Sometimes being a Taylor Swift fan is like being a meteorologist. Sure, you can try to predict the weather, you can read all the necessary signs, but you never really know where a storm’s going to land and how intense it will be once it gets there. Likewise, a legion of Swifties can try to identify all the hints and Easter eggs nestled into Swift’s song lyrics, videos, and social media, but they still never really know what the singer’s going to do next until she does it.
It’s staggering to think that only a few months ago Swift fans were theorizing the singer might be about to come out as a lesbian. Now, a mere week before the official release of her seventh album, Lover, those fans are convincing themselves that Swift will soon surprise us all with an engagement and imminent marriage to English actor Joe Alwyn. These rumors intensified Thursday night with the release of the album’s eponymous third track, “Lover.”
Swift-ologists pounced on lyrics referencing marriage, spousal cohabitation, wedding vows, decorating, and, possibly, Joe Alwyn. “And I’m highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you/ I’ve loved you three summers now, honey, but I want ‘em all,” Swift sings. The couple is rumored to have met at the Met Gala in May 2016, and their relationship is believed to have blossomed sometime between then and May 2017, which would put it at approximately three summers ago. But the lyrics that have fans hearing wedding bells are from the nauseatingly saccharine bridge:
Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand?
With every guitar string scar on my hand
I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover
Swift revealed on Thursday that she will be livestreaming an acoustic performance of the album on YouTube and SiriusXM on Aug. 22, shortly before releasing the full album and the “Lover” music video. Who knows what kind of juicy new secrets about the singer’s private life the coming weeks will hold? Taylor Swift’s secret wedding plans might not be the most exciting conspiracy ever, but I guess, as conspiracy theories go, they are refreshingly innocuous.
