Taylor Swift's Favorite Easter Egg Might Surprise You

Taylor Swift is the queen of Easter eggs, but she has an important rule for all of her cryptic clues. The pop star opened up about her “dos and don’ts” for Easter eggs during her Aug. 13 appearance on the New Heights podcast, shedding light on the one type of hint she would “never” intentionally plant. And she also singled out a particularly wordy Easter egg from a few years ago as her all-time favorite.

As the singer confirmed that the orange door at her final Eras Tour show was indeed a The Life of a Showgirl Easter egg, she got real about why she enjoys slipping these significant clues into her art — even if she knows some fans think the process can get a little ridiculous.

“I'm always trying to figure out how to make music into more of an event. How do we make it romantic? How do we make it something that people can experience together? And that's why I love vinyl. That's why I love putting so much into the tour, or a music video, or events, or activities for them to do, or Easter eggs, or little puzzles for them to solve,” Swift said. “It's gotten to the point where it's like... people are like, 'The Easter eggs thing is getting a little Zodiac Killer at this point.' But as long as they like it, you know?”

Wile Swift knows she can get swept away by her love of these knowing winks, she does have one major rule when it comes to Easter eggs. “I have some parameters. The art of the Easter egg is, there’s dos and don’ts,” Swift said. “I’m never going to plant an Easter egg that ties back to my personal life. It’s always going to be towards music; something I’m coming up with, or something I have coming up, a plan I have coming together, something that you don’t know I’m saying for a specific reason that you’ll hear later and you’ll go back and be like, ‘Oh my God.’”

As an example, Swift brought up her favorite Easter egg of all: her 2022 NYU commencement speech, which fans didn’t realize was packed with Midnights lyrics until that album released months later.

“I think my favorite one of those was, I was given an honorary doctorate from NYU and I made the commencement speech,” Swift said. “I put so many lyrical Easter eggs in that speech that when the Midnights album came out, after that, the fans were like, ‘The whole speech was an Easter egg!’ For me, that’s really fun, because they find it fun.”

Swift went on to explain her outlook on how she wants her Easter eggs to work — namely, they can be totally ignored if you don’t care to look for them.

“I want Easter eggs to be a certain thing where if you are a part of the fandom and you want to experience music in a normal way, then you don’t even see these,” Swift said. “You don’t even care what that thing is above that doorway or underneath that dimly lit flickering light over there that’s upside-down, backwards, in braille. You don’t need to know what that is. But if you want to look at that, then it’s there. If you know, you know.”