Taylor Swift releases 'Patient Zero' single and expanded album 'The Encore'

Taylor Swift released her single "Patient Zero" on September 25, 2026, alongside an expanded version of her 2025 album "The Life of a Showgirl," retitled "The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore." The expanded album includes four new tracks—"Patient Zero," "Cleveland!," "Pink Clouding," and "Babylon"—bringing the total to 16 songs.

Swift announced the single on September 24 with a cryptic countdown timer and modified Instagram bio reading "And, baby, that's sh0w business f0r y0u" (with zeros replacing the letter O). Three limited-edition CD variants of "Patient Zero" became available for pre-order at $3.99 each: standard, acoustic, and piano versions. Swift stated that the new songs emerged from a trip to Sweden to celebrate the original album's record-breaking first-week sales with collaborators Max Martin and Shellback: "Really we just wanted to reflect and take in how grateful we were for the moment we were in, but there was a studio there and we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs."

Swift directed the "Patient Zero" music video, which premiered at the MTV Video Music Awards on September 27. The video features actors Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell as co-stars, with cinematography by Oscar-winning photographer Emmanuel Lubezki. Swift released a 13-second teaser that included scenes of her and Johnson mirroring movements, along with imagery suggesting a love triangle narrative. The teaser contained visual easter eggs that corresponded with hints Swift had previously given during an Emmys pretaped sketch with Mariska Hargitay, where she uttered coded phrases ("Saccharide, Aries, From the Vineyard, North or South") that fans decoded to spell "encore."n Swift's last album release before this project was "The Life of a Showgirl" in October 2025, which achieved the largest first-week sales of any album at that time. In June 2026, she released "I Knew It, I Knew You" for the "Toy Story 5" soundtrack. "Patient Zero" marked her first new music since her July 2026 wedding to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden. At the MTV VMAs, Swift received the inaugural Artist-Director Honors award, becoming the most-awarded artist in the award show's history.