Last Friday, Taylor Swift released her tenth studio album, “Midnights.” On August 28, Swift announced this new work would be coming out two years after her sister albums “folklore” and “evermore.” The album consists of 13 songs, all corresponding to 13 different sleepless nights.
Since this summer, Swift’s obsessed fans, known as “Swifties,” have been anticipating her new album. Unlike a traditional album release, “Midnights” had no lead single. The first time anyone heard any part of the album was on Friday, October 21. There was a lot of social media promotion leading up to the release, focusing on the phrase, “Meet me at Midnight.”
On the night of the release, fans met Swift at midnight and crashed the music streaming service, Spotify. I was one of the many fans to experience delays when trying to listen for the first time. Those four minutes of reading “unable to load” felt like an hour.
This is not the first time Taylor Swift has caused commotion on Spotify following a release. In November 2021 Swift re-released “Red (Taylor’s Version)” which also caused a crash on Spotify.
Across every music platform and in vinyl sales, “Midnights” broke numerous records in less than a week. This could be because of her devoted fans, or because she surprisingly released a “Midnights (3am Edition)” at 3:00 a.m. on October 21. This included seven additional songs.
After only four days “Midnights” had the biggest streaming week of the year with 357 million official streams combining audio and video. “Midnights” became Spotify’s most streamed album in one day and Swift broke a record personally by being the most-streamed artist in a single day on Spotify.
According to Billboard, just one day after the release, “Midnights” had the largest sales week for vinyl albums since Luminate, an entertainment data company, began tracking these types of sales in 1991.
The sales and streaming numbers of Swift’s “Midnights” has made it the biggest overall week for an album since 2015. In the United States, “Midnights” had traditional album sales of over 1 million digital downloads, CDs, vinyls and cassettes.
Three days after the release, Swift appeared on The Tonight Show. Swift revealed that this album was autobiographical which was overwhelming and the response from her fans is shocking.
The music video for the song “Anti-Hero” debuted on YouTube on Oct. 21 and has been number one on the music trending page since then. The video has surpassed 34 million views. Swift’s second video for “Bejeweled” which premiered on Oct. 25 has surpassed over 13 million views. “Bejeweled” has held the number two spot on the music trending page on YouTube since its release.
This new era for Taylor Swift has been deemed a success in just a week. Many fans believe there’s much more coming, like another music video and new merchandise items.