Taylor Swift’s nearly two-week-long countdown comes to an end at midnight tonight. There are only hours to go until the world knows officially what Swift is debuting, but it looks like Swift herself may have let exactly what’s coming slip on her Instagram Story. The singer was on the way to a butterfly mural she had commissioned in Tennessee and responded to people speculating the mural wasn’t actually connected to her.
“I went on Tumblr and everyone thinks it’s not—they think it’s fake. They think it’s just like one of their theories,” she started. “Did I put up the butterfly thing? Yeah. Okay, so we’ve commissioned this butterfly mural to be painted on a wall on Nashville and put clues about the song and the new music in the mural. So I’m going to show up. The butterfly mural is painted by Kelsey Montague, who painted one of my favorite murals in New York. And let’s go see what happens.”
Swift saying the mural contains clues about “the song and the new music” seems like a direct confirmation she’s releasing her first new single tonight off of her seventh album. So new music is coming! How much? We’ll know at midnight. In the past, master hype-builder Swift has released one lead single for her album early and dropped the rest of the songs later.
When Swift made it to the mural, she took selfies with fans. This post will be updated if she reveals anything else during her surprise Nashville appearance.
If you look closely at the mural, you might spy some clues yourself. The large painting depicts a cat, a rainbow, and a lot of hearts, so there’s likely some kind of love story, be it romantic or self-love centered: