Midnights Mayhem has Begun

This fall has been action-packed for Taylor Swift fans (“swifties”). On August 28th, at the MTV Video Music Awards, Swift received the award for Best Video for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version)”. In her acceptance speech, she shared that as a gift to her fans for giving her the award, she wanted to announce that her new album would be released on October 21, and promised more details at midnight. As promised, at 12:00 a.m. on August 29th, Taylor Swift’s instagram had a new post: her new album is called Midnights, and it will tell “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” 

The mayhem really started on September 21st at midnight, when Swift posted a TikTok kicking off a series of videos titled “Midnights Mayhem With Me.” In this series, she stated she was going to reveal the titles of each track on the new album. This series started off having a new episode every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at midnight. However, Swift unexpectedly broke her pattern and posted an episode on Thursday October 6th. Fans on social media theorized what this change in routine could mean, as Swift is known to never do things by accident. 

This question was answered the next night. Swift posted a video at midnight on Friday October 7th as usual, but her caption was cryptic: “Tonight we mayhem til the morning!” She wasn’t kidding with this statement, as she posted a new video every hour after midnight until 4:00 AM, each revealing a new track title until all 13 had been revealed. In the finale episode, Swift announced that Track 4 was titled “Snow on the Beach” and that it would feature Lana Del Rey. 

Many Taylor Swift fans are also fans of Lana Del Rey, making this announcement very exciting. HF sophomore Ainsley Batsford loves Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey. “It’s really cool to see two artists I love so much collaborating on one song,” she said. 

Midnights by Taylor Swift will be released on October 21st, and the mayhem leading up to it has built a lot of excitement and hype from “Swifties.”