Taylor Swift drops “3am version” of “Midnights” 3 hours after album’s 12 a.m. launch

Taylor Swift has stated “Midnights” was impressed by sure key sleepless nights — one thing lots of her followers undoubtedly skilled because the singer-songwriter dropped seven bonus tracks and a music video simply hours after the album’s launch Friday.

“Midnights” was launched at, properly, midnight Eastern time. With a runtime of round 44 minutes, listeners would have had the chance to play the album 4 instances earlier than Swift unleashed “Midnights (3am Edition).”

“Surprise! I consider Midnights as a whole idea album, with these 13 songs forming a full image of the intensities of that mystifying, mad hour,” she wrote on Instagram. “However! There have been different songs we wrote on our journey to seek out that magic 13.”

The bonus tracks match tonally with the remainder of the darkly electrical and moody album, starting with “The Great War,” sweeping throughout “Paris” and exploring “High Infidelity” earlier than ending with “Dear Reader.” In all, the seven extra songs — added to the top of the unique “Midnights” observe itemizing, embody about 25 extra minutes.

Swift is the only real credited performer on the bonus tracks — the one individual to get a featured credit score on any “Midnights” observe is Lana Del Rey. The further songs are primarily written by Swift, Jack Antonoff — her “co pilot” on the album — and Aaron Dessner, a founding member of The National and one other frequent Swift collaborator who was in any other case absent from “Midnights.”

“Watch my nightmare eventualities”

And 5 hours after “Midnights (3am Edition),” Swift handled followers to a visible feast with a muted however lush music video for “Anti-Hero.”

Written and directed by Swift herself, reunited with “All Too Well” cinematographer Rina Yang, the video sees the singer be chased by chintzy sheet ghosts and do photographs with a glammed-up double who instructs her: “Everyone will betray you.” Dark glitter oozes from the yolks she cuts into on the breakfast desk, her wound from an arrow and her mouth after one too many photographs.

“Watch my nightmare eventualities and intrusive ideas play out in actual time,” Swift posted on Instagram.

The video contains references to Swift’s consuming dysfunction, which she revealed in a documentary, and pokes enjoyable at herself with a cutscene that breaks in halfway. It options Mike Birbiglia, John Early and Mary Elizabeth Ellis enjoying her heirs (Preston, Chad and Kimber) who uncover she’s left them solely 13 cents in her will (Swift’s favourite quantity is famously 13).

“There’s in all probability a secret encoded message meaning one thing else!” Early exclaims in character, referencing the sphere of cryptology Swift has created through the years.

“P.S. There is not any secret encoded message meaning one thing else. Love, Taylor,” Birbiglia reads seconds later.

The “Anti-Hero” video racked up greater than 2 million views within the first three hours of its launch and spawned the #TSAntiHeroProblem. Swift is encouraging folks to add to YouTube Shorts a video of themselves sharing the traits that will make them an antihero. According to a blog post on YouTube, the problem is “all about acknowledging and celebrating the traits that make every of us really distinctive and showcasing one’s true self in a FUN approach.”

“An anti-heroic trait could possibly be so simple as all the time grabbing the final slice of pizza, clapping on the finish of flicks, all the time placing your ft on the automotive dashboard, utilizing the identical phrase to start out your each day Wordle, leaving your clear laundry within the basket till the subsequent time you do it, pretending you did not already watch the subsequent episode of the sequence you watch together with your friends, and even treating your cat like a human,” the put up stated. Swift selected that final one for her own submission.

While the problem provides levity to the discharge cycle, Swift is obvious on the tone she’s going for with the album and its related tasks.

“Midnights is a collage of depth, highs and lows and ebbs and flows,” Swift posted on Instagram when the unique album dropped. “Life might be darkish, starry, cloudy, terrifying, electrifying, scorching, chilly, romantic or lonely. Just like Midnights.”