Why Fans Believe ‘Life of a Showgirl’ Could Be the Sister Album to Reputation

Baby, let the games begin … because a subset of Taylor Swift fans believe that The Life of a Showgirl has a connection to Reputation.

After the pop star, 35, announced her 12th album was on the way, Swifties have been trying to piece together potential clues, hints and even lyrics. Recently, all eyes have been on her preexisting album Reputation.

In 2017, Swift released her sixth studio album (her last with Big Machine Records), featuring songs “Getaway Car,” “Dress,” “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” and “King of My Heart.” A number of songs were cowritten by Max Martin and Shellback, whom Swift also worked with on Showgirl. She included several of their Reputation songs on her pre-Showgirl Spotify playlist titled, “Baby, that’s show business for you.”

“I LOVE the rep callbacks all over this rollout and am SO excited for rep’s older sister album,” one fan wrote via X.

Apple Music also got in on the teasers, seemingly dropping an Easter egg on Tuesday, September 30, after fans noticed the Showgirl album cover animation cracked to reveal purple glitter. From there, they combed through liner notes and discovered a handful of capital letters hidden in the lyrics.

An unscrambled message read, “They don’t make loyalty like they used to,” which had fans wondering whether that’s a lyric from Showgirl.

“The implications of this lyric in particular being hidden in Reputation is insane actually,” another fan quipped via X.

In addition to lyrical clues, certain Swifties noticed similar cover art between the records. The Showgirl pics were taken by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, featuring a handful of images that looked similar to the Reputation art. For that earlier LP, the back album cover had a close-up of Swift’s face. Fans thought the other side of the “The Crowd is Your King” variant had a similar face image to reveal the tracklist.

In addition, fans have presumed that Swift still has surprises that are yet to be announced, thanks to a “standby” mention on the official Taylor Nation album release calendar and frequent comments about an “encore.”

Swift specifically noted during her appearance on fiancé Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast last month that the album would only have 12 songs. Fans, however, think an encore could serve as a way to release the locked-in-the-vault extra Reputation tracks that haven’t seen the light of day yet.

“This sounds absolutely insane, but what if we are getting rep vault tracks soon?” one social media user theorized via X. “All of the callbacks through music, photographers, producers, etc., and now the cover cracking like the delicate stage AND the random capitalized letters in Reputation tracks.”

Fans connected the Apple Music crack to an egg hatching, a verb Swift recently used to describe the Reputation vault tracks.

“I haven’t even rerecorded a quarter of it,” she said of her rereleased version in a May letter on her website. “The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposefully misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief.”

She added, “There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for unreleased vault tracks from that album to hatch.”

Swift previously told TIME in 2023 that the vault tracks for that album were “fire.”

The Life of a Showgirl will be released Friday, October 3.