Why is Taylor Swift’s latest song drop so hard to find?

Understanding Taylor Swift’s marketing requires a degree in locating and analyzing “easter eggs” in every photo, lyric or performance the megastar releases.

So when eager fans opened their music streaming apps at midnight Friday expecting to see the four new tracks Swift promised would be available in support of her upcoming tour — which kicked off Friday in “Swift City,” Arizona — they weren’t sure if it had a deeper meaning than what’s on the surface.

“Me stressing for 30 damn minutes to find these 4 new songs taylor released,” read one caption on a video of a TikTok user trying to locate the songs.

Another, more conspiratorial Swiftie said the difficulty finding the tracks could have “crazy implications” for the future of her music and re-recordings, theorizing one of the songs wasn’t included on an album so Swift could re-release her “Speak Now” album and claim she wrote all the songs on it.

But perhaps the answer as to why the songs were hard to find just meant Swift released them — “Eyes Open,” “Safe & Sound,” “If This Was A Movie” and “All Of The Girls You Loved Before” — as singles rather than on a new album, making them a little harder to find with basic searches on streaming platforms. (Adding “Taylor’s Version” to the end of the song titles makes them appear on streaming platforms.)

Swifties “drop everything” to stream the new tracks

“Eyes Open” and “Safe and Sound” were originally recorded for the “Hunger Games” franchise — a film series which seems to be having a well-timed renaissance across TikTok — while “If This Was a Movie” was a bonus track on “Speak Now.” “All Of The Girls You Loved Before,” a “Lover” cast-off, has never been released until now. Unless, of course, you count the recent leak of that song, which has been doing the rounds on TikTok since before Valentine’s Day, the Star’s Aisling Murphy’s review of the singles reads in this week’s Star Tracks.

For the re-recording of “Safe and Sound,” Swift has somehow managed to bring much-beloved folk band The Civil Wars back together (though they’re now billed under their individual names), and she’s preserved the youthful whistle and earnest trepidation of the track’s first life over a decade ago. The lilting acoustic guitar licks are just as clean as they were in 2012, and Swift sounds in great form.

Eras Tour begins Friday in Swift City, Arizona

Swift’s Eras tour — her first tour in nearly five years — has 52 stops across the U.S. and follows the release of her new album “Midnights” last fall.

Glendale, Ariz., in anticipation of her first stops there on Friday and Saturday, renamed the city “Swift City” for the weekend, with some fans calling the show — at State Farm Stadium, where the Super Bowl LVII was played last month — their “version of the Super Bowl.”

Other fans created elaborate costumes to wear to her shows, while others are predicting setlists and analyzing each Instagram photo she posts. So there is surely more Taylor Swift content for fans to ponder over in the coming months.

“That’s a real f- – -g legacy to leave,” as Swift would say.

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