Taylor Swift has announced her 12th studio album during an appearance on boyfriend Travis Kelce’s podcast, revealing its title to be The Life of a Showgirl.
On Monday, Swift posted a countdown on her website, leading to a flurry of fan speculation that a new album could be on its way.
That was then confirmed a short time later when Kelce announced the singer would be featuring as a surprise guest on New Heights, the podcast he co-hosts with his brother, Jason.
In a clip from the podcast video feed, Swift said: “So I wanted to show you something,” and then lifted up a blurred-out album cover. “This is my brand new album, The Life of a Showgirl,” she added.
The full album cover and artwork is expected to be revealed when the full podcast episode drops on Wednesday.
The countdown on Swift’s website ended officially at 12.12am ET on 12 August, with the album then made available for preorder.
No release date has been confirmed yet.
But there were some clues about a timeline for the album’s release in a listing on her website for a special limited vinyl edition of the album in “portofino orange glitter”. The website said this and other vinyl editions would be shipped by 13 October.
The multi Grammy-winning pop star’s last album was The Tortured Poets Department, released in 2024. In the same year, she ended her record-breaking Eras Tour, which sold tickets worth an estimated $2.2bn (£1.6bn) in its nearly two-year run, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time for two years in a row.
The Life of a Showgirl will be Swift’s first album since she bought back the full rights to her first six albums from investment fund Shamrock Capital.
“All of the music I ever made... now belongs... to me,” she wrote in a digital note shared to her website. “My entire life’s work.”
“To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it. To my fans, you know how important this has been to me – so much so that I meticulously re-recorded and released four of my albums, calling them Taylor’s Version,” Swift added.
Her albums were first acquired by music mogul Scooter Braun in 2020 in a deal believed to be more than $300m.
The sale caused major furore at the time as Swift claimed she had begged to buy her own work outright, but was denied the chance.
In August 2019, she announced she would be working to re-record her early albums as a way to gain ownership of her music. So far, she has released Fearless (Taylor's Version), Red (Taylor's Version), Speak Now (Taylor's Version) and 1989 (Taylor's Version), all of which have been commercial successes.
Fans had been expecting Swift to follow these with the remake of Reputation (2017) and her debut album, Taylor Swift (2006). While sharing that she had “already completely” re-recorded the entire debut album, the singer said she hadn’t “even re-recorded a quarter of” Reputation.
“The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it.” She claimed that it’s the “one album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it.”
“So I kept putting it off. There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch.”
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