Taylor Swift’s Easter Eggs in ‘Fearless’ Announcement Keeping Her Fans Busy

Just months after dropping her latest albums, Folklore and Evermore, Taylor Swift announced Thursday that the first of her re-recordings, Fearless: Taylor’s Version, will drop “soon” and will be eligible for the Grammys After making the announcement during an appearance on Good Morning America, Swift took to social media to share the news, with eagle-eyed Swifties immediately taking note of a major Easter egg hidden in the message.

Within the announcement, which among other things confirmed six new songs “from the vault” would be included on the album, were random capitalized letters. Longtime Swifties know that this is a callback to her earlier days when she used to capitalize letters in lyric booklets to reveal a hidden message, sometimes revealing the inspiration of the song itself. Given that Swift is revisiting her second album, released in 2008, with the rerecording, it came as little surprise that she was also revisiting some of her earlier antics, and fans were quick to grab a pen and paper to decipher the message.

“when i think bAck on the fearless album and all that you turned it into, a completely involuntary smile creeps across my face… i am ecstatic that i’ll get to exPerience a bit of that feeling with you in the very near future…[Fearless] was the diaRy of the adventures and explorations of a teenage girl who was learning tiny lessons with every new crack in the facade of the faIrytale ending she’d been shown in the movies,” Swift wrote in part, revealing the first of the hidden message. “we’ve spoken a lot about why i’m remaking my first six albums, but the way i’ve chosen to do this will hopefulLy help illuminate where i’m coming from….(don’t want too many breakup songs, don’t want too maNy down-tempo songs, can’t fit that many songs on a physical cd)…. those reasons seem unnecessary now. i’ve decIded i want you to have the whole story, see the entire vivid picture… written betweeN the ages of 16 and 18, these were the ones it killed me to leave behind…. this process has been more fulfilling and emoTional than i could’ve ever imagined… i Hope you’ll like this first outing as much as i liked traveling back in time to recreate it.”

At first glance, the letters, APRILNINTH, seem like a jumbled mess, but given a closer look, the letters spell out “APRIL NINTH.” As many believe, this is the likely release date for Fearless: Taylor’s Version. Adding more emphasis to that theory is the fact that numerically, April 9 is 4/9. Four plus nine equals 13, Swift’s lucky number. Swift in the past has released albums on dates that add up to 13, such as the Aug. 23, 2019 release of Lover (8+2+3 = 13) and the July 24, 2020 release of Folklore (7+2+4 = 13), making it seem almost guaranteed that fans will be listening to Fearless on April 9.

Fearless: Taylor’s Version will include a total of 26 songs, the first of which, “Love Story,” was released Thursday at midnight. The album will mark the first of Swift’s re-recordings, the singer having announced in August 2019 plans to re-record her first five albums – her debut album, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, and 1989 – amid her ongoing music battle with Scooter Braun, whose company Ithaca Holdings purchased Big Machine Label Group for a reported $300 million, a situation Swift called her “worst-case scenario.” Swift teased later in 2020 that she had begun rerecording her earlier albums. It is unclear when the other re-recordings will be released.