Taylor Swift released her 10th studio album, “Midnights,” on Oct. 21. She made the surprise album announcement live during her acceptance of Video of the Year for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version)” at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards. Swift revealed the title, cover and album art on Aug. 29 at midnight in an Instagram post. 

“Midnights” is a compilation of 13 tracks with the “3am edition” including seven additional tracks. All 13 songs tell a story of sleepless nights that occur randomly throughout Swift’s life. Self loathing, fantasizing about revenge, wondering “what might’ve been,” falling in love and falling apart is what Swift herself said that kept her up at night and helped inspire the album. Some additional subjects the synth-pop album explores are Swift’s intrusive thoughts, heartbreak, loss, a traumatizing past romantic relationship, infidelity and star-crossed love. 

Swift began a new episode series of TikToks titled, “Midnights Mayhem With Me,” revealing all 13 track titles at midnight using a bingo cage filled with numbered balls and a vintage red telephone mic. “Anti-Hero,” “Lavender Haze” and “Snow on The Beach” were the only tracks where Swift told the backstories of the songs on her Instagram page. This event known as “Midnights Manifest” was an eight-day schedule of events that took place from Oct. 20 to Oct. 28. Swift also made a Twitter announcement on Oct. 20 that the “Midnights” teaser would debut during the third quarter of Thursday night football during the Saints vs. Cardinals game. The teaser revealed that there were multiple music videos for “Midnights.” 

Among the album is the song “Anti-Hero,” the third track off the album and the first video that dropped on album release day. Swift wrote and directed the “Anti-Hero” music video herself which surpassed 59 million views and 2.4 million likes on YouTube. The music video for the ninth track, “Bejeweled,” was released on Oct. 25 and was also directed by Swift which surpassed 29 million views and 1.4 million likes in comparison. The video included appearances by the Haim sisters, Laura Dern, Dita Von Teese, Pat McGrath and Jack Antonoff. 

Swift has been at number one with “Midnights” on the Billboard 200 and “Anti-Hero” is at the very top on the Hot 100 according to The New York Times. “Anti-Hero” stayed at number one on the Spotify global chart for more than 20 days. As of Nov. 16., Swift has charted at the top for three weeks straight since the release of “Midnights,” becoming the number one artist in the world with over 83 million monthly listeners on Spotify for the very first time in her career. “Midnights” continues to break several chart records and other records including the number of vinyl records sold and units sold in America. Swift also broke records on Apple Music and made history in music service streaming. 

On Nov. 1, Swift also made another surprise announcement on Good Morning America for “The Eras Tour” which will go through Swift’s discography of the different eras in her music career. Swift shared more news about the tour via Instagram. After adding 17 tour dates due to high demand, the tour totals over 50 shows. Pre-sale tickets via Ticketmaster began Nov. 15 and the general public onsale will begin Nov. 18 at 10 a.m. local venue. 

“Midnights” is available in over 20 versions. The vinyl format comes in the original moonstone blue, jade green, mahogany and blood moon editions. All four of their back covers correctly assemble in a square to form a clock, and the record holders make out the phrase, “Meet me at midnight.” Explicit and clean CD versions are available in the same editions as the vinyls. A lavender edition of “Midnights” in the CD and vinyl format are sold only at Target. The lavender CD exclusively has three bonus tracks. Every edition excluding lavender of the vinyls and CDs with autographed pictures were available for a limited time only on Swift’s official webstore. Cassette tapes can be purchased in moonstone blue. There are four digital albums of the clean and explicit versions for the 3am and moonstone editions on Swift’s official webstore.

“Midnights” is available now on all streaming services and “The Eras Tour” will begin in March 2023.