| Before Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish became spokeswomen for contemporary teen angst, there was Taylor Swift—who, in 2006, at age sixteen, released her self-titled début record and established her uncanny ability to articulate the joys and frustrations of growing up. Over the next five years, Swift became the world’s highest-selling musician by “singing about love in all its variations,” Lizzie Widdicombe wrote, in a vibrant 2011 Profile. To launch her career, Swift “tapped into an audience that hadn’t previously been recognized: teen-age girls who listen to country music.” By the time Widdicombe caught up with her, Swift had begun pivoting from the genre that made her famous to a more mainstream pop sound, a transition that she would complete, several years later, with the album “1989.” On Friday, Swift will release her tenth studio album, “Midnights,” which she has been teasing since the summer. As with her earlier releases, her most dedicated fans, Swifties, have eagerly attempted to decipher so-called Easter eggs, or hidden clues that seem to appear in many of Swift’s promotional materials. “Swift has an affinity for codes and symbols,” Widdicombe observed, eleven years ago. “She helps amateur sleuths along, using capital letters to spell out coded messages throughout the lyrics in her liner notes that indicate which boyfriend the song is about.” At the time of her New Yorker Profile, Swift was in the middle of her second world tour, and still figuring out how to supply the emotional authenticity that audiences expected. “Every show begins with a moment in which she stands silently at the lip of the stage and listens to her fans scream,” Widdicombe reports. “She tilts her head from side to side and appears to blink back tears—the expression, which is projected onto a pair of Jumbotron screens, is part Bambi, part Baby June.” | 
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