Petty, party of one?
Taylor Swift’s upcoming new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” is incorporating the color orange in its rollout. In a preview clip from her appearance on her boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce’s podcast “New Heights” on Monday, there was plenty of orange in the background of the set, on the graphics and in Swift’s lipstick.
The Empire State Building in New York City seemed to be getting in on the action too, posting a photo on social media of its top half lit up in orange with the caption, “Onto the next era.”
Given that the new project is the first since her insanely successful Eras Tour, the Swifties are locked in, of course.
Famously intentional with her choices, there has been speculation that the singer might be directing a subtle message toward President Donald Trump with her color theme.
She famously ran afoul of Trump in his first term, when during the 2018 midterms she shared her political position for the first time publicly to endorse a pair of Democrats running for the Senate and the House of Representatives from Tennessee, where she has a home and was living at the time.
Trump responded by saying that he liked Swift’s music “25 percent less” as a result of the endorsements.
The following year, Swift told British newspaper The Guardian that she felt Trump believed his presidency was an “autocracy.”
Her 2020 Netflix documentary “Miss Americana” featured a pivotal scene of Swift sharing with her team why she had made the decision to speak out against Trump.
“I need to be on the right side of history,” she said.
In 2024, she endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race against Trump, to which he responded by posting “I hate Taylor Swift” on his Truth Social app.
In May 2025, unprompted, Trump wrote on social media: “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?.’”
This led some observers to suggest the project’s orange rollout is somehow a dig at the president.
But publications such as Vogue have pointed out that Swift has long been associated with the color orange.
Elizabeth Vlossak, an associate professor of history and associate dean of humanities at Brock University in Ontario and the instructor for “A Swift History” course, told the outlet that Swift first used orange prominently in her music video for the song “Look What You Made Me Do.”
“There is a scene in which she is locked in a giant golden birdcage, swinging on a trapeze, dressed entirely in orange,” Vlossak told the publication. “Now that we know that TS12 is entitled ‘The Life of a Showgirl,’ this scene seems to hold even greater meaning.”
The professor also noted that toward the end of her Eras Tour, Swift incorporated orange more into her stage costumes and exited via an orange door.