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Midnights
Cover artwork of "Midnights" on digital streaming platforms: White background, with a square image of Taylor Swift in makeup holding a lighter on the bottom right corner, occupying two thirds of the image. There is a track list on the left of the image, featuring the thirteen track titles.
Standard cover
Studio album by
ReleasedOctober 21, 2022 (2022-10-21)
Genre
Length44:02
LabelRepublic
Producer
Taylor Swift chronology
Red (Taylor's Version)
(2021)
Midnights
(2022)
Singles from Midnights
  1. "Anti-Hero"
    Released: October 21, 2022

Midnights is the tenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on October 21, 2022, via Republic Records. Announced at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, the album marks Swift's first body of new work since her ninth studio album, Evermore (2020). Swift wrote and produced Midnights with Jack Antonoff and described the album as a "journey through terrors and sweet dreams" that describes thirteen sleepless nights of her life. Journalists categorize Midnights as a concept album.

Following the surprise release and negligible promotion of her previous studio albums, Swift returned to her traditional album roll-out with Midnights. She unveiled the track-list through a TikTok series called Midnights Mayhem with Me from September 21 to October 7, 2022. The fourth track, "Snow on the Beach", features Lana Del Rey.

Swift adopted a glamorous aesthetic for Midnights that drew from 1970s fashion. A trailer teasing several visuals for the album was released on October 20. A music video for the third track, "Anti-Hero", is scheduled to premiere on October 21, 2022.

Background

Taylor Swift performing at the One More Haim Tour as a surprise guest
Swift at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards

After a dispute over the sale of the masters of her first six studio albums in 2019, Taylor Swift announced plans to re-record these albums.[4] She released the first two of these re-recordings, Fearless (Taylor's Version) and Red (Taylor's Version), in 2021.[5] The latter included the 10-minute original version of her 2012 song "All Too Well" as well as a corresponding short film written and directed by Swift.[6] Mainstream media expected her to release the third re-recording next.[6]

We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears. We stare at walls and drink until they speak back. We twist in our self-made cages and pray that we aren't—right this minute—about to make some fateful life-altering mistake. This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face. For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching—hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve ... we'll meet ourselves.

— Swift, introducing Midnights on her social media[7]

Swift garnered five nominations for the short film at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards on August 28, 2022[8] and won three of them.[9] In her acceptance speech for the Video of the Year award, she announced a "brand-new" studio album scheduled for release on October 21, 2022.[7] Shortly after, Swift's official website was updated with a clock counting down to midnight and the phrase "Meet me at midnight".[7] The canvases of some of Swift's songs on Spotify were changed to a visual featuring the clock.[10] At midnight, Swift posted across her social media accounts that her tenth studio album is called Midnights, accompanied by a premise and a temporary version of the cover artwork. She described the album as "the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout [her] life".[7]

Writing and production

Jack Antonoff performing
Jack Antonoff is a producer on Midnights.

Swift enlisted her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff[note 1] to produce Midnights. The duo wrote 11 of the album's 13 songs together; of the remaining two, Swift wrote the track "Vigilante Shit" alone and "Sweet Nothing" with her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, who is credited with his pseudonym William Bowery.[12] [13]

Music and lyrics

Lana Del Rey is the only guest feature on Midnights, on the fourth track "Snow on the Beach".

The standard edition of Midnights consists of 13 tracks, while the deluxe adds three bonus songs, of which two are remixes. Six of the album's tracks are labelled explicit. Del Rey provides guest vocals on the fourth track, "Snow on the Beach".[14] The eleventh track, "Karma", has been described as the successor to fan theories which claimed that Karma was an album Swift had planned to release in 2016, but shelved the idea in favor of Reputation (2017) as her sixth studio album. The word "karma" appears in the lyrics of "Look What You Made Me Do", the lead single of Reputation, and in the music video of her 2020 single "The Man".[14][15]

Theme

Journalists have described Midnights as a concept album.[14][16] Midnight is a recurring lyrical motif in Swift's music, having been used in different contexts and viewpoints in her preceding albums.[note 2] The A.V. Club said Midnights expands the artistic motif "into a full-blown album".[18]

According to Swift, the subject matter of Midnights was inspired by five major topics: self-hatred, revenge fantasies, "wondering what might have been", falling in love, and "falling apart".[19] Her love life inspired the songs "Lavender Haze" and "Snow on the Beach", the former of which takes after the phrase "in the lavender haze" from the period drama series, Mad Men. Swift wrote "Lavender Haze" after she and Alwyn had to protect their relationship from unsolicited scrutiny online ("weird rumors" and "tabloid stuff"),[20][21] and "Snow on the Beach" is about "falling in love with someone at the same time as they’re falling in love with you",[22] co-written by American singer Lana Del Rey.[12] In "Anti-Hero", Swift details her insecurities such as struggling with "not feeling like a person".

Art direction

Upon the album's announcement, press outlets speculated that Swift's Moschino outfit for the VMAs afterparty—a navy blue micro mini romper embellished with silver stars—teased the album's aesthetic.[23][24][25] Analyzing the album's promotional pictures, The Ringer described the aesthetic as "glam, but a chill, interior kind of glamor as opposed to big popstar glamor", with midnight blue dominating the color palette and retro photographs featuring upholstery. Clock faces are also "a major part of the iconography of the Midnights era."[14] Vogue noted 1970s styles in Swift's fashion,[26] marking a departure from the rural, cottagecore attire she had adopted for her 2020 albums, Folklore and Evermore.[27][12] Fashion critic Jess Cartner-Morley found it reminiscent of the album cover of Country Life (1974) by English art rock band Roxy Music and the photographs by French artist Guy Bourdin for Vogue France.[28]

Cover artwork

The standard cover artwork of Midnights is minimalist.[29] It takes inspiration from old-fashioned LP jackets whose songs were listed on the front cover.[30] The photograph of Swift featured in the artwork depicts her in a blue eye shadow, a black eye liner, and her signature red lips,[29] observing a glimmering lighter held near her face.[31] The album title and track list are in a blue gradient.[29] The vinyl edition of the cover, posted by Swift across her social media, splits the track list into an A-side and B-side, indicating a two-sided LP.[32] Three limited-edition color variants of the physical album, featuring different cover artworks were also issued.[note 3] The Cut said the covers depict Swift in "various states of glamorous late-night stress."[34] Additionally, the reverse side of the standard and three alternate editions each portray a quarter sector of a dial; when assembled together and combined with a clock mechanism sold separately, they form a functioning clock.[35]

Release and promotion

Midnights was released at 12:00am EST on October 21, 2022.[7] The album was available to pre-save and pre-order on her website.[36] Two music videos—for "Anti-Hero" and another track—were set to released on October 21 and 25, respectively.[37] During the initial release, the influx of listeners playing the album at the same time made her profile on Spotify temporarily unavailable.

Marketing

Title card of Taylor Swift's Midnights Mayhem With Me video series
Title card of Midnights Mayhem with Me, a series of TikTok videos by Swift where she revealed the track titles one by one.

To "defy" her usual routine of incorporating easter eggs to hint at information,[38] Swift released a video series on TikTok called Midnights Mayhem with Me, consisting of 13 episodes between September 21 and October 7, 2022.[39] She unveiled the track-list in a randomized order in the series, one song per episode, in front of a curtain backdrop, accompanied by an elevator music tune.[38] A lottery cage containing 13 ping pong balls numbered from one to thirteen,[40] each representing a track of the album, was rolled, and when a ball drops out, Swift disclosed the title of the corresponding track on the album, through a telephone. The first episode revealed the thirteenth track "Mastermind",[41] and the final episode revealed "Snow on the Beach" and its Del Rey feature.[39] Some lyrics from Midnights were displayed on Spotify's billboards across the world in the days leading up to the album's launch, starting with Times Square on October 17.[42] Swift also posted an itinerary, entitled Midnights Manifest, detailing the promotional events scheduled for the album. She will appear on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on October 24, followed by The Graham Norton Show on October 28.[43]

Visuals

The teaser for a "chaotic surprise" exclusively premiered during Amazon Prime Video's Thursday Night Football broadcast on October 20, 2022,[44] which was first announced by American sportscaster Charissa Thompson on October 14 as "something very, very special".[45] It revealed a trailer compiling clips of several visual works based on Midnights.[46] The cast includes Swift, Jack Antonoff, Laura Dern, Haim, Mike Birbiglia, Laith Ashley, Dita Von Tesse, and Mary Elizabeth Ellis, with cinematography by Rina Yang, who had previously worked with Swift on All Too Well: The Short Film.[47]

Concert tour

Swift's United Kingdom website has indirectly confirmed a concert tour. Pre-ordering Midnights on the UK store resulted in "special presale code access for forthcoming and yet to be announced Taylor Swift UK show dates."[48][49]

Media response

Pitchfork,[50] Time,[51] and the Recording Academy named Midnights as one of the most anticipated records of fall 2022;[52] USA Today called it the most anticipated release of Swift's career.[45] The incorporation of Swift's lucky number 13 in the number of tracks, a tradition she had implemented in her career several times, was also highlighted.[53][54] Time found the track list's length a "concise lineup" for Swift, whose last album, Red (Taylor's Version), consisted of 30 tracks.[55] The New York Times called Swift a "restless creative force" for releasing her fifth album in three years and expected Midnights to become one of 2022's best-selling albums, despite its October release.[56] Los Angeles Times compared Swift's "prolific run of albums" to those of "the all-time greats".[note 4] Quartz projected Midnights to achieve record-setting vinyl sales.[58]

The lack of a pre-released single led to speculation over the album's sound on the internet.[28] Variety opined Midnights could either "continue in that more subdued, acoustic, Americana vein" of Folklore and Evermore, or return to the "pure pop" of Lover (2019) and its immediate predecessors.[30] The Washington Post commended the "excellent marketing strategy".[59] Fortune dubbed Swift an "unparalleled marketing genius", and praised the album's promotional roll-out, such as Midnights Mayhem with Me, for Swift's "ever-changing burlesque act of selectively revealing details while maintaining an aura of mystery and excitement."[60] ABC News described the album's release as a "dramatic" event.[61]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic95/100[62]
Review scores
SourceRating
Rolling Stone[63]

Midnights received by critical acclaim upon it’s release. Rolling Stone's Brittany Spanos declared Midnights an "instant classic" where Swift "let us into her darkest dreams"[63] while Elise Ryan of the Associated Press considered it Swift's best as a lyricist "reminding you of her unparalleled ability to make any emotion feel universal." Ryan compared the album to "love-soaked" Lover, "intimate" Folklore, and Evermore, stating that it "feels like both a confessional and a playground, crafted by all the versions of Taylor Swift we’ve gotten to know so far for a new Taylor Swift to shine."[64] Billboard's Jason Lipshutz called it an introduction to "an exercise in restlessness" and noted that Swift "delivered a focused, legacy-extending new project."[65]

Impact

Billboard called Swift's unexpected announcement of the album at the Video Music Awards a "headline-grabbing" moment. Bruce Gillmer, producer of the award show, spoke to the magazine about their viewership gains and how Midnights gave a "massive lift" to the ratings.[66] Swift's official website also crashed due to heavy traffic following her first social media posts about the album.[67] The album's cover artwork became an internet trend, mimicked and parodied by social media users, including official accounts of brands, organizations and celebrities.[note 5] A five-star, boutique hotel in France—Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa—offers a special luxury package inspired by the album called "The Royal Sleep Experience"; a 13 percent discount will also go into effect for 13 days following the album's release.[69] Apple Fitness+ released three new exercise programs designed around Swift's music, featuring tracks from Midnights, curated for yoga, treadmill and HIIT workouts.[70]

Track listing

Midnights – Standard edition
No.TitleWriter(s)Producer(s)Length
1."Lavender Haze"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Sounwave
  • Sweet
  • Braxton Cook
3:22
2."Maroon"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
3:38
3."Anti-Hero"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
3:20
4."Snow on the Beach" (featuring Lana Del Rey)
  • Swift
  • Del Rey
  • Antonoff
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
4:16
5."You're on Your Own, Kid"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
3:14
6."Midnight Rain"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
2:54
7."Question...?"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
3:30
8."Vigilante Shit"Swift
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
2:44
9."Bejeweled"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
3:14
10."Labyrinth"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
4:07
11."Karma"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Spears
  • Sweet
  • Keanu Torres
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Sounwave
  • Keanu Beats
  • Braxton Cook
3:24
12."Sweet Nothing"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
3:08
13."Mastermind"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
3:11
Total length:44:02
Midnights – Deluxe CD
No.TitleWriter(s)Producer(s)Length
14."Hits Different"
  • Swift
  • Antonoff
  • Dessner
3:54
15."You're on Your Own, Kid" (strings remix)   
16."Sweet Nothing" (piano remix)   

Release history

Release dates and formats for Midnights
Region Date Format(s) Edition Label Ref.
Various October 21, 2022 Standard Republic [71][72]
  • CD
Deluxe [73]
Japan October 26, 2022 CD Standard Universal Music Japan [74]
Brazil November 30, 2022 CD
  • Standard
  • Deluxe
Universal Music Brasil [75][76]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Antonoff has produced one or more tracks in seven Swift albums—every album since 1989 (2014).[11]
  2. ^ Examples include songs "You Belong with Me" (2008), "Untouchable" (2009), "All Too Well" and "22" (2012), "Better Man" and "Nothing New" (2021), "Style" and "You Are in Love" (2014), "...Ready for It?" and "New Year's Day" (2017), "Daylight" (2019), "The Last Great American Dynasty" and "Happiness" (2020).[17]
  3. ^ The standard, widely available artwork of Midnights is called "Moonstone Blue". The limited edition covers are namely "Jade Green", "Blood Moon", and "Mahogany". The deluxe CD is titled "Lavender".[33]
  4. ^ Such as David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, and Dolly Parton in their prime.[57]
  5. ^ Such as the International Basketball Federation, the United States women's national soccer team, HBO Max, Fruit by the Foot, Heinz, Dairy Queen, and America's Got Talent's Terry Crews, Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum and Sofía Vergara.[68]

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  71. ^ Midnights release formats:
  72. ^ Swift, Taylor (October 21, 2022). "Midnights". Apple Music (US). Archived from the original on October 12, 2022. Retrieved October 12, 2022.
  73. ^ Midnights Target-exclusive formats:
  74. ^ "ミッドナイツ:ムーンストーン・ブルー・エディション" [Midnights – Moonstone Blue Edition – Taylor Swift] (in Japanese). Universal Music Japan. Archived from the original on October 11, 2022. Retrieved August 30, 2022.
  75. ^ "CD Midnights – Moonstone Blue Edition – Taylor Swift". UMusic Store (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on September 2, 2022. Retrieved August 30, 2022.
  76. ^ "CD Midnights – Lavender Deluxe Edition – Taylor Swift". UMusic Store (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on September 21, 2022. Retrieved October 10, 2022.