I love Easter eggs, figurative and literal (’tis the season)! As a pop culture lover and passionate fan, I find a special satisfaction in catching the inside jokes and witty callbacks in media from my favorite artists, whether it’s a line in a film scene or a few seconds of an instrumental in a song. Once you’ve been around the block enough to clock the references right away, it feels as if you’ve unlocked a reward, leveling up and becoming more ingrained in the fandom.
This is in large part why, despite a “will she, won’t she?” rollercoaster ride, I accepted my fate as a Swiftie (a normal one, who cares most about Taylor’s writing and storytelling – yes, we still exist). I love the way Taylor ties her songs and selves together through the eras, marking recurring themes of life and love with recurring chords, bringing back a certain lyric years after its origin in the most clever way. It’s also why I later accepted my fate as BTS ARMY, because most BTS songs and music videos are historical and cultural Easter eggs on steroids!
Music is ultimately about connection in all its beautiful forms, but these references are my favorite because they require presence, active listening, curiosity about what you hear. When you’re in a fandom for the love of the creation above all else, it is validating and and moving to hear an artist tangibly connect with past lives and versions of themself through the music, using old songs in new ways to create a narrative throughout time.
I’ve come to think of this Easter egg concept in two ways: 1) the cheeky wink of an artist being self-referential in sound and/or lyric, like a ripple on the water you can only see if you pay close attention, and 2) the big wave of an artist resurrecting an entire song from the void.
The Ripple
The first kind are are fan service Easter eggs of the lightest, purest nature, because you have to actually be invested in the music for at least a few years to catch them – you need to know your history in order to receive. The first time you recognize an instrumental snippet from a past song is a fleeting but overwhelming delight that still fizzes up with every listen after. There doesn’t always have to be a serious “why” behind the use of the sound; the meaning is in the magic of knowing it, like a secret for your ears alone…like you’re the only one to see the artist’s wink.
I still adore the way Lana Del Rey does this on her Ocean Blvd album, more than three years after its release. There’s a stretch toward the end of “A&W” where you can hear the exact instrumental and vocal ad-libs from her 2019 song “Norman Fucking Rockwell” that I feel functions as a brief but cleansing breath, a mini-interlude lifting the listener out of time before diving back into the trap beat badassery of the present. The instrumental comes in and fades out again – maybe Lana and Jack Antonoff (whom she produced both albums with) just loved what they made too much to let it go! Whatever the reason, the recurrence proves that even timeless and singular sounds can be made new.
Lana also takes the back half of “Taco Truck x VB,” which already evokes the West Coast summer melancholy that defines NFR, to throw in some “Venice Bitch,” also against a trap beat that makes the hazy song suddenly feel much more embodied while channeling its original psychedelic energy – literally. Nothing beats cranking this up in the car on a hot night and screaming the words, “GET HIGH, DROP ACID, NEVER DIE, NOT TONIGHT, LAKE PLACID!!!” while you pretend you’re speeding through the streets of California, GTA style.
Each time I come across these samples and reworks I am reminded of how phenomenal and rightfully acclaimed NFR is, yes, but I also like to think of them as small ripples connecting the waves of Lana’s discography. Like treasures you may not know you’re searching for but have to be open to finding. It’s her sly, sonic nod to a past era and to the listeners who will continue to stick around through through every creative reinvention, the fans who don’t give a damn about aesthetics and just want to connect with the thing at the center of her career and success and artistic world – the music.
Speaking of reinvention and moving beyond sound, I also love when artists resurface older lyrics or ideas in newer songs to illustrate just that: a change of some kind, whether in them as a person or in their vision or both. They use the words they wrote many moons ago to signify a divergence from what they said and how they were, an acknowledgment that the statement no longer fits. Sometimes they’ve grown, sometimes they haven’t and want to talk about it…either way, the honesty is always welcomed. Here are some of my favorite examples:
- In John Lennon’s classic song “God” from his first solo album post-Beatles, he declares at the close, “I was the Walrus, but now I’m John / And so, dear friends, you’ll just have to carry on.” The picture doesn’t get much clearer than that – the Beatles were then, he’s on his own now, the dream is over for better and worse. It’s a sobering reality check and directive for fans to move on from the band as well. So much plaintive pondering and heartbreak in so few lines, as only John could do so masterfully.
- On “Oceanic Feeling” from her third LP Solar Power, Lorde whispers, “Now the cherry black lipstick’s gathering dust in a drawer / I don’t need her anymore / ‘Cause I’ve got this power / I just had to breathe…” These lyrics are tucked away in the last song, but they’re actually a very big deal. Lorde is firmly marking her coming of age by shedding an iconic relic of the Pure Heroine teenager who first got famous, a single makeup item that soon became shorthand for belonging among her Tumblr indie kid acolytes. Part of growing up is growing out of the phases and things you once clung to, finding new interests and styles, releasing the artifice and performance of adolescence as you settle into yourself. In four lines, Lorde conveys a life lesson we all come to learn: she no longer needs to armor up and project power because she has discovered it all lives internally, permanently.
- I have to cheat a bit and list two examples from The 1975, both too brilliant not to include:
- The shift from the iconic opening line “She had a face straight out a magazine” (on “Robbers” from their 2013 debut album) to “You used to have a face straight out of magazine / Now you just look like anyone” (on “A Change of Heart” from 2016)…OUCH?!?? OKAY?!??? The contrast is brutal and terse and incredibly effective in showing the disillusionment of falling out of love with someone who once seemed like magic to you. Or the resulting realization that you were romanticizing the relationship, you weren’t good for each other, and the moment they look ordinary to you again is the moment you’re free. Whichever way you read it, gut punch of the decade.
- The grand facade created by other iconic opening lines —“We’re f***ing in a car, shooting heroin” (from “Love It If We Made It”) and “This is how it starts / Take your shoes off in the back of my van” (from “Sex”) — is torn to pieces by “I never f***ed in a car, I was lying” on “Nothing Revealed/Everything Denied.” Matty closes the gap between years and albums by admitting that while the bravado and lust of young adulthood may have been fun, those chest-puffing words came from the embellished perspective of a character, not the real him in present day. This lyrical comparison has always hit an extra layer of satisfaction for me because it tracks perfectly with a major arc of The 1975’s songwriting and presentation as a band: progressing from blasé, ironic, “cool guy” humor to sincerity, emotional intelligence, and commitment.
The Wave
I am endlessly interested in what happens after a song is released, or unreleased but makes its way into the world somehow. It’s a wonderful kind of forced surrender, a full circle of creation, for as soon as the fans hear a song, it no longer belongs to the artist. Entire subsects of fandoms are born from a shared obsession with the “deep cuts,” the leaked album that got scrapped, the demos from before the band’s big break, that song they previewed once and never did anything with…then the wave hits.
The artist swoops in to declare that SURPRISE, they know that song, too! The fixed idea you might have had in your head for years that they care or don’t care about certain songs is wrong! They’re in on the lore! They remember it exists, they are aware of its cult status in the community, and they’re here to wrest back control one more time and tweak history. When done well, this can add a lot of playful, authentic energy to the trifecta of artist, music, and fan connection.
Again, the intent doesn’t have to be emotional — a few years ago Lana, aka the reigning Queen of Leaked Songs, plucked “Say Yes to Heaven” from the massive dark hole of unreleased tracks that have lived on the internet for ages and recorded it, just because! She dropped it on us out of the blue, random iPhone photo cover art and all! Who knows why and who cares? She could just like the song, or maybe she was bored and wanted to release a random song between projects. The effect of this single reach into the dusty, shadowy corner of her catalog was a storm surge of love and gratitude from fans, most of whom never dreamed the song would make it off YouTube. And with the track’s integrity and original vibe immaculately preserved, nonetheless! That’s how you do a spontaneous song revival right.
The most impactful example I’ve recently encountered is a resurrection so shocking I almost couldn’t believe my eyes and ears: Nick Jonas recording “London Foolishly,” a song he played exactly one time on a livestream in 2010 and may have sung one time in concert, for the deluxe version of his latest solo album, Sunday Best. The man sometimes struggles to remember the words to a song from maybe six years ago (I say that with all the love in the world), yet he remembered this after 16 years?! I fell to the floor! Everyone in the fandom moved, especially those of us who bore witness to the birth of the OG!
This song was born back when the JoBros hosted frequent livestreams to chat with fans. As the story goes, Nick J hopped on Cambio one night (if you remember Cambio, you better be regularly applying that retinol, babe!) and played a new song that he basically wrote on a whim in his London hotel room. It was fully formed, gorgeous and introspective and dreamy, very apropos for “the serious one.”
I ripped that livestream version – just Nick and an acoustic guitar – from YouTube onto my iPod and listened to it on repeat before I went to bed each night. Extra if it was a rainy evening. It brought me a lot of comfort as I entered the confusion of high school and adolescence. It felt like musical osmosis; I think I eventually absorbed every note he played and the vocal styling of every word he sang into my body and memory. And thank goodness I did, because Nick never officially released it. The song became dormant, living only in the shared lore of Jonas Brothers fans of a certain age and intensity, we who pride ourselves on knowing every obscure reference and song that’s ever existed.
I hadn’t thought of “London Foolishly” in nearly a decade, yet the second I heard the new recording (with sophisticated, jazzed up instrumentation that feels just right), it all came flooding back. To hear 17-year-old Nick on the intro and outro, bookending 33-year-old Nick singing it now…it’s an emotional show of the passage of time and also feels like a sweet gift for the fans who have lived the song’s history and stayed by his side for all the time between those two ages. One old song made new again that inherently captures his growth as a musician and a person, well into adulthood now but still the same kid who wrote it. And there’s really no time like the present for Nick J to do this, since the main theme of Sunday Best is reconnecting with your inner child. Oh, how I love a perfectly aligned artist wink!
To me, these musical Easter eggs are more than a fun little game — they serve as a peek behind the curtain from a fascinating new angle, a tender nudge toward shared history, a reminder that many artists love and revisit their older songs just as fans do. Regardless of whether they’re aware of the connection a wide swath of their fanbase may have with a certain song, their own connection can be powerful enough for them to return to it years later to sample, rework, or record and release it for the first time. In doing so, the artist is collapsing time and strengthening the qualities of their work that can’t be measured but matter most: heart, purpose, intimacy. And in a way, they’re also giving the listener permission to gently dip back in time, remember and honor what that song first meant to who they used to be, and evolve together.