Socials are ablaze with orange hearts on fire, cinemas are selling out special watch parties and the hype has been off the charts. Taylor Swift's next Era is here.
The global megastar has been releasing music since she was 16-years-old. In the 19 years since, she has consistently released cryptic messages, easter eggs and clues within her music to tell us the story of who she is as an artist.
With the release of The Life of a Showgirl on 3 October, BBC Bitesize has been speaking to English Literature and Swift expert Dr Clio Doyle about some of the classic literature tricks that run through Taylor’s albums, and what they suggest about what you should look out for from studio album number 12.
Meet Dr Clio Doyle: Taylor Swift and English Literature expert
Dr Doyle is a lecturer in Early Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London and knows a thing or (twenty) two about Taylor.
They are currently writing a new book called From the Vault: Studies in Taylor Swift and English Literature.
Title, track list, and cover: What clues have been revealed?
The most significant part of the album cover for Dr Clio is the fact that Taylor "is in water, which feels like a pretty clear reference to the first track, The Fate of Ophelia, as Ophelia is a character from Shakespeare's Hamlet who drowns."
Ophelia is woman who is exploited by the men around her and wants a relationship with Hamlet, who later rejects her, after this she decides to end her life.
Now listening to the song, we know that she may be thanking her now fiancé for helping her avoid parts of a life like Ophelia, with lines like "I might’ve drowned in the melancholy".
Dr Clio also points out that in this song Swift quotes almost exactly from the play Hamlet in her lines: "'Tis locked inside my memory / And only you possess the key.”
In Act I Scene 3 of Shakespeare's play, Clio says "Ophelia tells her brother Laertes "’Tis in my memory locked, / And you yourself shall keep the key of it." This is an almost exact quotation from the play".
Is fame a feature again?
Dr Clio says: “In her last album (The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology), she used a song called Clara Bow to reflect on the continuity of how young women have been led into fame and then replaced by other people in the public eye over the last few generations, connecting her career to that of the silent film star Clara Bow.”
They explain that whilst Taylor was writing Life of a Showgirl “she was facing greater fame than she ever had before, during the Eras Tour".
"She does reflect in passing on the ups and downs of show business in Elizabeth Taylor. In the song Father Figure she seems to offer a portrait the kind of person she has met and interacted with in show business. Fame is a backdrop to everything she sings about in the album," Dr Clio adds.
Another song Dr Clio says reflects on fame perhaps most clearly is CANCELLED! in which Taylor Swift talks about identifying with others who have suffered from bad press and public opinion.
In her recent engagement announcement Taylor referred to herself as ‘the English teacher.’ Do you expect this ‘role’ to play a part in the upcoming album?
Dr Clio says: “Describing herself as an English teacher is certainly a nod to the way people see her, as someone who cares a lot about the written word!”
Looking at the track list, Dr Clio explains: “She seems to be drawing on a variety of influences in this album, from Shakespeare to Elizabeth Taylor.”
After listening to the album, the two main themes appear to be falling in love and dealing with fame, and the references Dr Clio mentions really set up the focus for the rest of the record.
Is her recently announced engagement a key part of the album?
“Taylor doesn't always write about exactly what's going on in her life at the moment,” Dr Clio says. They explain, “but even when her songs do cross over very clearly with her personal life, they are deliberately crafted works that take creative licenses and don't necessarily reproduce her life exactly."
Dr Clio says they were surprised "by how explicit some of the songs are". But adds that, as expected, overall these songs focus more on Taylor Swift's emotional state, rather than on giving specific details about her engagement and relationships.
Dr Clio also explains that “on occasion she invents new characters to sing as or writes songs inspired by other people or artworks that she has engaged with. So I wouldn't assume that the album is straightforwardly about her life.”
Listen carefully to the tracks Father Figure and Ruin the Friendship - fans will definitely be trying to figure out who these songs are about, if anyone, and what they tell us about Taylor's relationship with fame and the music industry in contrast to her high school days in Tennessee.
What is lore and why is it important in Swift’s work?
Dr Clio says: “On the most basic level, the idea that Swift's work has lore means that, even though it's very possible to enjoy Swift's music without specialised knowledge, many The fandom of the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift have built up an extensive bank of information about Swift's life and work that we draw on in order to understand and enjoy her songs even more than we would otherwise.”
“This often means that we recognise the connections Swift draws between her songs when she uses particular imagery, word choice, and musical cues or when she tells particular stories.”
Academically, Dr Clio says: “Lore is not really a word I tend to use very much in my study of Swift”, as “it's not really a term from literary study. I come from an English literature background, I would probably use a combination of different terms to refer to these various things: Close reading, context, and biography.”
Dr Clio explains that Taylor’s songs “often return to the same stories with a different perspective.”
One example they cite is All Too Well (10 minute version), which was featured in her Red (Taylor’s Version) album in 2021. It tells a story about her 21st birthday party but this birthday party has been sung about before. In the song The Moment I Knew, which was featured in her Red Deluxe Edition album in 2012.
Dr Clio adds: “Knowing the lore in this case would mean understanding that these songs are referring back to a particular party that Swift had already given her fans a description of.”
In this latest record, Dr Clio says there are many connections to make with past songs. "One of my favorites is that we get a reference in Ruin the Friendship to someone called Abigail, who is possibly the same Abigail as in the song Fifteen."
The lore continues.
Can you think of any other artists who have so much lore in their work?
Dr Clio says: “Many, many writers and artists in other mediums draw connections between different pieces of their work or return to the same stories or ideas in different works. In fact, if you pick up a scholarly edition of a writer's works - the Arden editions of Shakespeare, for example - they will often contain extensive footnotes explaining that the writer has used a particular phrase or metaphor before, or that they borrowed something from a different writer.”
Dr Clio continues: “But perhaps one of the things that makes Swift especially interesting is that she has such a large community of fans who respond to her art in real time and discuss and debate particular moments in which she seems, for example, to be adding to or altering the story told in a past song. So in a way we Swifties are carrying all those footnotes around in our heads!”
Published in October 2025
