Taylor Swift Mural in Chicago Contains a Secret ‘Tortured Poets Department’ Message

The countdown to Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department is on, but what does the number “321” mean?

That was the question facing Swifties in Chicago on Monday, April 15, after a mural went up on a building at 33 W. Grand Avenue, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Painters put up a black-and-white piece on the side of the Windy City building, and when done, onlookers saw a QR code amid a mass of messy lettering.

Upon closer look, both the type and the QR code itself were made up of lowercase “ttpd” letters and the number “13.” The text was painted as if it came straight from the typewriter Swift, 34, has used in the promotional material for the album arriving Friday, April 19.

Those who scanned the QR code with their phones discovered a secret, unlisted Short on Swift’s official YouTube page. The video shows an ink-smudged piece of paper, the words “ERROR 321” being typed out slowly. There seems to be a faded “13” in the paper, which scrolls down once “ERROR 321” is typed out.

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This is not the first time Swifties have been graced by “Error 321.” Hours before Swift announced TTPD after winning Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2024 Grammys, her official website went down. Fans who attempted to access it were greeted with what looked like a bunch of code, along with a message: “Error 321 Backend fetch failed / Backend fetch failed / hneriergrd / DPT: 321 / Vanish Cache Server.”

Fans quickly decoded the jumble of letters to read “red herring” and “DPT” as the reverse initials for the Tortured Poets Department.

Swift, 34, has dropped many clues ahead of TTPD’s release, including words hidden within the Apple Music lyric pages for her music. After the platform’s X account changed its bio to read “a word a day till the [Swift] album drops,” fans began a frantic search. Soon, they discovered capitalized letters within the lyric page for “Glitch,” a song off Midnights. The letters spelled out the word “Hereby.”

Since then, the other words uncovered were “Conduct” and “This.” Some fans theorize that the message with the Apple Music easter eggs will be “I Hereby Conduct This,” with others theorizing the next word is “POST.”

The rollout of TTPD has led some fans to reevaluate Swift’s relationship with actor Joe Alwyn. Swift and Alwyn, 33, broke up in April 2023 after six years of dating. Although their breakup seemed amicable, insiders told Us Weekly that Alwyn wasn’t prepared to deal with the fame and scrutiny that came with dating one of the most famous artists on the planet.

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Yet, fans’ perception of Alwyn seemingly shifted after Swift released a series of Apple Music playlists, each one dealing with the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance). Fans noticed that many of the tracks on the “Denial” playlist were believed to be about Alwyn or cowritten by him under his William Bowery pen name. The title track of Lover, her 2019 album, was also included.

When releasing the playlist, Swift said these were songs about ”getting so caught up in the idea of something that you have a hard time seeing the red flags possibly resulting in moments of denial and maybe a little bit of delusion.”