Taylor Swift is dropping more hints about her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Ahead of its highly anticipated release on Friday, the singer teamed up with Spotify for a special “library installation” at The Grove in Los Angeles, curated specifically for her eleventh studio album.
Page Six stopped by the exhibit on Tuesday, where we got an up-close look at all the Easter eggs hidden within the pop-up display.
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One of the most notable clues was displayed front and center on one side of the exhibit. It was an open book that revealed a few new lyrics within its pages: “One less temptress. One less dagger to sharpen,” and “Even statues crumble if they’re made to wait.”
The surrounding tomes were authored exclusively by “Taylor Swift” and featured the titles of some of the tracks on her upcoming album, like “Down Bad,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “Clara Bow” and “The Bolter.”
Fans have been theorizing that many of the unreleased songs will be about Swift’s failed romance with Joe Alwyn ever since she announced the new project at the 2024 Grammy Awards.
The album title appears to be a savage nod to a boys-only group text the actor had, titled “The Tortured Man Club,” with pals Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott. And now, with the new clues from the exhibit, it’s clear Swift won’t be shying away from revealing the details behind their breakup.
One example, as eagle-eyed Swifties took notice of at the event, was a mailbox displaying 72 boxes. Many analyzed that number to symbolize 72 months, which equates to six years, aka the same amount of time Swift was in a relationship with Alwyn before coupling up with her current beau, Travis Kelce.
Others paid extra attention to one of the sculptures that was set out on the bookshelves, symbolizing Diana of Ephesus, “the goddess of childbirth and fertility and the goddess of the moon.”
“The original statue of Diana crumbled while waiting to be shipped to London in the 6th century due to years of neglect, succumbing to the passage of time and the elements,” a fan tweeted via X, implying that the treatment of the statue could be reminiscent of how Swift felt while dating Alwyn.
Also interesting were the pens on display – only quill and feather, no glitter – which could be a clue into the dark and melancholy themes many of her fans are anticipating with an album about heartbreak. Swift previously spoke about how her songs fall into the three different pen categories.
“Fountain” songs are “modern personal stories, written like poetry, about those moments you remember all too well where you can see, hear and feel everything in screaming detail,” she told Apple Music in 2022, while “quill” tracks feature a “period-piece detail … all old fashioned, like you’re a 19th century poet crafting your next sonnet by candlelight.”
Meanwhile, Swift said the “glitter gel pen” songs are typically happy and upbeat, with “lyrics that make you want to dance, sing, and toss glitter around the room.”
Other easter eggs included globes with push pins marking the state of Florida (the name of one of the new tracks and where Swift performed her first Eras Tour show post-split), notebooks that had “Us” written on the front in black marker (seemingly a nod to her 1999 song “The Story of Us”) and dried up flowers, including lavender (perhaps symbolizing the death of the lovey feelings she expressed about Alwyn in 2022’s “Lavender Haze”).
Swift’s birthday, December 13, was also prominent inside the exhibit, along with April 19 (the date of the new album’s official release), a clock set to 2 p.m. and empty bird cages believed to symbolize freedom.
Swift, 34, and Alwyn, 33, called it quits in April 2023 after dating for six years. Unlike the singer’s new PDA-heavy relationship with Kelce, 34, the former pair were notoriously private, keeping much of their years-long romance away from the public eye.
Although the exact reason behind their split has yet to be revealed, the “Lover” singer previously shared that it had to do with the English actor not wanting to tie the knot.
Swift’s “Tortured Poets Department” pop-up, presented by Spotify, is open to the public Tuesday, April 16 through Thursday, April 18 from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. at The Grove ahead of the album’s release on April 19.
