It is a mere week away until fans everywhere can enter the world of Taylor Swift’s Midnights, and this month has been nothing short of chaotic – as our queen said herself. Midnights is the first new album, not counting re-recordings, since Lover to get a full rollout promotion – folklore and evermore were both surprisingly announced less than 24 hours before their release. Of course, being surprised by your favorite artist is fun, but there is truly nothing like reading fan theories and decoding easter eggs on the internet with fellow swifties! Here are four theories about Midnights, to get you ready about what keeps Swift up at night:
- Who is niceboy ed?
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Swift has been no stranger to TikTok since her first post in Aug. 2021 and has used it as another outlet for her special easter eggs, like teasing the “All Too Well” short film pre-Red (Taylor’s Version) release. On Sept. 16, she posted a short montage video with the caption “the making of Midnights.” But what caught the eye of curious fans was the song attached to the video released the day prior, titled “life you lead” by an unknown artist named niceboy ed. A simple search reveals that niceboy ed has no other music, no posts on Instagram besides promo for this song, and no other engagement on social media. Swift follows this artist on Instagram, as well as her long-time boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn. Fans have speculated that niceboy ed is actually an alias for Alwyn and that it could be him singing in the song or at least someone connected to him. Alwyn has been credited on Swift’s song “Exile” with writing credits under the name William Bowery, so this definitely is a possibility. Maybe Swift and Alwyn have worked together on Midnights as well.
- Midnights Mayhem With Me
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Speaking of Tiktok, Swift has gone even further this year on the app, using it to reveal all 13 tracks from Midnights through a series of videos – posted at midnight, of course. In the first episode, posted on Sept. 21, Swift swears that she is here to defy the cryptic easter eggs and messages by revealing the track titles one by one and in random order. These reveals are nothing short of chaotic, with them being posted sporadically on different days and concluding with five videos being released in one special night – Oct 7. Not only that but in the videos revealing track eight “Vigilante Shit” and track three “Anti-Hero,” Swift holds the red phone to her ear upside down! This can’t possibly be an accident because the professional sleuths on the Taylor Swift subreddit said so! Those fans have speculated these songs are potential singles with music videos or even remix tracks on special editions of the album.
- The Tracklist
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Now that all 13 song titles have been revealed to the world, fans can truly mentally prepare for this album’s incoming emotional repercussions. Some of my favorite titles so far are “Lavender Haze,” “Sweet Nothing,” and “Snow on the Beach” featuring Lana Del Rey (I’m having an internal freakout). Thank you Jack Antonoff for finally making this collaboration a reality. But what exactly is the story of this album? Coming off the tails of folklore and evermore, which were almost exclusively fictional storylines, Midnights has the potential to be so many different things. What is known so far, is only what Swift shared in the caption of the album reveal Instagram post: “Midnights, the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life, will be out October 21”. Were these songs written in the present? Or could they be abandoned projects from her past that have been revisited? Or even a combination of both?
- What is “Karma?”
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This article would not be complete without discussing the implications of a song titled “Karma” on this album. Twitter exploded with excitement after this specific track reveal, and Swift even giggled in her TikTok knowing the chaos she was unleashing onto the internet. Veteran Swifties would recall a long-time theory that an album dubbed Karma was created but scrapped in 2016 after the Kanye West/Kim Kardashian drama that exiled Swift from the internet for over a year. Before this, Swift had released a new album every two years like clockwork until the delay of Reputation in 2017. The word karma and the phrase “Karma is real” was seen in graffiti in the “The Man” music video and cryptically dropped in her “73 Questions” with Vogue video. Could this be a long-lost song from the long-debated scrapped album? Will “Karma” finally get its moment to shine?