Taylor Swift’s sneaky Easter eggs we missed ahead of evermore album announcement

Ahead of her 31st birthday this weekend, Taylor Swift gave her fans the best gift ever.

The superstar announced she was dropping her ninth album, evermore, at midnight tonight (December 10).

This will be the second record she has put out in 2020, following the surprise release of folklore on July 24.

In a post on social media, the American singer said: "I'm elated to tell you that my 9th studio album, and folklore's sister record, will be out tonight at midnight eastern. It's called evermore.

"To put it plainly, we just couldn't stop writing songs. To try and put it more poetically, it feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or travel further into the forest of this music. We chose to wander deeper in."

She then shared a look at the album cover and back, with a tracklisting featuring 15 songs and two bonus ones only available on the physical deluxe version.

Fans were flabbergasted over the announcement which seemingly came out of nowhere.

One said: "NOT ME MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS AGAIN AND MISS TAYLOR SWIFT ANNOUNCING SHE'S DROPPING ANOTHER ALBUM, I'M NOT EVEN OVER REPUTATION."

Another tweeted: "OMG OMG OMG WHAT?!"

"Taylor I am too mentally unstable for this... give me a break... I haven't finished digesting folkore yet... but also thank you... guess it's cry time now," a third wrote.

But did this announcement really come out of nowhere?

Of course it didn't, this is Taylor Swift we're talking about, obviously, there were a number of sneaky hints and Easter eggs we all missed.

For example, Miss Swift recently did a photoshoot for EW magazine in some very festive Stella McCartney looks. She posted one on Instagram, writing: "This outfit really screams 'TIS THE DAMN SEASON."

Little did we know, she was dropping hints for what was to come, as 'tis the damn season is the name of the fourth song on evermore.

Similarly, on December 4, Taylor retweeted a Rolling Stone article ranking folklore as the album of the year.

She captioned her tweet, saying: "*cries in cottagecore* *screams in soft lullabies* *throws self to the base of a willow tree by a reflection pool at midnight*."

This was another clue, as Willow is the first song on her new album and the Willow music video is set to premiere tonight.

Fans were also quick to spot that in a tweet Taylor posted just yesterday, she included nine Christmas tree emojis, which they believe signifies her ninth album.

And if that weren't enough, there is, of course, the biggest hint of all, which we saw but misinterpreted.

While recording folklore, Taylor tweeted the iconic line "not a lot going on at the moment".

This, as we all know now, was a lie, she had a lot going on.

She tweeted the very same thing again on November 23, which many thought was in relation to the work she is currently doing, re-recording her first six albums.

Boy were we wrong!

Not only has she been re-recording Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989 and Reputation, she's also made a whole new album.

As Todrick Hall said: "2020 works hard, but Taylor swift works harder."

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