Top 10 Small Details You Missed in Taylor Swift's Music

#10: The 1989 Mercedes-Benz “All Too Well: The Short Film” (2021)

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Our first entry won’t be the only cruise through this video, so let’s get rolling with a nice set of wheels. In November 2021, Taylor Swift revealed the trailer for her upcoming “All Too Well'' short film. The teaser opens with a vintage car driving down a beautiful country road. Viewers swiftly identified the vehicle as a 1989 Mercedes-Benz. The year “1989” is most obviously a salute to Swift’s birth year and the title to her fifth studio album. If you want to go a little deeper though (and we do), Taylor had released a re-recording of “Wildest Dreams,” a signature track off “1989,” just a couple months earlier. Could she be telling us which “Taylor’s Version” album we’ll be getting next?

#9: No Scooters Allowed Various

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Top 20 Best Taylor Swift Music Videos

The current “Taylor’s Version” trend all started when talent manager Scooter Braun bought the rights to Swift’s first six albums. Swift retaliated by re-recording her music with complete ownership of all intellectual rights. The wound is still fresh, however, as the singer-songwriter has populated her videos with some subtle slights. In the video for “The Man,” the main character urinates on a wall with a “no scooters” sign. In the “Match” commercial featuring a re-corded “Love Story,” you can spot a scooter lying next to a flaming dumpster. And in the “I Bet You Think About Me” video, Taylor teaches kids the middle finger, while wearing the iconic “Red” album ring around her own. It seems Swift lacks no creativity when it comes to throwing shade.

With Taylor Swift, even lighting changes can code a hidden meaning. In “I Bet You Think About Me,” Taylor’s character takes a moment to dance with the groom. As they clasp hands, the spotlights above them turn a tint of cool blue. As their waltz concludes, the hue dims to a faded gray. Detailed fans took this as a nod to her lyrics from “Red: ‘Loving him was blue…’ and “missing him was dark gray.’” As the interlude subsides, she dons the bold crimson dress that she’d worn from the beginning. Like the lyrical trajectory of the hit from the early 2010s, the aesthetics linger in melancholic memory of a past romance, before bursting back loudly with the revitalized celebration that “loving him” was “burning red.”

#7: Signs on Social Media Various

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Title Holder - Signs (Official Video)

The power of T-Swizzle extends beyond The Matrix…and into the Twitterverse. The trickster has a spirited history of teasing her online followers with quizzical clues, including a 2019 tweet of seven palm trees to cue her then-upcoming seventh album. Shortly before the release of “Taylor’s Version,” she posted a video on Spotify where she winked at the camera, while dressed in her signature “Red” wardrobe. She’ll also scatter little breadcrumbs like four heart emojis (signifying the fourth album) and carefully-placed lyrics to tip off swiftie sleuths. She even sent Olivia Rodrigo a ring like the one she wore while writing “Red,” which Rodrigo promptly shared on SiriusXM Radio. Okay, not EXACTLY social media, but it shows that there are no boundaries for a Swift cipher.

Scandal and Taylor Swift are familiar bedfellows, but she’s never shy to look haters in the eye. In her “Look What You Made Me Do” video, she has dancers sporting "I Heart T.S." shirts, a nod to her relationship with Tom Hiddleston. Swift also appears sitting on a throne of slithering snakes, an image she’s spectacularly recreated for live performances. This is likely a saucy wave to her most infamous feud (as well as other serpent-related references): you know, the one with Kanye West and an award acceptance speech you MIGHT have forgotten about. A Twitter post by West’s then-wife, Kim Kardashian, popularized a hashtag trend calling Swift a “snake,” and it seems her set pieces had something to say about that. The retaliation is an affirmative addition to her Reputation Era, as she embraces an unflattering persona that others have bestowed upon her, and laughs right back.

#5: Twenty Dollars and Ten Cents

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Taylor’s Re-Recording Era is going strong, and every swiftie wants to know which album is next. Shortly after dropping her much-awaited “All Too Well” video, Swift released, quote, “a very limited” number of signed “Red: Taylor’s Version” CDs. Even if you weren’t lucky enough to nab one, you might have noticed the peculiar price tag of twenty dollars and ten cents, posted on her official online store. Remove the decimal point, and the numbers correspond to twenty-ten, the release year for the album “Speak Now.” Furthermore, the characters were typed in purple font, like the violet color scheme associated with “Speak Now” (though that color has since changed). Does that mean “Taylor’s Version” is coming soon? Call us crazy, but we think the proof is in the purple.

#4: The Number Thirteen Various

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Top 10 Taylor Swift Music Video Looks

Curb your triskaidekaphobia. The number “thirteen” has been important to T. Swift for, quite literally, her entire life. She was born on the Thirteenth, and turned thirteen on Friday the Thirteenth. Her debut album went gold in thirteen weeks, and her first number-one hit had a thirteen-second intro. Besides inking “thirteen” on her hand before shows, she’s left many subliminal love letters for her lucky digit. The first line spoken in “All Too Well” begins at the thirteen-second mark. She sings the word “lucky” thirteen times in “The Lucky One,” and her Twitter account is “TaylorSwift13.” “Thirteen” appears like a “Blues Clues” paw print throughout her videos, like near the top of the “I Bet You Think About Me” wedding cake. Speaking of which….

Did you spot the mark Taylor leaves in “I Bet You Think About Me”’s final shot? After dragging two fingers through the wedding cake frosting, she leaves what appears to be a red “equal” sign… that we’re PRETTY sure we’ve seen somewhere else. The symbol resembles cover art for Ed Sheeran’s “Equals” album. Swift is no stranger to being suggestive about future collaborators, and we know that Sheeran and Swift have co-written before. The Englishman has revealed that he is currently working with an American artist on a remix of his song, “The Joker and the Queen.” A recent tweet by “I Bet You Think About Me” director Blake Lively features a picture of the “equalized” cake with heart and joker-card emojis. Weee see what ya did there, guys.

#2: “Not A Lot Going On…” Various

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Top 10 Taylor Swift Music Video Cliches

Great surprises often come from low expectations. Though that may seem impossible if you’re Taylor Swift, she figured out that the best anticipation is no anticipation. Swift has relished in using the phrase “not a lot going on at the moment,” in tweets and instagram posts, during strategic phases of her life. She uttered the words during the Covid-19 lockdown, but fans later found out that she’d been hard-at-work crafting “Folklore.” She posted the same sentence while “Red (Taylor’s Version)” was in-the-works, this time with the coquettish ambience that her fans were in on the joke. Now, “not a lot” goes all over tee shirts, merch, and the eager minds of Swifties waiting for their next fix of Taylor greatness. Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions. Taylor Swift: Author?, “All Too Well: The Short Film” (2021) Thirteen Years Later… & a Book by Taylor in 2023…? “What’s in Your Easter Egg?” Album Track Titles Hidden in Commercials “Capital Letters” Uppercase Letters in the Lyric Books Are No Accident Taylor in Wonderland, “All Too Well: The Short Film” (2021) Alice’s Artwork on Taylor’s Notebook “The Golden String” A “Visible” String that Connects Two Music Videos

We come, at last, to the legacy of the scarf. While the subject of “All Too Well” remains a mystery, the most popular contender is ex-beau Jake Gyllenhaal. Lyrics about the scarf and a “sister’s house” have left many to speculate that Maggie Gyllenhaal may be in possession of the absent neckerchief. Swift has a lot of fun with this cultural cryptid, giving it cameos in both of her “Red: Taylor’s Version” videos.The scarf adorns the Sadie Sink’s neck and is eventually gifted to a new bride. Might this be Taylor’s way of handing off her past to the next girl? Sister Gyllenhaal says she knows nothing about the scarf. Maybe it’s hiding in the back of her getaway car.