Taylor Swift has announced her 12th studio album, The Life Of A Showgirl, following a whirlwind 24 hours of speculation from fans.
Hints began dropping on Monday morning, when the singer’s marketing team posted a carousel of 12 images on social media with the caption: “Thinking about when she said ‘See you next era…’”
Hours later, Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce revealed on his and his brother Jason’s New Heights podcast that the pop star would be joining them as a guest.
Around the same time, her official website launched a countdown to 00:12 ET (05:12 BST), fuelling further excitement.
Later, a brief clip from the New Heights podcast was posted on Instagram and showed Swift pulling a copy of the album from a briefcase with the cover blurred.
Swift’s last record, The Tortured Poets Department, smashed Spotify’s record for the most-streamed album in a single day upon its release last year.
Her website said physical copies of the album, which is available for pre-order, would be sent out by October 13.
The album is the first since Swift announced in May she had regained control over her back catalogue and follows 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department.
In the statement on her website, the 35-year-old also revealed that she had purchased the rights to all of her concert films, music videos, album art and photography, as well as unreleased songs.
Swift said the process of gaining ownership of her work was “honest, fair, and respectful” and said she was “endlessly thankful” to private equity firm Shamrock Capital, which offered her the deal.
In a post on LinkedIn, Shamrock Capital said at the time: “We are thrilled with this outcome and are so happy for Taylor.”
The value of the deal has not been disclosed.
The singer announced plans to re-record all her songs in 2019 following a dispute with retired talent manager Scooter Braun after he acquired the recordings of her first six studio albums when he bought her former label.
Though the masters changed hands again after a deal with Shamrock Capital, Swift continued with a bid to regain ownership of the music by creating new versions of the songs.
She has been re-recording of all of her albums, re-releasing them as “Taylor’s Version”.
To date Swift has released new versions of her previous albums Fearless (2008), Red (2012), Speak Now (2010) and 1989 (2014), with Reputation and her self-titled debut yet to be re-released as Taylor’s Versions.
Swift ended her billion-dollar, record-breaking Eras Tour in December, having started the mammoth string of dates in March 2023.
Last summer, she made history as the first solo artist to perform at London’s Wembley Stadium eight times on a single tour.
