Taylor Swift Has Been Teasing New Single Patient Zero Longer Than Anyone Realised

Less than a year on from the release of her most recent album The Life Of A Showgirl, Taylor Swift has teased that she has more new music on the way.

Earlier this week, the Swifties began suspecting that something could be afoot when it was noticed that the Grammy winner had managed to sneak zeros into her Instagram bio and in the lyrics to some of her more recent musical offerings on Apple Music.

Finally, on Tuesday evening, she revealed that this was all intentional, as she has a new single titled Patient Zero coming later this week.

“I’ve been impatiently waiting to tell you that my brand new single Patient Zero will be out on 25 September (!!!!!!!!!!!!),” she confirmed on Instagram.

Meanwhile, it’s been suggested that Patient Zero could be the lead single from an upcoming deluxe edition of – or companion piece to – The Life Of A Showgirl, with the subtitle “Encore”.

Remember last week when Taylor appeared in a skit at the Emmys, poking fun at all of the Easter eggs she’s prone to including in her week?

Well, it seems that even this itself was an Easter egg, as the nonsense words she uttered to camera – “Saccharide. Ares. From the vineyard. North or south” – appear to allude to the word “encore”.

It seems she’s been teasing this new work for longer than many of us realise, as her Opalite music video also included a shot containing the message “patient for the encore”, in an apparent nod to her upcoming single and the collection of songs it’s taken from.

The Life Of A Showgirl was released in October 2025, reuniting Taylor with her Red and 1989 collaborators.

While it’s fair to say that it was far from her best-reviewed work, it did perform well commercially, and featured not one but two UK number ones in the singles The Fate Of Ophelia and Opalite.

It’s also been pointed out that the nonsense words she said at the Emmys are an anagram for “my first record’s re-record is out Nov Ten ha ha ha”: