Taylor Swift Releases ‘Midnights,’ Her 10th Studio Album - The New York Times

The Easter eggs person been thoroughly examined for clues. The marbled vinyl has been pressed and sorted into collectible variants. The instrumentality hashtags are cued up.

It is clip for a caller Taylor Swift album.

“Midnights,” Swift’s 10th workplace LP, was released astatine midnight connected Friday, the latest section successful what has been an extraordinarily productive mates of years for Swift, who astatine 32 remains 1 of the astir potent originative forces successful music. She announced the 13-track “Midnights” 2 months ago, calling it “the communicative of 13 sleepless nights scattered passim my life,” and “a postulation of euphony written successful the mediate of the night, a travel done terrors and saccharine dreams.” (True Swifties — or, really, anybody who has paid mean attraction to Swift’s nationalist presumption implicit the years — knows her fascination with the fig 13.)

It is Swift’s 5th medium successful conscionable implicit 2 years, pursuing her quarantine-era, indie-folk-style “Folklore” and “Evermore,” and past “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” and “Red (Taylor’s Version),” the archetypal 2 rerecordings of her aboriginal albums, a task she undertook aft her erstwhile grounds statement was sold without her participation. “Folklore” won album of the year astatine the Grammys successful 2021.

In a sense, “Midnights” is Swift’s instrumentality to the popular pipeline aft her digressions of the past mates of years. Many of the lyrics, arsenic she suggested, lucifer late-night ruminations, pondering life’s pressures, aging, the meaning of love. On the 3rd track, “Anti-Hero,” she sings:

I person this happening wherever I get older but conscionable ne'er wiser
Midnights go my afternoons
When my slump works the graveyard shift
All of the radical I’ve ghosted basal determination successful the room

According to the album’s credits, astir of the songs were written and recorded with her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, and overmuch of it was recorded astatine Antonoff’s location workplace successful Brooklyn and astatine Electric Lady Studios, the Greenwich Village warren founded by Jimi Hendrix.

Another song, “Sweet Nothing,” was written by Swift with 1 William Bowery — an unfamiliar sanction that popped up successful the credits to “Folklore,” which Swift aboriginal acknowledged was a pseudonym for the histrion Joe Alwyn, her boyfriend. “They said the extremity is coming/Everyone’s up to something,” she sings connected the track. “I find myself moving location to your saccharine nothings.”

“Midnights” stands a precise bully accidental of being 1 of the year’s biggest sellers. Swift’s selling this clip has progressive a bid of kitschy videos connected TikTok that revealed opus titles, 1 astatine time, taken from Ping-Pong balls successful a basket, arsenic if connected a decades-old section TV spot. Swift adjacent displayed her release-week plan connected Instagram, with items laid retired connected a regular calendar: a “special precise chaotic surprise” connected Friday astatine 3 a.m. Eastern time; the merchandise of the euphony video for “Anti-Hero” astatine 8 a.m.; “The Tonight Show” connected Monday.

The video for “Anti-Hero,” written and directed by Swift, is simply a comic portrayal of Swift’s worries astir her nationalist representation overshadowing her backstage life, acceptable arsenic a campy retro fearfulness movie, implicit with a tan rotary telephone with the enactment cut. The clip includes a skit dramatizing the song’s lines astir a imagination successful which Swift’s household reads her volition aft “my daughter-in-law kills maine for the money.”

Beside the coffin we spot a representation of gray-haired Swift cradling a clump of cats, portion her heirs Preston (the stand-up Mike Birbiglia), Kimber (Mary Elizabeth Ellis from “It’s Always Sunny successful Philadelphia”) and Chad (the comedian John Early) reason implicit whether the enactment “to my children I permission 13 cents” contains a concealed encoded connection that means thing else. Then they read: “P.S. There’s nary concealed encoded connection that means thing else.”

Swift announced the formed of actors for different videos from the album, including Laura Dern, Laith Ashley, Dita Von Teese, Pat McGrath, Antonoff and the 3 members of the set Haim.

An important origin successful the income and illustration prospects for “Midnights” whitethorn beryllium Swift’s clasp of carnal euphony formats similar CDs and vinyl LPs, which, due to the fact that of the mode Billboard crunches information astir however euphony is consumed, tin person a large interaction connected illustration positions. Swift is releasing 4 modular versions of “Midnights” connected vinyl, each with its ain disc colour and screen art; they besides correspond to 4 variant CD versions. “Collect each 4 editions!” Swift’s website says. Target, which has had a agelong narration with Swift, has its ain exclusive LP mentation (on “lavender” vinyl) arsenic good arsenic a CD with 3 exclusive tracks.

The astir ingenious oregon shameless portion — instrumentality your prime — of Swift’s vinyl strategy is what she has done with the backmost covers. When turned astir and placed connected a grid, the 4 editions show 12 numbers that, erstwhile arranged properly, signifier the hours of a clock. “It could assistance you archer time,” Swift said, perfectly deadpan, successful a caller Instagram video.

And not conscionable that. For $49, Swift’s website sells the existent clock — a kit including 4 walnut wood shelves to clasp the LP jackets, “with brass metallic timepiece halfway piece,” the statement reads, “with 2 woody hands that each person ‘Taylor Swift’ printed successful brass ink.”

The tract adds: “While supplies last.”