Taylor Swift has announced she is releasing a new album, Midnights, in October.
While receiving the top honour at MTV’s annual Video Music Awards, the 32-year-old singer used her acceptance speech to announce her 10th studio album would come out on 21 October.
“You guys, I’m just so proud of what we made, and I know 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 told the audience, while accepting the video of the year award for her song All Too Well (10-minute version).
“Because I wouldn’t be able to re-record my album [Red (Taylor’s Version)] if it weren’t for you. You emboldened 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 October 21st. And I will tell you more at midnight.”
At midnight, Swift’s official website crashed. On social media, she shared the title and cover of the 13-track album, describing it as “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life”.
“This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams,” she wrote. “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 12 … we’ll meet ourselves.”
Midnights will be Swift’s 10th studio album, and her first album of new songs in almost two years.
Last year she put out two re-recordings of previous albums, Fearless and Red, as part of her project to re-release her first six albums, which were made while signed to the record label Big Machine. She started the project in order to regain ownership of her work, after music mogul Scooter Braun bought Swift’s former label in 2019 – and with it the master recordings of her back catalogue.
Swift has previously described the sale to Braun as her “worst-case scenario”, and has accused him of bullying her in his role as former manager of Kanye West and manager to Justin Bieber.
It remains to be seen whether Swift will continue on her progression away from the country music that made her a child star, and the pop sound of her early twenties. Her last two studio albums, Folklore and Evermore, were both released in 2020 and signalled her move towards folk and alternative music, having collaborated on the albums with the National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon.
Last year Swift broke a record set 50 years ago by the Beatles, for the fastest accumulation of three No 1 albums in the UK. Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Folklore and Evermore all hit No 1 in the UK in the space of 259 days, beating the record of 364 days set by the Beatles between 1965 and 1966.