“Midnights” is the 10th album by the Taylor Swift. After one week of release, it marks one of her most successuful albums to date.
So let’s find out some trivia and facts about the album.
- Midnights is the tenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift
- The album was released on October 21, 2022, via Republic Record
- It was announced at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards
- The album marks Swift’s first body of new work since her 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore
- Midnights is a concept album about nocturnal contemplation
- It is written and produced by Swift with Jack Antonoff as the main collaborator
- The album was inspired by “13 sleepless nights” of Swift’s life
- She adopted a glamorous visual aesthetic for the album, drawing from the 1970s fashion and art
- Eschewing the alternative folk sound of Folklore and Evermore, Swift experimented with electronica, synth-pop, dream pop and chill-out music styles in Midnights, employing subtle grooves, vintage synthesizers, drum machine and hip hop rhythms
- Its subject matter contains confessional yet cryptic lyrics, discussing self-criticism, self-assurance, insecurity, anxiety, and insomnia
- After the limited promotion of her previous studio albums, Swift returned to her traditional album roll-out with Midnights
- She unveiled the album’s track list on a TikTok series called Midnights Mayhem with Me from September 21 to October 7, 2022
- There Swift revealed a Lana Del Rey feature on the fourth track, “Snow on the Beach”
- Seven bonus tracks were surprise released on October 21
- They were followed by music videos for “Anti-Hero” and “Bejeweled”
- Midnights was met with widespread acclaim from music critics
- They praised its restrained production, candid songwriting, and vocal cadences
- The album broke the Spotify record for the most single-day streams for an album
- Midnights was also a major commercial success across all formats of music consumption
- In the United States, it became 2022’s fastest-selling and best-selling album
- Midnights also logged the largest vinyl sales week of the 21st century
- Elsewhere, it has so far topped the charts in Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom
- According to Swift, the subject matter of Midnights was inspired by five major topics: self-hatred, revenge fantasies, “wondering what might have been”, falling in love, and “falling apart”
- Swift enlisted her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, since 2013, to produce Midnights
- The duo wrote 11 of the album’s 13 songs together
- Of the remaining two, Swift wrote the track “Vigilante Shit” alone and “Sweet Nothing” with her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, who is credited with his pseudonym William Bowery
- Some bonus tracks were co-produced by Aaron Dessner, who had collaborated with Swift on her 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore
- She conceived the bonus tracks on their “journey to find that magic 13 [tracks]”
- Swift’s love life inspired the lyrics of “Lavender Haze” and “Snow on the Beach”, the former of which takes after the phrase “in the lavender haze” from the period drama series, Mad Men
- Swift wrote “Lavender Haze” after she and Alwyn had to protect their relationship from unsolicited scrutiny online (“weird rumors” and “tabloid stuff”)
- “Snow on the Beach” is about “falling in love with someone at the same time as they’re falling in love with you”, co-written by American singer Lana Del Rey
- The composition of “Lavender Haze” was first conceived by Antonoff when he heard Sounwave, one of his collaborators, press a button accidentally, playing a “small little loop” produced by Jahaan Sweet
- Sounwave edited the loop, adding “a bunch of effects”
- Sam Dew wrote some melodies to the loop with Zoë Kravitz, who had been working with Antonoff as well
- Antonoff then pitched the song to Swift, who wrote its lyrics
- “Glitch” was also born from these sessions
- Sweet further reached out to Swift via Antonoff with “Karma”, which had also been worked on by Keanu Beats
- The next day, Antonoff returned with “Karma” finished with Swift’s vocals on it
- In “Anti-Hero”, Swift detailed her insecurities, such as struggling with “not feeling like a person”
- Midnights received widespread acclaim from music critics, most of whom praised its subdued production and vocals
- On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized score out of 100 to ratings from publications, the album received a weighted mean score of 85
- Based on 25 reviews
- Indicating “universal acclaim”
- Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 7.9 out of 10
- Based on their assessment of the critical consensus
- Midnights broke the all-time Spotify record for the most streamed album in a single day, garnering 186 million streams in its opening day on the platform
- Thus surpassing the previous record of 155 million streams by Drake’s Certified Lover Boy (2021)
- Swift also became the most-streamed artist in a single day on Spotify, with 228 million streams across her entire catalog
- She became the first artist to cross the 200-million mark
- The album further broke the Apple Music record for the most-streamed pop album in a single day
- The Amazon Music records for the most-streamed album in a single day and week
- And the most single-day Amazon Alexa requests ever
- She had the most single-day streams in Spatial Audio on Apple Music
- In the United States, Midnights sold over 800,000 pure albums in its first day
- Including 400,000 vinyl LPs
- Instantly becoming the best-selling album of 2022
- It logged the biggest sales week for an album since Swift’s own Reputation (2017)
- And the most vinyl records sold in a week since 1991
- The album surpassed 1.2 million units within the first three days
- And reached 1.4 million units by the fifth day
- Consisting of 1.05 million album sales and 423 million streams
- It marked the largest opening week of the last five years and Swift’s career-best, surpassing 1989
- In the United Kingdom, Midnights sold over 140,000 units in its first three days
- Surpassing the opening-week tally of Harry Styles’ Harry’s House (113,000 units) to become the fastest-selling album of 2022
- Ultimately, the album debuted atop the UK Albums Chart with 204,000 units
- This is Swift’s highest first-week tally in her career
- She broke Madonna’s record for the shortest time for a female act to accumulate nine UK number-one albums
- And became the first woman since Miley Cyrus in 2013 to simultaneously debut atop both the albums and singles chart, following the number-one debut of “Anti-Hero” as well
- In Australia, Midnights became her record-extending tenth consecutive number-one album, with the biggest opening week since Reputation
- Midnights also set the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) records for the biggest streaming and vinyl sales weeks for an album
- All of the album’s standard tracks entered the ARIA Singles Chart
- Occupying the entire top 14 region, except the seventh spot
- With the debut of “Anti-Hero” atop the singles chart, Swift earned a record-breaking third Australian “Chart Double” of her career
- In China, Midnights sold over 200,000 digital albums in its first day on QQ Music
- In Germany, Swift scored her first number-one album on the Top 100 Albums chart with Midnights, garnering the largest streaming week for an album in the country at 20 million
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