Taylor Swift tried to upstage an eclipse, and it almost worked
Not everyone can upstage an eclipse. But then, not everyone is Taylor Swift.
On Friday, the pop megastar deleted all content from her social-media accounts, to the surprise of her hundreds of millions of followers she erased every tweet, every Instagram photo, every Facebook post. Her website went completely dark. It sparked internet mania, as her fans could only assume that it meant she had hit the reset button to signal that new music was on the way.
Swift’s next project is especially highly anticipated because she hasn’t released any music since “1989” in October 2014. Swift typically is on an every-two-years album cycle.
Over the weekend, Swift fans thought they had figured it out Swift was in a social-media blackout, so that’s like an eclipse ... so she must be releasing music Monday, during the solar eclipse!
And Swift, always the marketing genius, stoked the flames Monday morning. She broke her silence with a creepy 10-second video, which appeared to show a snake unfurling, interrupted by static.
Naturally, Swift fans freaked out. The mysterious teaser sent her devoted fan base into a frenzy. And of course, Twitter went into overdrive making jokes about Swift trying to one-up a celestial event by making sure all attention was focused on the rollout of her new music.
As of Monday afternoon, although the eclipse was the top worldwide trending topic on Twitter, social media was primed for Swift’s new single, or album, or whatever she wanted to release. Even though there were no more hints, no one seemed to mind.