.
She’s had us hyped up for weeks, and now we know what she had planned for us: a new single, and a new video!
She dropped her new song, “ME!” simultaneously with its corresponding, pastel-filled music video. And it’s Taylor, so of course it was packed full of Easter Eggs. Here’s a few.
We’re here for the callbacks
The video kicks off with a snake (representative of the now-passed Reputation era) slithering across a sidewalk.
Well…that’s actually an Easter egg! It’s a reference to a poem of Taylor’s, called “Why She Disappeared.”
Goodbye, Reputation
The symbol of the Reputation era was a snake.
Now that she’s shed that skin, it’s time to let the snake go and blossom into a butterfly. The new, lighter era is here.
The album might be dropping soon…ish
Clever nola-swifties on Tumblr noticed that there’s some numeric imagery in the video.
If you combine the 7 briefcases and 13 clouds, you get 7/13…July 13th.
Could this be a possible album release date? They noted that julythirteen.com goes to taylorswift.com, but it actually goes to a survey about Taylor Swift.
I filled out the survey so that you don’t have to. Let’s see what happens.
Or it could drop in August
Just Jared noticed that the clock in one scene is set to 8:30.
Could this be the real album release date? Or perhaps the start of her next world tour? Things to think about.
The many Taylors
See the shadows on the ground?
Those are the old Taylors from “Look What You Made Me Do.”
Taylor steps over them and into the daylight, leaving her past behind. Her mind.
Three cool chicks await
While the lyric “And there’s a lot of cool chicks out there” is cleverly paired with this painting of the Dixie Chicks, it raises a question: is a collab coming our way?
Only Taylor and the Dixie Chicks know…and they’re being pretty cryptic about it.
Oh, she resurrected
The pink phone that Taylor playfully bops is the exact same style of phone that she used in her music video for “Look What You Made Me Do.”
The old Taylor may have died, but new, pastel Taylor hath risen.
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Taylor has 3 cats now
A clever fan followed the puzzle pieces Taylor laid out to come to the correct conclusion: the kitten in the video is Taylor’s new cat!
She confirmed it on Twitter hours after the video’s release. Her new cat’s name is Benjamin Button, and she adopted him after meeting him during the video’s production!
And the next track is…
Fans are already dying to know when the next single will drop, so Taylor let us know: the title of the album and the next single are hidden in the video.
Is Lover the single, or the album title?
The whole video is a rainbow
“Duh,” you say, to which I say: look at the image!
The video may be full of color, but Taylor also carefully arranged each scene to correspond to a different color of the rainbow.
(Check out the whole gifset to get a real idea of what I mean!)
Could Taylor be engaged?
This Twitter user seems to think so.
They have a whole thread of evidence, all based on a few pictures of rings, as well as screencaps from the video.
Considering Taylor was proposed to in the video (which she rejected, in favor of a cat), you never know…
Tumblr has things figured out
It looks like “ME!” was a big callback to things that Taylor associates with home.
Based off of this, we can probably expect an album full of nostalgia, and maybe even some throwback collabs with some of Taylor’s favorite childhood artists.
Welcome to New York
The costume Brendon Urie dons in “ME!” is a reference to a song from 1989 .
In “Welcome to New York,” she wrote: “kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats under coats.”
And wouldn’t you know it, there they are!
Her costumes are nods to her past
It looks like “ME!” and “Look What You Made Me Do” are two sides of the same coin.
She rocks past outfits in both — but unlike in LWYMMD, she’s celebrating them, rather than mocking her past selves.
The entire video takes place inside a chrysalis
You know, what butterflies eventually emerge out of.
Much like Taylor emerged from the reputation era and is now entering this new butterfly one, the rainbow at the end of the video broke the chrysalis open.
Curioser and curioser…