Taylor Swift Announces New Album After Video of the Year Win at 2022 MTV VMAs: 'Out Oct. 21!'
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Are you ready for a new Taylor Swift era?
While accepting the Moon Person for video of the year at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, the singer-songwriter, 32, announced her tenth studio album will drop on Oct. 21 via Republic Records.
Swift made the surprise announcement while accepting her prize for the night's most coveted award, and credited her fans with helping inspire the winning video for "All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor's Version)."
"I wouldn't be able to re-record my albums if it weren't for you. You embolden me to do that, and 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," she told the crowd.
RELATED: Taylor Swift Shares Details on Upcoming Midnights Album: 'The Stories of 13 Sleepless Nights'
Theo Wargo/Getty Taylor Swift
Check out PEOPLE's full VMAs coverage to get the latest news on one of music's biggest nights.
The star also made note of the fact that for the first time in VMAs history, four of the directors nominated in the video of the year category were women, and said she was "heartened" by the accomplishment.
"I'm so honored to have been recognized alongside such amazing artists and directors in this category and I just want to say I'm so heartened by the fact that for the first time in VMA history, four of the directors nominated in the video of the year category are women," she said. "You guys, I'm just so proud of what we made and I know with every second of this moment that we wouldn't have been able to make this short film if it weren't for you the fans."
For more on the 2022 VMAs, listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.
Swift won the VMA for breakthrough long-form video earlier in the night, and was joined onstage by the film's star Dylan O'Brien, her cinematographer Rina Yang and her producer Saul Germaine, who also accompanied her during her speech for video of the year.
Arturo Holmes/Getty Taylor Swift
The forthcoming album marks Swift's first full-length set of new material since 2021's Evermore and first overall release since Red (Taylor's Version), a re-recording of her fourth album, 2012's Red, which spawned her latest Billboard Hot 100-topping hit single, "All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor's Version)."
An extended version of a fan-favorite Red track, "All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor's Version)" was released in November 2021 alongside a 13-minute short film starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O'Brien. The video was up for five awards at the 2022 MTV VMAs.
RELATED: University of Texas at Austin Announces New 'Taylor Swift Songbook' Course: 'Are You Ready for It?'
In June, Swift released a haunting ballad titled "Carolina" from the upcoming film Where the Crawdads Sing — three months after previewing the song in the Daisy Edgar-Jones-starring film's trailer.
Produced by frequent collaborator Aaron Dessner, "Carolina" was Swift's first release since "This Love (Taylor's Version)," a re-recorded take on the 2014 ballad from her 1989 album, which she dropped on streaming services after it was featured in the trailer for Amazon Prime Video's coming-of-age series The Summer I Turned Pretty.
Alongside the trailer's debut, Swift released merchandise themed around 1989 as well as her third studio album, Speak Now, on her website — prompting fans to speculate 1989 (Taylor's Version) and Speak Now (Taylor's Version) could be coming soon.
"This Love (Taylor's Version)" was the second re-recorded track from 1989 to be released. Amid the rollout of last year's Red (Taylor's Version), 1989's fifth single "Wildest Dreams" went viral on TikTok due to a slow zoom video trend, and Swift released "Wildest Dreams (Taylor's Version)" as a surprise to fans.
Alongside the new music, Swift is in the midst of re-recording her first six albums after Scooter Braun bought her former record label Big Machine, which gave him control of the masters, in June 2019. He later sold the masters for $300 million to Shamrock Holdings in November 2020.
The 2022 VMAs aired live Sunday night from the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
