Taylor Swift shared a video on Friday with a reversed snippet of a new song and scrambled words.- The words hint at titles for six "from the vault" tracks included on "Fearless (Taylor's Version)."
- Although the words are out of order, even when unscrambled, we think we've decoded them.
Taylor Swift is toying with her fans just one week before unveiling her first rerecorded album.
On Friday, the "Folklore" singer shared a cryptic video on Twitter, which shows scrambled words emerging from a golden vault.
"The vault door is about to be as unhinged as you'll think I am after you watch this video," she wrote. "Happy decoding!"
-Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 2, 2021
Swift previously announced that "Fearless (Taylor's Version)," the rerecorded version of her sophomore album, will include six bonus tracks "from the vault." These would've been written before "Fearless" was released in 2008, but left off the original tracklist.
There are 23 words in the video. Fans were quick to realize that two of them unscrambled are "featuring," and four of them unscrambled spell the names of other artists: Maren Morris and Keith Urban.
Another four spell out the name of an existing song: "You All Over Me," featuring Morris, was the first "from the vault" song released on March 26.
"One thing I've been loving about these From The Vault songs is that they've never been heard, so I can experiment, play, and even include some of my favorite artists," Swift said at the time.
The remaining 13 scrambles seem to hint at the other five "from the vault" song titles, with one featuring vocals from Urban.
These words appear to be "bye," "fine," "Mr," "we," "that's," "were," "baby," "when," "happy," "you," "don't," "perfectly," and "bye" again.
Even when unscrambled, however, the words are out of order; the seven that combine to create "You All Over Me featuring Maren Morris" don't appear together in the video.
Although there are several possible combinations that would create viable song titles, we think we've decoded them
"We Were Happy" seems like a good place to start.
An unreleased piano ballad known as "We Were Happy" has been floating around the internet for years. It's unclear when Swift wrote the song, but the demo recording recalls her vocal style as a teenager.
"Bye Bye Baby" is another plausible song title.
In fact, it's already the title of a popular song, originally recorded by The Four Seasons and later rerecorded by the Bay City Rollers; you may recognize the latter from the funeral scene in "Love Actually." It's also the title of a Madonna single from 1993.
Swift's version could nod to any of these. But it's more likely that a punchy, alliterative phrase like "bye bye baby" is attractive to a songwriter.
In fact, Swift has used the phrase in the chorus of an unreleased song known as "One Thing," so it could be the same song renamed.
-Arshia | swiftie since ‘07 (@TheSeagullShirt) April 2, 2021
Fans have speculated that another "from the vault" song is called "Mr. Perfectly Fine." Although Swift has never used the phrase, to fans' current knowledge, it sure seems like something she would write.
-no it's sandy (@tallesttiptaes) April 2, 2021
That leaves four words, which could split in half to become "That's When" and "Don't You."
"That's When" is the title of another Swift demo that has previously leaked online. Both titles already have lyric pages up on Genius, although the one for "Don't You" says that the "lyrics for this song have yet to be released."
The video also included a reversed snippet of a new song
Swift's cryptic vault video is soundtracked by an audio clip that sounds like Swift singing gibberish.
If you reverse the video, it sounds like a snippet of a previously unheard song.
-hourly taylor (@hourlyswift) April 2, 2021
Although the sound quality is still muddled, some possible lyrics can be deciphered: "Hey, I ran into you somewhere / I didn't mean to stare / I hope she's nothing like me / I'm sure she'll make you happy."
"Fearless (Taylor's Version)" will be released on April 9.