Taylor Swift has shut down rumors that a third surprise album is on the way.
Days after releasing her Evermore project—her second surprise drop of 2020—the singer-songwriter appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to discuss the record as well as a circulating fan theory about her 10th studio album. Many Swifties noticed there was a faint text that read "Woodvale" on the cover of Swift's eighth project Folklore, leading some to believe the artist was hinting at another full-length release.
Unfortunately for Swift's fanbase, the "Woodvale" text wasn't an Easter egg. It was a mistake.
"OK, well, this takes a bit of explanation," Swift told Kimmel when asked about the rumor. "I tend to be sort of annoyingly secret-agenty about dropping clues and hints and Easter eggs and it's very annoying but it’s fun for fans and it's fun for me because they like to pick up on things. And they'll notice lots of things in music videos or photos or whatever, and then sometimes, I take it too far, and I make a mistake."
She went on to say that while creating Folklore she was too afraid to unveil its name, and even kept it a secret from her management team. In an effort to keep the title under wraps, she came up with a "codename" with the same letters as "Folklore," and would use that word for album art mockups.
"[I] chose a random name, chose 'Woodvale,'" she said. "Wanted to see how it would look on the album covers .... then decided, I don’t actually want to have a title on the album covers and we forgot to take the fake codename off of one of them."
Toward the end of the interview, Swift and Kimmel discuss her increasing use of swear words throughout her career. The host even provided a chart that illustrated the rise of profanity in Swift's most recent albums. Kimmel pointed out that her debut effort only had two "damns," while Folklore and Evermore contained four "fucks" in total.
"It's just been that kind of year," she said with a laugh.
You can check out the full interview above.
On Tuesday, Swift released two more remixes of Evermore's "Willow" track. The first, titled "Lonely Witch" arrived in the morning, while the second, "Moonlit Witch" hit streaming that night.
The most recent version was produced by Aaron Dessner, who also produced the original cut. During a recent interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe, Swift spoke about working with Dessner, as well as Jack Antonoff and Justin Vernon, on Evermore, explaining why she was so inspired to continue the stripped-down sound following the release of Folklore.
"Even the day after releasing Folklore Aaron and I were still bouncing ideas back and forth, and we just knew we were gonna keep writing music," Swift said. "I didn’t know if it was for an album of mine or Aaron and Justin Vernon have a really amazing project called Big Red Machine, so we kept writing thinking maybe we were gonna do some Big Red Machine stuff, but the things that we ended up writing really sounded more like a continuation of Folklore."
Swift acknowledged that she has gone through so many artistic phases throughout her career, changing her sound and look with each new record. But she says this year was different, which is why she refers to Evermore as Folklore's sister album.
"You've got to allow yourself that grace to put on a certain lifestyle or a certain outfit or a creative mantra, and then discard it when you outgrow it," she explained. "This was weird, though. Evermore was the first time I didn't discard everything after I made something new. It was weird. I actually had to fight off anxiety that I had in my head, like fear that was like, 'You need to change ... you can't stay in the forest.' I was like, 'But I wanna stay in the forest.'"
You can watch Swift's full sit-down with Lowe below. The two also discuss the importance of artists owning their masters, how the pandemic lockdowns affected her creative process, and why she and her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, like to create "sad songs" together.
