Swift has trained her fans to be highly discerning detectives when it comes to her body of work, but the musician isn’t immune to the allure of pop culture obsession. She proudly fangirls over her favorite artists, actresses, and TV shows — the button-adorned jean jacket she sports in Entertainment Weekly‘s cover shoot serves as Easter-egg-filled proof.

Pastel power

Swift first teased her new (yet-to-be-revealed) album aesthetic with a single palm tree-filled Instagram post and arrived to the April 11 shoot with matching pink-dipped locks.

Hint-dropping how-to’s

“I posted [the palm tree Instagram] the day that I finished the seventh album,” says Swift about the photo. “I couldn’t expect [my fans] to know that. I figured they’d figure it out later, but a lot of their theories were actually correct. Those Easter eggs were just trying to establish that tone, which I foreshadowed ages ago in a Spotify vertical video for ‘Delicate’ by painting my nails those [pastel] colors.”

Totally Taylor

Swift, photographed in Los Angeles on April 11, wears a dress and belt by Faith Connexion.

Snakes begone

Most Swift-watchers expected the Reputation era to signal a permanent shift, but the singer assured EW that the old Taylor wasn’t really dead — just on hiatus.

The fans have it

She credits her (huge) crowd of supporters for bringing her back into the light we see in “ME!”

“It’s definitely the fans that made that tonal shift in the way I was feeling,” she says. “Songwriters need to communicate, and part of communicating correctly is when you put out a message that is understood the way you meant it. Reputation was interesting because I’d never before had an album that wasn’t fully understood until it was seen live. When it first came out everyone thought it was just going to be angry; upon listening to the whole thing they realized it’s actually about love and friendship, and finding out what your priorities are.”

TS7

The album (which is still referred to by its working name) promises to be much longer than any of her previous EPs.

“I try not to go into making an album with any expectation,” she says. “I started to write so much that I knew immediately it would probably be bigger.”