The Tortured Poets Department was only just released, but fans are already theorizing about Taylor Swift‘s Seashore and whether it could be her upcoming 12th album. TTPD, Swift’s 11th studio album—not including her Taylor’s Version re-recordings—dropped on April 19, 2024, after leaking early online.
Her latest album features 31 songs and two sides: the standard edition with 16 songs and The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology with 15 songs. “The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post on release day.
“This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.”
Despite its recent release, there are a few theories getting about concerning Taylor Swift’s Seashore album. Here’s what we know.
The Taylor Swift Seashore theory
There’s been speculation about a Taylor Swift album titled Seashore since, from what we can tell, 2021. According to one fan site, it’ll be announced “on May 28, 2026, in a social media post” confirming “that it was the third sister album to 2020’s folklore and evermore albums and would release at midnight.”
Another fan site, however, projects Seashore would be “a surprise” released “on June 10th, 2028”. It’s unclear where these theories have stemmed from because there’s not a whole lot about it on Reddit, where a lot of fan theories are debated.
Some fans think the Eras tour artwork is coded to hint at her 12th album. One TikToker said the biggest hint comes from the fact that each era is represented by one square on the poster: Midnights taking up 3 squares originally, then TTPD taking up 2 squares. The theory is that the final square will be her 13th album. Then again, she could just be teasing a new merch drop for summer.
Personally, we think Reputation (Taylor’s Version) will be next. In August 2023, Prime Video released a trailer of the show Wilderness. In the background, “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version) can be heard playing. “Another day another drama, but all she thinks about is karma….,” Prime Video UK’s account posted with the trailer on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Another song from Reputation got its debut as a (Taylor’s Version) in the Prime Video original series The Summer I Turned Pretty. “Delicate (Taylor’s Version)” played in an episode aired in August 3, 2023. Showrunner and writer Jenny Han confirmed that the show used the re-recorded version when she went to an Eras show date and thanked Taylor on Instagram with the caption “Thank you @taylorswift 🫶🏼 (TV).”
There’s a reason why Reputation was one of the last albums to be re-recorded. The album was the last one that was under Big Machine Records before she recorded her album Lover in 2019 under Republic Records. According to some general music contracts via Rolling Stone, labels will not allow re-recordings of the song until “the later of two years following the expiration of the agreement or five years after the commercial release.” After Reputation, the last album to be re-recorded would be her debut album Taylor Swift.
