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Taylor Swift made plenty of headline-worthy moves at this year's MTV Video Music Awards: becoming the most-awarded artist in the show's history, winning video of the year for the third time in a row, encouraging fans to vote in her acceptance speech, and even giving a sweet shout-out to her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, onstage.
But one of Swift's subtler decisions on Wednesday may give us a hint as to her next career move.
After walking the red carpet in a yellow-and-black plaid Dior outfit, Swift changed into an asymmetric mini dress while inside the show at UBS Arena.
The second dress featured a sequined UFO floating above a pastoral landscape on the bodice.
Swifties were quick to point out a parallel with the production design for "Down Bad" on the Eras Tour. During Swift's performance of the song, the screen projects a UFO with a beaming spotlight that follows her around onstage.
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The lyrics use alien abduction as a metaphor to describe the thrilling, destabilizing sensation of being love-bombed at the beginning of a relationship. Swift compares the sudden breakup to being abandoned by the ship, forced to return to her normal life after being exposed to "cosmic love."
"Did you really beam me up / In a cloud of sparkling dust / Just to do experiments on?" she sings in the first verse. "Tell me I was the chosen one / Showed me that this world is bigger than us / Then sent me back where I came from."
"Down Bad," cowritten by Swift and Jack Antonoff, was released as the fourth track on her latest album, "The Tortured Poets Department."
Some fans think the UFO detail means that "Down Bad" will be the album's next single, following "Fortnight" with Post Malone (which earned six awards on Wednesday, including best direction and best collaboration) and "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart."
In fact, Swift doubled down on the reference with her outfit for the after-party at Electric Lady Studios, also featuring a UFO on her corset.
The theory isn't far-fetched. Swift has said that clothing is one of her preferred hint-dropping mediums.
"Easter eggs can be left on clothing or jewelry," she revealed to Entertainment Weekly in 2019. "This is one of my favorite ways to do this because you wear something that foreshadows something else, and people don't really usually find out this one immediately, but they know you're probably sending a message. They'll figure it out in time."
