Swifties, assemble! During her acceptance speech for Video of the year at the MTV Video Music Awards, Taylor Swift announced she’d be dropping a new album on October 21. However, fans only had to wait a short hour more to be delighted by the thrill of the first look at the album cover for her 10th studio album and the name of her next masterpiece, Midnights. The release of this album would mark her return to original music in two years.
“We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears,” Taylor wrote in her post announcing the album. “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 floor that 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 12… we’ll meet ourselves. Midnights, the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life, will be out October 21. Meet me at midnight.”
Since 2020, Taylor has focused on the “Taylor’s Version” series of re-recordings of her Big Machine catalog. However, Taylor’s last releases of fresh material — the folklore and evermore albums — were also surprise releases and debuted within 5 months of each other. Clearly, Taylor has decided to make this a trend… and we’re not complaining!
The night belong to Taylor, who won big for the short film for All Too Well (Taylor’s Version). Between gliding down the red carpet like a damn disco ball and dancing to Lizzo and Nicki Minaj, Taylor picked up two big awards of the night: Best Long Form Video and the aforementioned Video of the Year, which makes her the only artist in history to win the award 3 times. At her side were her producer, cinematographer, and one of the stars of the video, Dylan O’Brien.
“You guys, I’m just so proud of what we made,” she said during her acceptance speech for Video of the Year. “And I now that 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.” She then added, “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 October 21st. And I will tell you more at midnight.”
This new album will be her 12th record, with 9 original studio albums and 2 Taylor’s Version re-recorded albums proceeding it. Her last two album, folklore and evermore were both nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys. Taylor won for folklore in 2021. She will be eligible to be nominated for Red (Taylor’s Version) for the 2023. Her last release was a single for the soundtrack of the movie Where The Crawdads Sing called “Carolina”.
Clearly, there is no slowing down Taylor anytime soon! You know, as we understand it, All Too Well: The Short Film is Oscar-eligible. Is it time for for her to conquer the movie world too?! Guess we’ll see!