As the globe tilts on its axis with the massive force of Taylor Swift’s latest album release, some music critics have voiced concerns about the quality of her tracks. They’ve labeled the songs as ‘corny’, ‘dull’, and ‘chafing’.

However, for numerous ‘Swifties’, these critiques miss the essence entirely. At this moment, the excitement of critically analyzing her music takes a backseat to the well-known chase to solve the Great Taylor Swift Easter Egg Hunt.

Swift is renowned for embedding her albums and videos with ‘Easter eggs’ – hidden clues, cryptic messages, and nuanced (or blatantly obvious) references – for fans to uncover.

These musical hints can disclose the singer’s guarded thoughts, things Swift, who is known for being careful and deliberate in her public statements, might want to express but wouldn’t say outright.

Swifties comb through lyrics, sometimes finding references from years before the song is released, and debate their significance online.

This time, the billionaire’s 12th studio album, The Life Of A Showgirl, is reportedly rich with hidden treasures, according to Swiftologists who have been poring over the lyrics of its twelve tracks since its recent release.

Themes deciphered by the hunters include the 35-year-old’s future dreams with her football star fiancé, Travis Kelce, and her rumored disputes with singer Charli XCX and reality TV figure Kim Kardashian.

Here, it is claimed, are some of the most notable eggs to have been discovered so far…

The superstar, 35, dropped her already critically acclaimed pop album on October 3

The album was released just over a month after Swift, 35, first announced it

Lover Boy

Predictably, Swift’s relationship with her American football star fiance, Travis Kelce, is everywhere – tackled in no fewer than five of the songs.

In the first track, The Fate Of Ophelia, Swift sings: ‘If you never called me, I might have drowned in melancholy,’ and, ‘I heard you calling on the megaphone.’

Swift fans may not get the reference to Shakespeare’s most famous drowning victim (Ophelia perishes in Hamlet) but they do know that it was Kelce who ‘called’ out for her in his podcast saying that he’d love to meet her, which led to their first introduction in 2023. 

‘You dug me out of my grave and saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia,’ she tells him. Fans have also noted that the cover of Taylor’s album, that depicts the singer-songwriter half submerged in water, looks like a nod to Sir John Everett Millais’s celebrated painting of Ophelia hanging in Tate Britain.

In the song Opalite, Swift sings: ‘You were dancing through the lightning strikes, sleepless in the onyx night.’ 

Kelce’s October birthstone is opal, sharp-eyed Swifties have pointed out.

Some of the other Kelce references are rather less innocent. 

The sexual innuendo-laden song Wood appears to be about her beau’s manhood, which apparently played a not-inconsiderable part in winning over his fiancee.

The lyrics go, ‘The curse on me was broken by your magic wand’, which could mean all manner of things… including even Kelce’s memorable one-time appearance on Swift’s Eras Tour wearing a magician’s outfit.

Swift (left) seemingly made references to her fiancé Travis Kelce (right), 35, in some of the tracks

Strained Friendships

New song Ruin The Friendship has a pointed title. But which friendship does she really mean?

Before the album was released, many fans were convinced it was a reference to actress Blake Lively, with whom Swift was a close friend for years and whose children (to whom Swift is godmother) have featured in previous songs. 

That relationship, however, was allegedly severely damaged when the singer was dragged into Liveley’s ongoing and costly legal battle with Justin Baldoni, her director and co-star in the film It Ends With Us. 

Swift was sub-poenaed as a witness by Baldoni’s lawyers, which reportedly incensed her as she felt Lively had ‘betrayed’ and ‘exploited’ her.

But some Swift fans question this interpretation, pointing out that the lyrics actually refer to a friend who Taylor wished had turned into her lover.

Blake Lively? No, they counter, the song from the new album that is really about Lively is actually CANCELLED!

Swift sings: ‘It’s a good thing I like my friends cancelled, I liked them cooked in Gucci and in scandal.’ Lively was named the face of Gucci’s new fragrance, Gucci Premiere, in 2012.

There are several clues that Blake Lively (L, pictured in 2023) was the inspiration behind Swift’s (R) new song Cancelled! amid the ongoing It Ends With Us drama 

Famous Feuds

The British singer-songwriter Charli XCX (Charlotte Emma Aitchison) was once a friend of Swift but wrote a song about her, Sympathy Is A Knife, on her 2024 album Brat that many perceived as an attack.

Charli sang about how she felt insecure when Swift was in a brief relationship with Matty Healy, singer in the pop band The 1975, while Charli was dating the 1975’s drummer, George Daniel.

Fans say Swift has now fired back in the song Actually Romantic, singing: ‘I heard you call me ‘boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave’ and compares Charli (who has a history of drug-taking) to ‘a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse.’ 

Swift appears to be settling other scores in the song Father Figure but this time with music moguls Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun. 

The former, the chief executive of her old record company, Big Machine Records, sold the label – including the original recordings of her first six albums – to producer Scooter Braun in 2019.

Swift accused Braun of ‘incessant, manipulative bullying’ in an open letter and criticised both men for ‘controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them’.

She now sings: ‘I’ll be your father figure, I drink that brown liquor, I can make deals with the devil because my d***’s bigger’ and ‘This love is pure profit, Just step into my office, I dry your tears with my sleeve, Leave it with me, I protect the family.’

Some fans believe she is singing about both men, others insist it is really Borchetta in her sights. Either way, it’s damning stuff.

Fans say Swift (right) has fired back at Charlie XCX (left) in the song Actually Romantic

Cutting the Kardashians

As FAR as some easter egg hunters are concerned, the eighth song on Swift’s album, Wi$h Li$t, is most noteworthy as a jab at the wildly successful reality TV family the Kardashians – and how their values are not Swift’s.

While she sings about dreaming of simple pleasures such as a ‘driveway with a basketball hoop’, she accepts that others ‘want that yacht life, under chopper blades, They want those bright lights and Balenci[aga] shades, And a fat a** with a baby face, They want it all’.

She doesn’t mention any names but Swifties insist the line about a ‘fat a** with a baby face’ screams Kim Kardashian, the family’s biggest star.

She and Swift have been sniping at each other since 2016 when her then-husband, rapper Kanye West, released a song that jabbed at Swift.

Kardashian insisted Swift had known and approved of West’s plans, releasing a phone conversation between the two music stars that – to Swift’s fury – had been heavily edited.

Under the Spotlight

Being a superstar isn’t all it’s cut out to be, suggests Swift.

And she provides the clearest evidence of this in her song, Elizabeth Taylor, in which she is directly comparing herself to the Hollywood superstar who also had an intensely-scrutinised love life. ‘Oftentimes it doesn’t feel so glamorous to be me,’ moans Swift. ‘All the right guys promised they’d stay.

Under bright lights, they withered away but you bloom.’ She’s actually talking to

Travis Kelce here, not Taylor, Swifties insist.

And while Liz Taylor was notorious for a life of excess and endless failed romances, Swift sees a very different existence with Kelce.

The lines ‘I just want you, Have a couple kids, Got the whole block looking like you, We tell the world to leave us the f*** alone, and they do,’ provides a glimpse, say the easter egg hunters, of how she wants a future out of the limelight.