Midnights
Midnights is the tenth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on October 21, 2022, by Republic Records. Swift conceived it as a concept album about nocturnal ruminations inspired by her sleepless nights. The autobiographical songwriting explores broad emotions such as regrets, self-criticism, fantasies, heartbreak, and infatuation, using confessional yet cryptic lyrics that allude to her personal life and public image.
For the time of day, see Midnight. For other uses, see Midnight (disambiguation).Midnights
October 21, 2022
- Electric Lady (New York City)
- Henson Recording (Los Angeles)
- Rough Customer (Brooklyn)
44:02
- Taylor Swift
- Jack Antonoff
- Sounwave
- Jahaan Sweet
- Keanu Beats
Swift and Jack Antonoff produced the standard edition of Midnights, which features a subdued electronic soundscape consisting of mid-tempo rhythms, retro synthesizers, sparse drum machine beats, and digitally manipulated vocals. Music critics categorize the album into pop styles of synth-pop, electropop, dream pop, and bedroom pop. The songs infuse electronica, hip hop, R&B, and alternative elements. Sounwave, Jahaan Sweet, and Keanu Beats shared credits on two tracks, and Aaron Dessner produced additional songs for an extended 3am Edition that was surprise-released three hours after the standard edition.
Swift announced Midnights at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards and unveiled the standard track list via the video-sharing platform TikTok. Midnights topped the charts across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Americas. In the United States, Midnights was Swift's 11th consecutive number-one album on the Billboard 200, her fifth to sell over one million first-week copies, and the best-selling album of 2022. Its songs made Swift the first artist to monopolize the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, with the lead single "Anti-Hero" peaking at number one; the other singles "Lavender Haze" and "Karma" peaked at number two.
Music critics regarded Midnights as an amalgamation of Swift's past albums. They praised her songwriting for engaging narratives and compositions; most of them complimented the production as restrained and tasteful, although a few found it derivative. Midnights featured on publications' rankings of the best albums of 2022 and won accolades including Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards (2024), making Swift the first artist to win the former category four times. Journalists dubbed the album's critical and commercial successes a testament to Swift's enduring cultural popularity. To support Midnights along with her other albums, Swift embarked on the Eras Tour (2023–2024).
Background[edit]
Taylor Swift's career has been characterized by artistic reinventions; she first emerged as a Nashville-based country musician in the 2000s and transformed into a mainstream pop star in the 2010s.[1] While self-quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic, Swift released two indie folk albums, Folklore and Evermore, in 2020.[2][3] On Folklore and Evermore, Swift collaborated with the indie artists the National and Bon Iver.[4] Her songwriting incorporated fictitious narratives and characters that dwell on nostalgia and escapism, which deviated from her previous autobiographical songs.[4] The albums shifted Swift's status from a mainstream pop star to an "alternative"-leaning musician and brought her widespread critical acclaim and recognition as a songwriter.[5]
In November 2020, Swift began re-recording her first six studio albums.[6] The decision followed a 2019 public dispute between her and the music executive Scooter Braun, who acquired Swift's former record label Big Machine and the masters of Swift's albums released by the label.[7][8] By re-recording the albums, Swift had full ownership of the new masters, which enabled her to control the licensing of her songs for commercial use and therefore substituted the Big Machine-owned masters.[9] In 2021, Swift released her first two re-recorded albums, Fearless (Taylor's Version) and Red (Taylor's Version), which both garnered more album-equivalent units than their original counterparts, Fearless and Red, in the same time period.[10] Critics and academics deemed Swift's re-recordings a key event contributing to a wider industry discourse on artists' rights and artist–label relationships.[11]
Amidst the re-recording projects, Swift sparked speculation on new music when she appeared as a guest at Haim's One More Haim Tour concert in London in July 2022; it was her first concert performance since 2019.[2][12] At the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards on August 28, Swift won three awards, including Video of the Year for All Too Well: The Short Film, which accompanies the track "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" from Red (Taylor's Version).[13] In her acceptance speech for Video of the Year, she announced a new studio album, slated for release on October 21;[14] the announcement attracted media attention and increased the show's viewership ratings.[15] After the show, Swift revealed the album title Midnights on her social media.[14] On music streaming platforms, Midnights was labeled "pop", which attracted media speculation on its sound after the "alternative"-labeled Folklore and Evermore.[2]
Artwork and aesthetics[edit]
The standard edition's cover artwork contains a square photo of Swift in blue eye shadow, black eye liner, and red lipstick, holding the flickering flame of a lighter close to her face.[79] The photo is at the bottom right corner, occupying half of the cover, and bordered on the top and left sides by off-white negative space.[80] The tracklist is on the bottom left, and the title Midnights is written in a blue gradient, printed on top of Swift's photo.[79] Publications found the track-list presentation to evoke the 1970s vinyl album jackets.[81][82] The fashion critic Jess Cartner-Morley found the cover to evoke the artwork of the English band Roxy Music's 1974 album Country Life and the French artist Guy Bourdin's photographs for Vogue France,[2] and Alex Bilmes of Esquire found Swift reminiscent of the English model Jean Shrimpton in the 1970s.[36] Some publications commented that the cover artwork was minimalist[79][80] and aligned it with the indie sleaze trend.[f] After Swift unveiled the cover on her social media, it created a trend and was parodied by many brands, celebrities, and athletic teams.[85][86]
Other promotional visuals for Midnights also have 1970s-inspired aesthetics.[87][88] The photographs and videos that Swift posted onto social media featured a clock face, family-room furniture with retro upholstery, and a rust velvet curtain in the background.[46][89][90] Her wardrobe incorporated embellishments that Vogue identified as "disco sequins" and "corduroy flare".[91] The covers for three other physical editions all feature 1970s memorabilia: a retro piano, a push-button telephone, and a wood-paneled wall.[79][82] Their reverse sides each portray a quarter sector of a dial and, when assembled together and combined with a clock mechanism sold separately, form a functioning clock.[92] The music videos for "Anti-Hero", "Bejeweled", and "Lavender Haze" all feature Swift in 1970s fashion: houndstooth polo sweaters, ribbed knit trousers, and sequined bodysuits.[g] Light said the "head-faking" 1970s visuals were contrary to the "contemporary" electropop sound of Midnights,[3] and Willman wrote that the 1970s sensibilities were at least complemented by the music's use of analog synthesizers.[46]
Commercial performance[edit]
Midnights was a major commercial success across all consumption metrics: streaming, digital sales, and physical sales.[78][128] It broke various records on music streaming platforms.[129] On Spotify, Midnights broke records for the highest single-day streams and the highest single-week streams.[130][131] It also claimed the highest single-day streams for a pop album and an album released in Dolby Atmos on Apple Music, the highest single-week streams for an album on Amazon Music, and the highest single-day requests on Amazon Alexa.[132] All of its tracks entered the Billboard Global 200 simultaneously; it set the record for the most simultaneous top-10 entries (nine) and made Swift the first artist to occupy the entire top five.[133]
In the United States, Midnights sold 800,000 copies after one day of release[134] and one million copies after five days, becoming Swift's record-extending fifth album to sell one million first-week copies.[135] The album debuted atop the Billboard 200 with first-week units of 1.578 million, consisting of 1.14 million sales and 549.26 million streams—the highest streams for a pop album.[136] Swift had her record-extending 11th consecutive number-one album debut and tied with Barbra Streisand for the most number-one albums among women.[136] It was the best-selling album of 2022, the second-best-selling album of 2023, and the second-most-consumed album of both years.[137] Swift became the first artist to have a yearly best-seller six times since Luminate tracked US music sales in 1991.[109] Midnights spent six weeks atop the Billboard 200.[127] Its songs, led by "Anti-Hero", made Swift the first artist to occupy the entire top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 the same week;[138] all 20 tracks from the 3am Edition charted in the top 45.[139] "Anti-Hero" and Midnights marked the fourth time Swift had a number-one album and song simultaneously, a first for any musician.[138] In November 2022, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album double platinum for surpassing two million US units.[140]
Midnights debuted at number one on the album charts in at least 14 countries, including Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden.[132] In Germany, it was Swift's first number-one album and had the largest streaming week for a solo artist in 2022.[141] In China, it sold nearly 250,000 copies within one day and made Swift the best-selling foreign artist of 2022.[142] On the Australian charts, it became Swift's 10th consecutive number-one album and claimed the biggest streaming and vinyl sales weeks in history.[143] "Anti-Hero" and Midnights marked Swift's third time to have a "Chart Double" by topping both the Australian album chart and singles chart the same week.[144] The other eight tracks also charted in the top 10 of the singles chart and marked the most top-10 songs simultaneously (nine) by an artist.[145] In the United Kingdom, Midnights sold over 140,000 units in its first three days to become the fastest-selling album of 2022.[146] It debuted atop the UK Albums Chart with 204,000 units, helping Swift achieve the shortest duration (10 years) for a female act to accumulate nine UK number-one albums.[147] Midnights spent five weeks atop the UK Albums Chart.[148] It sold 80,000 vinyl copies in 2022, the highest annual figure for an album in the 21st century, propelling total UK vinyl sales past CD sales for the first time since 1987.[149]
According to Universal Music Group, the album crossed three million album-equivalent units in its first week and six million in two months.[150] Bloomberg News reported that the album generated $230 million in sales for Universal in 2022, accounting for 3% of their annual revenue—the highest from any artist.[151] The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) recognized Midnights as the second-most-consumed album of 2022; it ranked third in pure sales (first in vinyl sales) and fifth in streams.[152] They named Swift the Global Recording Artist of the Year, which made her the first act to win the accolade three times (after 2014 and 2019).[153] Midnights received platinum or higher certifications in many countries, including double-platinum certifications in Australia,[154] Canada,[155] Poland,[156] and the United Kingdom,[157] and a triple-platinum certification in New Zealand.[158]
Impact[edit]
Midnights received extensive press attention before and after its release. The Guardian's Laura Snapes commented that the album was "likely to hang around longer" than other "superstar releases" by Swift's contemporaries because of her popularity on streaming services and the positive public image she had curated since her 2017 album Reputation.[2] In Fortune, Ashley Lutz argued that Swift's marketing strategy for Midnights proved she was a "business and marketing genius" akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero franchise.[1] For Snapes and Billboard's Katie Atkinson, Midnights came at a point when the public became invested in Swift's music after the critical success and reevaluation she received with the 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore and the 2021 re-recordings of Fearless and Red.[2][217]
Publications said the album's commercial success attested to Swift's longevity in the music industry. According to Billboard, it was the only album in 2022 that succeeded "evenly" across every consumption metric, namely streaming, album sales, and song downloads.[109] Five Billboard journalists collectively agreed that Swift, upon Midnights' release, was "the biggest pop star in the world right now",[217] and Yahr deemed 2022 a year of "all-Taylor all the time".[218] Molanphy argued that by employing savvy business tactics that tackled the constantly evolving chart rules, she broke previously "unthinkable" records by the likes of the Beatles and Drake, which was "mind-blowing" for a musician in the "17th year" of her career.[119] For The Guardian economics journalist Greg Jericho, it was an "amazing" feat that Swift remained culturally relevant "18 years into a recording career", a mark that surpassed the peak popularity of such musicians as the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and U2.[131][j]
Unterberger said the physical sales of Midnights were "not seen in decades",[219] and Anna Nicolaou in the Financial Times said they were unseen since the "1990s boy bands" era, labeling Swift "the last pop superstar".[220] The music publisher Matt Pincus called Swift "basically an intellectual property franchise [... like] a DC movie".[220] Noting a 2021 article from The New York Times that asked "if Adele couldn't sell more than a million albums in a single week, could any artist?" after her album 30 missed the mark, Rolling Stone's Ethan Millman responded that Swift "has once again moved the goalposts regarding what the music industry can see as possible from a major pop star."[221] Swift shared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon that she was astounded by the success: "I'm feeling very overwhelmed by the fans love for the record. I'm 32, so we're considered geriatric pop stars."[222]
Billboard commented in November 2022 that although the commercial success of Midnights was undisputable, "the legacy of the album within [Swift's] catalog [...] remains to be seen."[217] Molanphy observed that when the initial reviews were out, "few seem to think Midnights is Swift's very best album" and "nobody seems to agree on what [its] best or worst songs are."[119] Within one year of its release, on the rankings of Swift's 10 studio albums, Midnights appeared fifth on NME[223] and Entertainment Weekly[29] and sixth on Paste,[224] Spin,[225] and Slant Magazine.[226]
Notes