Swift,Taylor-Midnights / Blood Moon Edition / SEALED
Swift,Taylor-Midnights / Blood Moon Edition / SEALED
Midnights is the tenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on October 21, 2022, via Republic Records. Announced at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, the album marks Swift’s first body of new work since her 2020 alternative folk albums, Folklore and Evermore. Midnights is a concept album about nocturnal contemplations, written and produced by Swift with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff.
Inspired by the “sleepless nights” of Swift’s life, Midnights contains confessional yet cryptic lyrics, ruminating themes such as anxiety, insecurity, self-criticism, self-awareness, insomnia, and self-confidence. Musically, the album experiments with electronica, dream pop, bedroom pop, and chill-out music styles, expanding on the synth-pop sound of Swift’s previous pop records. The songs are characterized by subtle grooves, vintage synthesizers, drum machine, and hip hop/R&B rhythms. After meager promotion of her 2020 albums, Swift returned to a traditional album roll-out with Midnights. She unveiled the track list on a TikTok series called Midnights Mayhem with Me from September 21 to October 7, 2022, and surprise-released seven bonus tracks on October 21. Midnights was met with widespread critical acclaim for its restrained production, candid songwriting, and vocal cadences.
Breaking numerous records globally, Midnights was a major commercial success across all formats of music consumption. It achieved the Spotify feat for the most single-day streams of an album and topped the charts in 30 territories, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. In the United States, it opened with over 1.5 million units, became 2022’s fastest and best-selling album, logged the largest vinyl sales week in the 21st-century, and marked Swift’s 11th number-one album on the Billboard 200. Media publications dubbed the album’s success a testament to Swift’s status as the leading pop star of the modern era.
The album spawned 10 top-ten songs on the US Billboard Hot 100—the most for any album—in the same week. The lead single “Anti-Hero” scored Swift her ninth number-one song in the US and topped the charts in 14 other territories; fellow tracks “Lavender Haze”, “Maroon”, “Snow on the Beach” featuring Lana Del Rey, and “Bejeweled” also achieved top-tier positions internationally. To support Midnights along with her other albums, Swift announced the Eras Tour (2023), but its Ticketmaster pre-sale crashed controversially.