Everything to know about Taylor Swift's Midnights album

'Tis the damn season — for a new Taylor Swift era.

The songstress surprised us all by revealing at the 2022 VMAs that her next release wouldn't be one of her rerecorded albums as previously assumed, but instead her much-anticipated 10th studio album, Midnights.

Longtime fans know all too well that Swift loves her surprises and Easter eggs, and after two surprise drops with Evermore and Folklore, the mad woman herself has gone back to her release patterns of the past with an initial announcement and a slow trickle of information.

Long story short, as we celebrate the release of Midnights — which in less than 24 hours became the most-streamed album in a single day (and later, for Swift, most-streamed artist) on Spotify and set the record for biggest pop album on Apple Music — EW has gathered all the information you need to know as you dive into the record.

The songs

Swift poked fun at her Easter-egg-giving ways on Sept. 21, revealing on TikTok that she'd be unveiling one song title at a time, at random, in a video series cheekily called Midnights Mayhem With Me. The full track list has since been released:

1. "Lavender Haze"
2. "Maroon"
3. "Anti-Hero"
4. "Snow on the Beach" ft. Lana Del Rey
5. "You're on Your Own, Kid"
6. "Midnight Rain"
7. "Question…?"
8. "Vigilante S---"
9. "Bejeweled"
10. "Labyrinth"
11. "Karma"
12. "Sweet Nothing"
13. "Mastermind"

Additionally, the bonus edition tracks were announced by Target on Oct. 13. They are: "Hits Different," a strings remix of "You're on Your Own, Kid," and a piano remix of "Sweet Nothing."

Midnights will mark a return to more personal subject matter, after Swift moved away from that a bit with her past two albums. In her note announcing the new record, she described it as "the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life."

"This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams," Swift wrote. "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."

True to the theme, after revealing the title of track 3, "Anti-Hero," she also shared a behind-the-song featurette on Instagram in which she talked about the intimate nature of the piece, which she considers one of her favorites she's ever written.

"I don't think I've delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before," she said in the clip. "I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized and, not to sound too dark, I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person." She went on to tell fans not to feel bad for her and explained that "Anti-Hero" is a "guided tour" of all the things Swift tends to hate about herself.

"We all hate things about ourselves, and it's all of those aspects of the things we dislike and like about ourselves that we have to come to terms with if we're going to be this person," she said. "So I like 'Anti-Hero' a lot because I think it's really honest."

In a subsequent explainer video, Swift discussed how her six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn inspired the album opener, "Lavender Haze." She said she first heard the phrase while watching Mad Men, and upon looking it up she realized it was commonly used in the 1950s to describe being in love.

"Like, if you were in the lavender haze, then that meant that you were in that all-encompassing love glow — and I thought that was really beautiful," she said. "And I guess theoretically, when you're in the lavender haze, you'll do anything to stay there and not let people bring you down off of that cloud."

Swift continued: "And I think a lot of people have to deal with this now, not just like 'public figures,' because we live in the era of social media, and if the world finds out that you're in love with somebody, they're going to weigh in on it. Like my relationship for six years: We've had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it. And so this song is about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff. I hope you guys like it."

Yet another video revealed that the fourth track, "Snow on the Beach," which features Lana Del Rey, was inspired by the "cataclysmic, fated moment" when you realize you're falling in love with someone at the same time as they're falling in love with you. Swift likened that realization to seeing snow falling on the beach. She also called Del Rey one of the "best musical artists ever" and said she'll "be grateful for life" for Del Rey's participation.

The 3 a.m. tracks

But wait... there's more! Hours after the album dropped on Oct. 21, Swift unleashed more chaos on her fans with seven more songs that she dubbed "the 3 a.m. tracks."

"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," she wrote in a post announcing the news. "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."

The tracks — titled "The Great War," "Bigger Than the Whole Sky," "Paris," "High Infidelity," "Glitch," "Would've, Could've, Should've," and "Dear Reader" — are available to stream now.

Though most of the songs see Swift again teaming up with Midnights collaborators such as Jack Antonoff, fans of Folklore and Evermore will be pleased to see Aaron Dessner's return here as co-writer and co-producer on "The Great War," "High Infidelity," and "Would've, Could've, Should've." Dessner produced both of those aforementioned albums, but was, until now, absent from Midnights.

When and where to buy

The album is now available to stream on Spotify and Apple Music. Physical copies of it — vinyl, CD, or cassette tape — can be purchased on Swift's website. Currently, there are four versions of the album available that come in the corresponding colors: Moonstone Blue Edition (the standard version), Jade Green Edition, Blood Moon Edition, and Mahogany Edition.

According to Swift's website, each of the versions includes 13 songs, one of four collectible albums with unique front-and-back cover art, one of four unique collectible disc artworks, one of four unique marbled-color CD discs, and a collectible lyric booklet with never-before-seen photos. The standard edition vinyl and CD are also available in stores.

Bonus content

Swift has a longstanding relationship with Target and is releasing a separate bonus edition of the album, which has been dubbed the Lavender Edition, to purchase there. As mentioned above, this edition includes three bonus tracks, two of which are remixes. The tracks are not going to be on the other editions of the album.

Producers and collaborators

The credits and song lengths for Midnights appeared on iTunes on Oct. 18. Frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff cowrote 11 of the 13 songs with Swift, and she wrote one solo ("Vigilante S---"). Still another was written by her and Alwyn ("Sweet Nothing"), once again using the alias William Bowery. Other co-writers include Zoë Kravitz ("Lavender Haze"), Del Rey ("Snow on the Beach"), Mark Anthony Spears ("Lavender Haze" and "Karma"), Jahaan Akil Sweet ("Lavender Haze" and "Karma"), Sam Dew ("Lavender Haze"), and Keanu Torres ("Karma").

In the run-up to the album's release, Swift was mum about any potential collaborations, but a behind-the-scenes video showed her and Antonoff — who had a hand in producing tracks on past albums 1989, Reputation, Lover, Folklore, and Evermore — hard at work on Midnights, which he also produced with Swift.

Upon Midnights' release, the album's credits revealed several famous faces, from Kravitz to Dylan O'Brien, who also provided surprising cameos to several tracks on the album.

Genre

Swift didn't release a single or any confirmation of what the album's genre would be before its release. Now that we've heard it, however, it's clear that Midnights is a return to the pop genre for Swift, after the more folk-alternative style of Evermore and Folklore. True to the album's aesthetic, though, the new record feels 1970s-inspired, with hints of the pop from that era sprinkled throughout.

Lyrics

In the lead-up to the album's release, Swift partnered with Spotify to unveil lyrics from Midnights on billboards around the world. The reveals kicked off Oct. 17 in New York, where the words "I should not be left to my own devices…" lit up Times Square. That was followed up the next day by a sign in London that read, "I polish up real nice."

On a billboard in Sao Paulo, these lyrics were shared: "Just like clockwork, the dominoes cascaded in a line." And, bringing it home, in Nashville: "Did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room?" The final lyrics, revealed in Mexico City, were, "Breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out."

Spotify also collaborated with Swift on a short video series to accompany the lyrics, in which she revealed five things that kept her up at night and helped inspire the Midnights album. They are:

1. Self-loathing
2. Fantasizing about revenge
3. Wondering what might have been
4. Falling in love
5. Falling apart

Album release plans

The week of release, Swift shared a video to her social media accounts with a calendar for promotion related to Midnights. Fans can expect the following events to come, post-release:

Friday, Oct. 21: (release day)

3 a.m. ET: "Special very chaotic surprise"

8 a.m. ET: "Anti-Hero" music video release (and the #TSAntiHero Challenge on YouTube Shorts)

8 p.m. ET: Lyric videos

Monday, Oct. 24:

Appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Tuesday, Oct. 25:

Midnight ET: Second music video release

Friday, Oct. 28:

Appearance on The Graham Norton Show

Music videos

Swifties will be feasting for weeks. During her teaser-trailer on Thursday Night Football ahead of the album's release, the singer revealed that she filmed music videos for several songs, which she has called the "Midnights Music Movies."

"[They are] the music videos that I've made for this album to sort of explore visually the world of this record," she said in a clip announcing the projects. "And I love storytelling, I love songwriting, I love writing videos, I love directing them. And this was a really fun opportunity to work again with the cinematographer Rina Yang, who was my collaborator on the All Too Well 10-minute short film. So we really wanted to challenge ourselves to do different things this time around and stretch, and I'm really proud of what we made, and I really hope you like them."

The music videos will star Laura Dern, Antonoff, the Haim sisters, Pat McGrath, Dita Von Teese, John Early, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Mike Birbiglia, and Laith Ashley.

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