"The Life of a Showgirl" will be Swift's 12th studio album. It follows Swift's 11th studio album, "The Tortured Poets Department," which was released on April 19, 2024. That album came with an extra surprise for fans when Swift dropped an additional 15 songs at 2 a.m. that same day.

The news was preceded, in typical TAS fashion, by a few big hints: First came a post from Taylor Nation, the official Instagram account of Swift’s management team, with a 12-image carousel of the singer in orange ensembles, to the sweet strains of 2020’s “August.” The caption? “Thinking about when she said ‘See you next era…’”