Swift said the songs were inspired by “13 sleepless nights” from throughout her life. You really thought Taylor Swift would let August slip away so easily? At the end of Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards, the pop superstar announced her 10th studio album as she accepted the video of the year trophy for her “All Too Well” short film.
“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,” Swift said to the audience, earning deafening cheers from the crowd at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. Swift, 32, revealed more about her upcoming music on Twitter shortly after the ceremony. Titled “Midnights,” the album is “the storiess of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life,” she wrote.
“This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams,” she elaborated. “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 twelve … we’ll meet ourselves.”
“Midnights” marks Swift’s first album of all-original songs since 2020’s “Evermore,” a companion project to “Folklore,” which won the album of the year Grammy last year. She’s the only woman to ever win the Grammys’ album of the year award three times, after “1989” in 2016 and “Fearless” in 2010.
In addition to her video of the year VMA, Swift also picked up best longform video and best direction for “All Too Well,” a 15-minute short film set to her song of the same name. The emotional film stars Sadie Sink (“Stranger Things”) and Dylan O’Brien (“The Outfit”).
Swift is in the process of re-recording and re-releasing her first six albums, after her old masters were sold twice without her knowledge. In June, she released new song “Carolina,” which she wrote for the film adaptation of “Where the Crawdads Sing.”
