Taylor Swift released her tenth studio album, “Midnights,” at midnight EST on Oct. 21, returning to the pop sound she deviated away from in 2019. “Midnights” is a collection of thirteen stories of sleepless nights scattered throughout Swift’s life.
The album was first announced during Swift’s acceptance speech for the Video of the Year award for “All Too Well (10 minute version)” at the VMAs in August. She said, “I had sort of made up my mind that if you were going to be this generous and give us this, I thought it might be a fun moment to tell you that my brand-new album comes out Oct. 21.” After her announcement of “Midnights,” she was extremely active on social media in order to keep everyone’s attention for the following seven weeks leading up to her album’s release. Through social media, she gave fans hints about the upcoming album. For example, she created “Midnights Mayhem With Me,” a series of TikTok videos that slowly announced the tracklist of “Midnights.” Swift is well-known for her hidden clues.
“Midnights” was instantly successful with 185 million streams on its release day. Swift broke her own record for weekly sales. Five years ago, “Reputation,” attained the largest ever U.S. sales week by traditional album sales with 1.216 million copies sold. “Midnights” reached this number in four days. Also, “Midnights” took all the top 10 spots on the Billboard Hot 100.
At 3 a.m. EST on Oct. 21, Swift surprised the world with a “3 am edition” of the album. She announced the “3 am edition” through her Instagram caption. The caption said, “Surprise! I think of Midnights as a complete concept album, with those 13 songs forming a full picture of the intensities of that mystifying, mad hour. However! There were other songs we wrote on our journey to find that magic 13. I’m calling them 3am tracks. Lately I’ve been loving the feeling of sharing more of our creative process with you, like we do with From The Vault tracks. So it’s 3am and I’m giving them to you now.” This version includes an additional seven songs.
All thirteen original tracks were produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff. Aaron Dessner co-produced the “3 am edition.” Antonoff and Dessner are Swift’s longtime friends and have both co-produced previous albums with her.
Spotify collaborated with Swift on a short video series to accompany the lyrics. During the collaboration, she revealed the five things that inspired the album. They are: self-loathing, fantasizing about revenge, wondering what might have been, falling in love, and falling apart. The lyrics of the 20 songs clearly reflect these five things.
Swift appeared on Good Morning America on Nov. 1 to announce her upcoming tour. She said, “It’s a journey through all the musical eras of my career.” Later that day she wrote on social media, “I’m enchanted to announce my next tour: Taylor Swift l The Eras Tour, a journey through the musical eras of my career (past and present!),” She added, “The first leg of the tour will be in stadiums across the US, with international dates to be announced as soon as we can!” This will be Swift’s first tour since 2018’s “Reputation” stadium tour.
Swift will be performing in Santa Clara on July 29 and in Los Angeles on Aug. 4 and 5. These are her only announced California shows. Ticket presale starts on Nov. 15 at 10 a.m local venue time.
