Taylor Swift’s Intimate and Introspective Midnights Breaks Multiple Records

Throughout the years, Taylor Swift has been known to write country, pop, and alternative music. Her 10th studio album, Midnights, showed the world that Swift can still go back to her pop roots after releasing two alternative albums, Folklore (2020) and Evermore (2020). Swift released Midnights on October 21, 2022 for all of the world to hear.

Midnights is by far the most successful album Swift has released. Her previous album, Red (Taylor’s Version), reached 90.8 million streams at first release, Midnights shattered this record reaching 185 million streams on release day. Midnights also broke the all-time record for “most single day streams for an artist in Spotify history.” And Midnights broke records on Apple Music, including the biggest pop album of all time.

 Swift enjoys surprising her millions of fans by dropping albums without much advanced promotion. In 2020, she dropped her eighth album, Folklore, out of the blue in July of 2020. Evermore, her ninth album, surprised fans with an unexpected release in December 2020. These albums were majorly alternative, a genre-shift for Swift. In contrast to the two prior surprise album releases, on August 28, 2022, Swift announced in her speech at the VMA awards that her new album will be coming out on October 21, 2022. At the time, she withheld the name of the album to release it later at midnight, which is very on brand for her. In an August 25th Instagram post about her new album, Swift says, “Midnights, the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life, will be out October 21. Meet me at midnight.”

In the two weeks leading up to the October 21st release date, Swift built up anticipation and hype by posting videos each day, to excite listeners about the track titles. Swift referred to these videos as“Midnight Mayhem with Me.” She started with announcing Track 13, “Mastermind,” and ended the series with announcing Track 4, the only collaborated song on the album called “Snow on the Beach,” featuring Lana Del Rey. She also posted some explanatory videos for “Lavender Haze,” “Anti-Hero,” and “Snow on the Beach” to provide background for these songs and what they mean to her. She states in one of her videos, “Snow on the Beach, the song, is about falling in love with someone at the same time as they are falling in love with you. Sort of in this cataclysmic faded moment where you realize someone feels the exact same way as you feel, at the same moment. And you are looking around like: Wait is this real? Is this a dream? Is this for real? Is this happening? Is it really happening?  Kind of like what it would be if you were to see snow falling on the beach.” After delighting fans with an aptly timed release of Midnights at midnight, October 21st, Swift continued her tradition of surprises when she released Midnights (3am Version) at 3am. Midnights (3am Version) gave seven new tracks for listeners to hear for a total of 20 tracks on the album total. These tracks are called: “The Great War,” “Bigger Than The Whole Sky,” “Paris,” “High Infidelity,” “Glitch,” “Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve,” and “Dear Reader”.  

Internationally, her single, “Anti-Hero” debuted at No. 1 with 17.39 million streams, the biggest chart debut ever. All 13 songs on the standard edition of Midnights debuted into the top 13 on the global Spotify chart. The songs are the 13 biggest female streaming debuts in history.  Midnights earned its spot by holding all top 10 spots on the Billboard Hot 100. Swift is the first artist in history ever to accomplish all these records. She also broke the records for the biggest pure sales week for an album released in 2022, #1 best selling album of the year, and the first album in history to debut with more than 1 million pure copies in the US. Swift accomplished this by releasing four different versions of the Midnights standard edition vinyl and CD. They came in colors named, “Moonstone Blue, Jade Green, Blood Moon, and Mahogany.” Each cd costs around $13 and each vinyl costs $30. By purchasing and arranging all four of the vinyls or CDs, diehard Swifties are rewarded with an image of a clock face. Swift also offers working clock hands as an additional purchase to create a functional timepiece. Her slick marketing scheme helped her sell 575,000 vinyls and 1,578,000 cds in the first week.

In addition to unparalleled streaming success, Swift’s music videos also have done incredibly well. Swift released her music video for her global phenomenon song, “Anti-Hero.” The video was written and directed by Swift herself. The video featured celebrity comedians Mike Birbiglia, John Early, and Mary Elizabeth Ellis. A few days later, Swift releases her fairytale-like music video called, “Bejeweled.” This video includes Oscar-winner, Laura Dern, music producer of many of Swift’s albums (1989, reputation, Lover, and Midnights), Jack Antonoff, makeup legend, Pat Mc Grath, Dita Von Teese, and the Haim sisters, who will be opening for her in her “Eras Tour.”

The world has seen Swift break records before with many of her songs, like when Midnights surpassed her 2017 album, Reputation, the previous record holder for sales in its first week. But Midnights showcases Swift’s ability to connect with fans while luring over new ones with her deeply intimate and heartfelt lyrics like, “Ask me what I learned from all those years / Ask me what I earned from all those tears / Ask me why so many fade, but I’m still her” (Karma) or “And now that I’m grown, I’m scared of ghosts / Memories feel like weapons / And now that I know, I wish you’d left me wondering” (Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve). Midnights shows that Swift continues to break records, by being vulnerable and relatable to audiences.