Taylor Swift in Lisbon during her Eras Tour in May, 2024. Swift has announced her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl.ANDRE DIAS NOBRE/AFP/Getty Images
Look what you made her do – Taylor Swift has announced her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl.
Swift announced the album on her website shortly after a countdown timer expired at 12:12 a.m. Tuesday. No release date was announced, but her site said vinyl editions of the album would ship before Oct. 13.
Fans have long theorized that Swift’s 12th album would soon arrive. On Monday, Taylor Nation – an official branch of the pop superstar’s marketing team – posted a TikTok slide show of 12 images with the caption “Thinking about when she said ’See you next era…’” Swift is seen wearing orange in every image.
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A special limited vinyl edition of the album will be released in “portofino orange glitter,” according to a preorder page on her site.
Sensing a pattern, eagle-eyed fans noticed that 12 minutes earlier, the popular New Heights podcast posted a tease for Wednesday. The show, hosted by Swift’s boyfriend and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce alongside his brother, former Eagles centre Jason Kelce, posted an orange image on social media with a mysterious silhouette, many believing to be Swift.
Swift also announced early Tuesday that she would appear on the podcast and a teaser video posted about her appearance showed her pulling the album from a briefcase. The actual album artwork, just as it is on her website, is blurred.
The Life of a Showgirl follows last year’s The Tortured Poets Department, announced during the 2024 Grammys and released during her record-breaking tour, which raked in over US$2.2-billion across two years and five continents, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time.
The album is also her first release since Swift regained control over her entire body of work. In May, that pop star said she purchased her catalogue of recordings – originally released through Big Machine Records – from their most recent owner, the private equity firm Shamrock Capital. She did not disclose the amount.
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In recent years, Swift has been rerecording and releasing her first six albums in an attempt to regain control of her music. The project was instigated by Hybe America CEO Scooter Braun’s purchase and sale of her early catalogue and represents Swift’s effort to control her own songs and how they’re used. Previous “Taylor’s Version” releases have been more than conventional re-recordings, arriving with new “from the vault” music, Easter eggs and visuals that deepen understanding of her work.
So far, there have been four re-recorded albums, beginning with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) in 2021. All four have been massive commercial and cultural successes, each one debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Swift’s last rerecording, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), arrived in October 2023, just four months after the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). That was the same year Swift claimed the record for the woman with the most No. 1 albums in history.