Robin

Taylor released her tenth studio album, Midnights, on October 21, 2022, to widespread commercial and critical success, becoming the biggest album of the year. Midnights was eventually nominated for six Grammy Awards at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards on February 4, 2024. The morning of the ceremony, Taylor teased the release of an album by changing her profile picture across all social media platforms to a black and white version of the already existing cover artwork of Midnights. This led to her fans speculating online that she was preparing to release reputation (Taylor’s Version), a forthcoming re-recording of her sixth studio album, reputation (2017). Taylor’s website also appeared to have crashed, replaced with the non-existent HTTP status code 321, as well as error code “hneriergrd”, which fans deciphered to be an anagram spelling “red herring”. They also analyzed the source code of her website and found hidden, foreign-language words, which they then translated into English. The words found would be revealed to be words in Taylor’s handwritten note for the album.

Taylor won the Grammy Awards for “Best Pop Vocal Album” and “Album of the Year” for Midnights a few hours later. In her acceptance speech for the former, she revealed a new studio album, titled THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, and announced its release date of April 19, 2024, which she had been keeping secret for nearly two years. Its cover artwork was subsequently posted on her social media accounts, along with a photograph of a handwritten note.