by Claudia Fennell '24 on September 8, 2022
A&E Co-Editor
Arts & Entertainment
After a busy two years, Taylor Swift is soon to release her fifth album. This will be her 10th studio album, titled Midnights, and will be released on Oct. 21. The album will be composed of 13 songs representing a sleepless night in the artist’s life. Swift teased the content of the album, saying that each song was written throughout her life, always in the dark of night.
Swift announced that she is planning on releasing a new album at the MTV Video Music Awards on Aug. 28. The announcement was made after the artist won video of the year for her 10-minute version of the song “All Too Well,” which she recorded as a short film. The short film is a few seconds short of 15 minutes long, with over 74 million views on YouTube, making it one of the most famous music videos from 2021. The film stars actors Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink who act out the relationship that Taylor Swift had with her ex-boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal. The song gained so much popularity that it beat the Guinness World Record for the longest song to ever reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
After thanking her fans for supporting her throughout her music career, Swift announced that she plans to release a brand-new album this fall. She stated that all the constant encouragement from her fans has motivated her to continue to release new music. The artist stated at the MTV’s, “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.” After winning the video of the year award for her short film, the artist was delighted to speak on the release of a new album.
As usual, Swift’s fans are looking for clues about the upcoming album throughout the singer’s social media and her public appearances, attempting to find hints about the new album. The singer has not confirmed any of the clues so far. Swift released two albums two years ago in 2020, Folklore and Evermore before she began rerecording her old albums after issues with her old record label. In 2021, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) were released, her first re-recorded albums now under her name and authority. Taylor was inspired to re-record after her old record label made a $300 million dollar deal to sell the pieces. This sparked Swift’s interest to re-record her work, stating on “Good Morning America” that she thinks, “artists deserve to own their work. I just feel very passionately about that.”
Fans across the world are waiting in anticipation for Oct. 21, when listeners can “meet [her] at midnight” as Swift posted on her Instagram.