Taylor Swift fans, more popularly known as “Swifties,” have crashed yet another search engine, this time bringing down a special feature set up specifically for them by Google and the pop star herself.
The collaboration between Google and Swift is part of an Easter egg for fans, in anticipation of her upcoming album “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” her fourth album that she has since re-recorded. The online feature was a pop-up animation in Google's search bar that prompted fans to solve a series of puzzles that would ultimately reveal tracks from Swift’s upcoming re-recording.
Fans clicked through a set of 89 puzzles - with 33 million individual puzzles being completed - in order to “open Taylor’s vault.” Some of those questions were about Swift, including her zodiac sign, while others were puzzles about track lyrics from the original album.
As it turned out, the search engine was unable to keep up with the massive amount of Swifties, with some fans complaining the puzzles were not popping up for them.
“Swifties, the vault is jammed! But don't worry, there are no blank spaces inside. We're in our fix-it era and will be out of the woods soon,” Google wrote on their X account, referencing Swift lyrics in their message to fans.
In the end, fans were able to mobilize and eventually open Swift’s vault revealing four of her re-recorded vault tracks: “Is It Over Now?,” “Now That We Don’t Talk,” “Say Don’t Go” and “Suburban Legends.”
Swift’s album “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” is expected to be released on October 27.
Swift first began releasing re-recorded music in April of 2021, after the process first began in 2019. The new recordings come after her old record label Big Machine Records, which she left in 2018, was sold to music manager Scooter Braun. Braun took over the rights to all the master recordings of Swift’s past music, with the artist calling it her “worst case scenario.”
Swift switched to Republic Records in 2018 and negotiated to own the rights to all her music going forward. She is now sidestepping the 42-year-old Braun, and is re-recording her old songbook.