The 30-year-old singer dropped the record on Friday, after surprising fans with news of its impending release the day before.

Despite the fact that Taylor is best known as a pop star, the new album is actually categorised as alternative on iTunes. Four of her previous records were classed as country albums, while she's also dropped three pop albums.

In addition, Taylor will be submitting the record for the Best Alternative Music Album gong at the 2021 Grammy Awards, according to reports.

Fans have initially responded positively to the new record, which has a running time of an hour and three minutes and features 16 songs - five of which have explicit language warnings on them.

Taylor's followers have also started speculating about the identity of the mysterious co-writer she thanked when detailing her collaborators on Folklore. While she tagged almost all the writers she mentioned, she didn't tag William Bowery - with fans immediately speculating the name is a pseudonym.

After discovering there are no registered songwriters or producers named William Bowery, speculation began building that Bowery is another name for Taylor's longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn.

According to fans, Swift and Alwyn were spotted outside New York's Bowery Hotel back in 2016 at the start of their romance. In addition, Joe is the great-grandson of composer and musician William Alwyn - which fans believe is how the name William Bowery came about. Taylor has yet to comment on the speculation.