Taylor Swift will be dropping her Red re-recording on November 19th, and as she did with Fearless (Taylor’s Version), she’s now released a special “vault video” containing a hidden message about the album for her fans.
*presses post*
*cackles maniacally*Level: casually cruel in the name of being honest pic.twitter.com/Tf0ahCMql8
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) August 5, 2021
The code looks to be some kind of word search puzzle, featuring the names of bonus tracks to be included on Red (Taylor’s Version) as well as possible collaborators on the album. Swifties were quick to discover the words “Phoebe Bridgers” hidden in the message, plus “Better Man,” a song Swift originally wrote for Red but later gave to Little Big Town to record. (Swift performed it live at the Bluebird Cafe in 2018 as part of Bluebird, a documentary film tribute to the Nashville venue where she was discovered.)
“Sheeran” (as in Ed Sheeran, who recorded “Everything Has Changed” with Swift on the original Red) and “Stapleton” (as in country singer Chris Stapleton) were also found in the word search, implying that Swift will be collaborating with both for the new album.
Also in the puzzle was “Ronan,” a heart-wrenching track Swift wrote in the Red era that was inspired by four-year-old Ronan Thompson’s fatal battle with cancer. The song was exclusively released as an iTunes standalone single, and Swift only performed it once at the 2012 Stand Up to Cancer telethon, but Billboard reported last week that a re-recorded “Ronan” will be appearing on Red (Taylor’s Version) with permission from Ronan’s mother, Maya Thompson. And lastly, “All Too Well,” “ten,” “minute” and “version” are in the search, confirming that the long-awaited 10-minute version of “All Too Well” will be featured on the re-recording.
There are a few other words here and there in the puzzle (“forever,” “winter,” “message”) that form up the names of new song titles; you can find the full list of bonus tracks below, as cracked by @TSwiftNZ on Twitter. At this rate, if Swift continues to release secret codes for all of her re-recorded LPs, she’ll be having her fans translate the Voynich manuscript by album #6.
Taylor Swift, Red (Taylor’s Version) Bonus Tracks
21. Ronan
22. Better Man
23. Nothing New (ft. Phoebe Bridgers)
24. Babe
25. Message in a Bottle
26. I Bet You Think About Me (ft. Chris Stapleton)
27. Forever Winter
28. Run (ft. Ed Sheeran)
29. The Very First Night
30. All Too Well (Ten Minute Version)
From Rolling Stone US