It's been almost a year and a half since Taylor Swift released her record-breaking, iconic, legendary sixth album, Reputation, and it's fair to say her stans are ready for new music.
Until Reputation, Taylor's album cycle was predictable. She'd release the first single of a new era in the summer, and the album would come the following October or November.
The cycle would repeat itself every two years: Taylor Swift was released in 2006, Fearless in 2008, Speak Now in 2010, Red in 2012, and 1989 in 2014.
But that all changed with Taylor's sixth album. Following a very public and very messy fight with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West — as well as her longstanding feud with Katy Perry — Taylor broke her own tradition, disappearing from public life almost entirely and releasing Reputation a whole year later than predicted.
Now that the cycle has been broken, we're totally unable to predict when Taylor will release new music, and several clues point to the possibility that it'll be coming earlier than expected.
In May, Perez Hilton claimed Taylor herself told him her seventh album would be released before her thirtieth birthday in December this year. At the American Music Awards last October, Taylor announced to the world that while she loved Reputation, she was "even more excited" about the next chapter, suggesting she was already moving onto the next era.
She was also spotted entering and leaving a recording studio in New York in July last year, and again as recently as January.
So when Taylor started posting cryptic photos on Instagram a whole six months before a new lead single usually drops, fans immediately descended into a theorising frenzy.
Here are all the ways fans have been theorising about TS7, from release dates to album themes...
1. First of all, there's speculation that the photos Taylor has been posting over the last few days are counting down to some kind of announcement or important release date.
On Sunday, she posted this photo of seven palm trees, and captioned it with seven palm tree emojis.
On its own, fans assumed this was confirmation Taylor would be attending the Oscars later that evening. But when she didn't show up — instead simply attending after parties and skipping the red carpet entirely — they began to speculate further about the photo's meaning.
The general consensus was that the seven trees were a reference to Taylor's upcoming seventh album. Some even went so far as to theorise that the four on the left represented her older country albums, the two on the right represented her pop albums (1989 and Reputation), and the tree in the centre symbolises TS7, which will fall somewhere between the two.
Then she posted this pre-Oscars party photo of herself sitting on the sixth step of a staircase.
And a third picture — posted the following day — showed Taylor photographed through one of five holes in a fence.
So, the theory goes, Taylor is using her uncharacteristically frequent Instagram posts to subtly count down to an important announcement, which fans expect to happen some time this weekend.
Whether you believe the countdown theory or not, it's unquestionable that all these photos fit a similar aesthetic — one which totally differs from the photos posted during her Reputation era. Ever since Red, Taylor has used Instagram to tease her new albums, so it's not unrealistic to assume her suddenly frequent posting schedule and change in aesthetic are an indication that something new is coming soon.
2. All of this actually validates theories fans have had for a while about Taylor's seventh album.
Back in October — just a few days after the "next chapter" comment at the AMAs — Taylor posted a photo of herself playing Scrabble with her mom.
The caption read "let the games BEGIN", which could easily be written off as a reference to the first song on Reputation.
But some Swifties believed it to be an indication that the "next chapter" was just around the corner, and we should start looking for clues. Then, when Taylor posted the third photo of the supposed countdown, she was wearing the same shirt as in the Scrabble photo. The shirt features a flower that, according to one Twitter user, blooms in April. Keep that in mind...
3. There have also been a lot of theories about important dates throughout this year based on the mysterious stamps that appear on the 13th day of only a few months in Taylor's official 2019 calendar.
It's common knowledge that the number 13 holds huge significance for Taylor, so it's highly unlikely that the stamps appearing on these specific months are a coincidence. If the "countdown" finishes in early March, it makes sense that whatever happens could be followed by something big in April — maybe even an album release date.
Oh, and there's a flower marking the second day in March. That just so happens to be when the "countdown" is due to end.
4. The palm tree photo has brought about its very own theory that fans think Taylor hinted at throughout the the entirety of the Reputation era.
When Reputation dropped, Taylor also released two deluxe editions of the album in the form of magazines which included handwritten lyrics, exclusive poems, and photoshoots. In some of the photos from the magazines, Taylor is seen wearing a jacket emblazoned with images of palm trees.
It turns out, if you look closely, palm trees showed up a lot during the Reputation era. They're in the videos for both "End Game" and "Delicate", showed up in a couple of Taylor's outfits, and ~seven~ of them featured on one of the posters sold during the Reputation tour.
One fan went so far as to look up the significance of the tree, and it turns out they symbolise "triumph, peace, and eternal life".
During one of Taylor's rare Rep era red carpet appearances at the Billboard Music Awards, eagle-eyed fans noticed a word stitched into her custom Versace gown — "eternal".
At the time, fans began to theorise that it was a reference to new music, even going so far as to speculate that her seventh album would be called Eternal. The significance of the palm trees may not be such a reach after all...
5. Another theory goes way back to something fans speculated about before Reputation was even released, all because of the "Look What You Made Me Do" video.
You may remember that the end of the "LWYMMD" video featured a lineup of fourteen Taylors past and present, and behind them — standing on the sawed-off wing of a jet plane — was a Taylor we'd never seen before.
It was theorised that this Taylor represented the new, real Taylor, who was standing in the background watching her other personas, ready to take centre stage with Reputation.
Well, if you brighten the image, the tail of the plane at the end of the video reads "TS6". This could easily just be a reference to Reputation, but some fans have another theory.
The mysterious, never-seen-before Taylor of the video saws off the plane's wings and literally paints it with the word "reputation", which leads some people to believe there was a different album in the works before all the Kimye drama. They think that, now Reputation has been released and the world has moved on from the feud, the ~original~ album represented by the plane is just around the corner.
And what's all over the outfit the mysterious plane Taylor is wearing? Palm trees.
"The Taylor on the wing is TS7 Taylor," one Twitter user wrote. "She addressed her reputation, took control of her narrative and is ready for the Next Chapter in her life."
We know the palm tree look is significant, because Taylor stepped out in an outfit made of the same material on World Snake Day last year — which just so happened to be the day before she was papped leaving that recording studio.
6. There's been some unusual activity on Taylor's YouTube channel, leading fans to believe there's something hidden there waiting to be released.
When you search Taylor's username on YouTube, an overview shows that there are 245 videos uploaded to the channel. But when you count them manually, only 243 appear.
This suggests that there are two videos on the channel that aren't available for public viewing. While they ~could~ just be old videos that have been set to private, some Swifties have speculated that there's a brand new announcement, music video, or something else entirely just waiting to be made public.
Oh, and Taylor's longtime music video collaborator Joseph Kahn is also tweeting some pretty mysterious things about an upcoming project. Make of that what you will.
While it's super fun to theorise, it's fair to say that us Taylor Swift stans don't have a great track record when it comes to interpreting hints about her new albums.
But I guess we'll just have to wait and see what TS7 brings.
