Taylor Swift Announces New Album ‘Midnights’ During VMAs Acceptance Speech
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Taylor Swift has a new album – as in, not a re-recorded album, a new album.
The superstar made the enormous announcement while taking home the final MTV Video Music Award on Sunday night (Aug. 28) at the Prudential Center in Newark. While accepting the video of the year award — the third of her career, a VMAs record — for her “All Too Well” short film, Swift revealed that her next full-length is out on Oct. 21.
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“I thought it might be a fun moment to tell you that my brand new album comes out October 21,” said Swift. “And I will tell you more at midnight.”
After a countdown on TaylorSwift.com, the celebrated singer-songwriter did just that. “Midnights, the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life, will be out October 21. Meet me at midnight,” Swift wrote on her Instagram (her website, unsurprisingly, crashed exactly at midnight as fans flocked to see the revelation).
“We lie awake in love and 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,” Swift wrote next to a photo of herself cradling her head in a darkened room. “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.”
The upcoming album will be Swift’s first since the acclaimed one-two punch of Folklore and Evermore, a pivot towards indie-folk that were recorded in secret in the early days of the pandemic and released in the second half of 2020. Folklore and Evermore were both nominated for album of the year at the Grammys, at the 2021 and 2022 ceremonies, respectively; Folklore won the top prize, giving Swift a record-tying three career wins in the category.
Following the release of Evermore in December 2020, Swift began rolling out the re-recorded versions of her first six studio albums, a project she announced in 2019 after being unable to buy back her master recordings. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version), the first two re-recorded albums, scored two of the biggest debuts of 2021 on the Billboard 200.
The 10-minute version of Red fan favorite “All Too Well” topped the Hot 100 chart upon its release last November. Swift has yet to announce the release of her next re-recorded album, although multiple ‘Taylor’s Version’ tracks from 1989, including “Bad Blood” and “Wildest Dreams,” have been unveiled in recent months.
Swift appeared at the 2022 VMAs with five nominations, all for the All Too Well short film that she directed last year, and took home three awards, including for best longform video and best direction. Swift had previously won the video of the year trophy twice, for the “Bad Blood” and “You Need To Calm Down” visuals in 2015 and 2019, respectively.
See the IG announce below.
