Taylor Swift, always a riddler, presented her fans with an internet scavenger hunt challenge this week — and it seems like the mission has been accomplished.
After asking her army of Swifties to unscramble numerous word clues on Google (more details below), Taylor promised to unveil the vault tracks on her upcoming re-record of “1989,” and she has delivered.
On September 20, Taylor Nation, through her Taylor Nation social media accounts, released the titles of four out of the five promised vault tracks:
- “Is It Over Now?”
- “Now That We Don’t Talk”
- “Say Don’t Go”
- “Suburban Legends”
However, the title of the fifth vault track is still a mystery waiting to be decoded by fans.
Also on September 20, Taylor Nation shared a teaser clip for a track that was previously teased in a similar video. The clip shows a vault graphic, with the letters “T-S-!-U-L” emerging from it.
“But what about the 5th #1989TaylorsVersionVault track?” Taylor Nation captioned the post.
Fans on social media have been debating the meaning of the word, with many suggesting “slut!” or “lust!”
“I’m so sure it’s ‘SLUT!’ It makes so much more sense with the apostrophes and the exclamation, also the narrative that people made up of her at the time,” one commenter on Reddit wrote.
“It’s almost certainly ‘LUST!,’ but I’d give anything for a song called ‘SLUT!’ from her,” another person commented.
“If it didn’t have the quotes and exclamation point I’d say lust,” someone else responded. “With those: one hundred percent ‘SLUT!’”
Vault tracks, which refer to the songs that were left out when an album was originally released, have been present in every re-record that Taylor Swift has released so far.
Still catching up on the whole “1989” vault track situation? Read all about it below.
The Role of Google in All of This
On September 19, Google launched a campaign with Taylor Swift for fans who were eager to find out the meaning behind the “T-S-!-U-L” unscramble.
Google explained the game in a blog post: When a user searches for “Taylor Swift” in the Google search bar, a blue vault will appear. Fans can click on it to solve one of the word puzzles. There are a total of 89 puzzles to solve. If fans can collectively solve 33 million puzzles (Taylor is 33), she will reveal the upcoming track titles.
“Dying to see how this one ends? We promise that the wait isn’t gonna be forever, but the prize will definitely be worth the pain,” stated a release from Google. “Cause darling, we’re a Swiftie dressed like a search engine.”
However, two TODAY.com editors attempted to do this but were not presented with a blue vault. Many social media users also complained about the inability to see the vault, and the hashtag #WheresTheVault started trending on X (formerly known as Twitter) by the afternoon of September 19.
TODAY.com contacted Google to inquire why the vault did not appear for some users, but did not receive a response at the time of publication. However, the search engine tweeted on the evening of September 19 that the “vault is jammed.”
“Swifties, the vault is jammed!” read the tweet. “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.”
Taylor Swift’s Previous Teasers
This is not the first time Swift has teased her fans with a puzzle before revealing tracks “from the vault.” On August 5, 2021, she shared a similar video with another puzzle for her album “Red (Taylor’s Version).”
During her performance at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, Swift announced on August 9 that her next re-recorded album would be “1989,” which she initially released in October 2014.
At the time, she also shared on social media that this was her “FAVORITE” re-record and that there would be five songs from the vault.
“The 1989 album changed my life in countless ways, and it fills me with such excitement to announce that my version of it will be out October 27,” she posted. “To be perfectly honest, this is my most FAVORITE re-record I’ve ever done because the 5 From The Vault tracks are so insane. I can’t believe they were ever left behind. But not for long!”
Swift has been re-recording and releasing her first six albums after Big Machine Records sold the masters in 2019 to Scooter Braun, who later sold them to a private equity firm. Swift was vocal about her disapproval of the sale and announced her decision to re-record all the albums she originally made with Big Machine.