Taylor Swift kept the “Midnights” oil burning later than usual late Thursday night and early Friday morning, revealing not just the name of one song at midnight, as has been her custom in the buildup to the Oct. 21 album release, but all five of the remaining mystery track titles, one per hour, until she finally reached a grand finale at 4 a.m. ET.
That very last track reveal brought — as she promised in a caption — “QUITE the twist of an ending,” with Lana Del Rey revealed as making the only featured guest appearance on the album. Del Rey will make her cameo on a song titled “Snow on the Beach,” which will be track 4 on “Midnights.”
The other four tracks whose titles were revealed in the wee hours as night went into morning were “Lavender Haze,” set to be the first track on the album; “You’re on Your Own,” track 5; “Labyrinth,” track 10; and “Sweet Nothing,” track 12.
The first-time collaboration of Swift and Del Rey perhaps should not be as shocking as it first seemed to drowsy onlookers when she dropped the news at 4 a.m., as the two pop superstars share a fairly constant co-producer/co-writer, Jack Antonoff.
As the clock struck 12 on the east coast, Swift first revealed “Lavender Haze” and left a video message explaining the meaning of the song on Instagram — something she didn’t do for any of the other songs being revealed early Friday, and something she’d previously only done for one other forthcoming song, “Anti-Hero,” a few days ago.
“‘Lavender Haze’ is Track 1 on ‘Midnights,’” she said in the video, “and I happened upon the phrase ‘lavender haze’ when I was watching ‘Mad Men.’ And I looked it up because I thought it sounded cool, and it turns out that it’s a common phrase used in the ’50s where they would just describe being in love. Like, if you were in the lavender haze, then that meant that you were in that all-encompassing love glow — and I thought that was really beautiful. And I guess theoretically, when you’re in the lavender haze, you’ll do anything to stay there and not let people bring you down off of that cloud. And I think a lot of people have to deal with this now, not just like ‘public figures,’ because we live in the era of social media, and if the world finds out that you’re in love with somebody, they’re going to weigh in on it. Like my relationship for six years: we’ve had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it. And so this song is about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff. I hope you guys like it.”
In her previous explainer for a new song, Swift talked about “Anti-Hero” on Monday, calling that track “one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. I really don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before. You know, I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized, and that I, you know… not to sound too dark, but, like, I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person. But don’t feel bad for me. You don’t need to. But this song is a real guided tour throughout all the things that I tend to hate about myself. We all hate things about ourselves, and it’s all of those aspects of the things we dislike and like about ourselves that we have to come to terms with if we’re going to be this person. So, yeah, I like ‘Anti-Hero’ a lot because I think it’s really honest.”
The other song titles Swift had revealed previously besides “Anti-Hero” (which is track 3 on the album) were “Maroon” (track 2), “Midnight Rain” (track 6), “Question…?” (track 7), “Vigilante Shit” (track 8) and “Mastermind” (the closing track, 13).
Beyond the basic 13 songs, a Target deluxe edition will include a 14th original song — that title still remains a mystery — along with two remixes.
Production credits for “Midnights” have not been revealed — nor has anything about the musical style, for that matter — but a making-of video montage Swift put online weeks ago depicted only Antonoff joining her in the studio, leading many fans to believe he may be the singer’s sole production partner on the new album.
No singles or even song snippets have been revealed from the album so far. At this point, it appears as though Swift may head into the Oct. 21 album release without having previewed a single second of the new music or even describing what it might sound like, although all things are subject to last-minute surprises in Swift-world, as the Del Rey reveal proved.
