Everything We Know So Far About Taylor Swift’s New Album Midnights

As the clock struck midnight early Monday, Taylor Swift took to the streets—Instagram and Twitter, that is—to let the world know: another album is coming.

This one, titled Midnights, will tell “the stories of 13 sleepless nights” scattered throughout Swift’s life, and will come out at midnight, aptly, on Oct. 21.

Here’s everything we know so far about Swift’s new album.

The Announcement

At the Video Music Awards on Sunday night, the pop star won video of the year for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version),” starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien.

“I know with 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,” Swift said in her acceptance speech. “Because I wouldn’t be able to re-record my albums 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 21,” she continued. “And I will tell you more at midnight.”

The Release Date

As we very well know by now, there are no such things as coincidences for Taylor Swift. While Oct. 21 may not seem to hold any special significance, the date does coincide with a few other pop culture milestones.

Perhaps most significantly, the movie My Policeman—starring Harry Styles, who Swift formerly dated—releases on Oct. 21. Fans have speculated that the 2014 track “Style” off of the 1989 album was about Swift’s relationship with Styles.

Kim Kardashian’s birthday also falls on Oct. 21—another celebrity figure who Swift has seemingly written about in the past, with 2020’s “long story short” off of evermore. (The pair came into conflict in 2016, when Kardashian posted a series of videos on Snapchat in which her then-husband, Kanye West, openly discussed mentioning Swift on his 2016 song “Famous.”)

And maybe most innocuously, Canadian singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen is scheduled to release her newest album, The Loneliest Time, also on Oct. 21.

The Songs

As disclosed in Swift’s late-night posts, the tracklist of 13 songs is currently labeled exactly as such: Side A includes “Track One,” “Track Two,” “Track Three,” “Track Four,” “Track Five” and “Track Six” and Side B includes “Track Seven” through “Track Thirteen.” (An admirably concise lineup for an artist like Swift, whose last album, Red (Taylor’s Version), contained no less than 30 songs.)

“We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears,” Swift captioned her announcement post on Instagram. “We stare at walls and drink until they speak back. We twist in our self-made cages and pray that we aren’t—right this minute—about to make some fateful life-altering mistake.”

Swift has recently taken to social media (at, of course, midnight) to announce individual song titles, revealing that they will not, in fact, remain referred to by numbers alone. In an Instagram story series called “Midnights Mayhem With Me,” she has disclosed that: “Track Six” will be titled “Midnight Rain,” “Track Seven” will be “Question…?,” “Track Eight” will be “Vigilante Sh-t,” and “Track Thirteen” will be called “Mastermind.”

“This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams,” Swift continued in the caption. “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, when it releases, will mark Swift’s third album (after evermore and folkmore) produced during the pandemic—five albums if you include the two recently re-released “Taylor’s versions” (Red (Taylor’s Version) and Fearless (Taylor’s Version).) The singer-songwriter will also soon have four albums (including Midnights) that have yet to be toured.