NEW YORK (AP) — Look what you made her do — Taylor Swift has announced her 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Swift revealed her upcoming album on her website right after a countdown clock ended at 12:12 a.m. on Tuesday. Although she did not specify a release date, her website indicated that vinyl versions of the album would be shipped out before October 13.
Fans have speculated for some time that Swift’s 12th album was on the horizon. On Monday, Taylor Nation, which is an official part of the pop star’s marketing team, shared a TikTok slideshow featuring 12 pictures with the caption “Thinking about when she said ‘See you next era…'” In the slideshow, Swift is wearing orange in each photo.
The album will have a special limited vinyl version that comes in “Portofino orange glitter,” as detailed on a pre-order page. Additionally, a special cassette version is available for pre-order.
Picking up on the clues, attentive fans observed that 12 minutes earlier, the popular “New Heights” podcast hinted at something for Wednesday. The show, hosted by Swift’s boyfriend and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce along with his brother, former Eagles center Jason Kelce, shared an orange-colored image on social media featuring an enigmatic silhouette, which many fans think resembles Swift.
The podcast declared early Tuesday that Swift would be featured on “New Heights,” and a teaser video released about her appearance showed her retrieving the album from a briefcase. The album’s cover art is blurred, just as it appears on her website.
“The Life of a Showgirl” follows the previous year’s album “The Tortured Poets Department,” which was announced during the 2024 Grammys and launched during her record-breaking tour. That tour earned over $2.2 billion over two years and five continents, becoming the highest-grossing tour in history.
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 catalog 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.
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 catalog 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 rerecorded 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.
