Ring ring, it’s Taylor Swift calling to fuel another theory (Picture: @taylorswift, TikTok)
If you’ve somehow managed to miss all the theories on your timeline surrounding Taylor Swift’s upcoming album Midnights, then you probably deserve a medal.
Midnights will be Taylor’s 10th studio album and our pop favourite has been going big as the record’s credits boast some serious star power.
Not only will Taylor be blessing us with her talented pen, but she’s enlisted the likes of Lana Del Rey, Batman actress Zoe Kravitz and Jack Antonoff to scribe some of the tracks too.
To settle some anticipation from fans, Taylor recently released the hour-by-hour schedule for how the Midnights drop is going to run but, it’s actually fuelled the speculation with one entry billed as a ‘special very chaotic surprise’.
This brings us to all those endless theories running wild on social media as one fan so eloquently put it: ‘Between keeping up with all of the student loan forgiveness updates and theories on the new Taylor Swift album, it’s shaping up to be a busy busy week.’
But are they just fans’ wildest dreams or very much a reality?
Midnights, Taylor’s 10th studio album, is out on October 21 (Picture: AP)
There are less than 48 hours until we find out but until then, have fun wrapping your mind around just a few…
Theories about Taylor Swift’s Midnights album
Karma’s a…
The tracklist for Midnights features a song titled Karma at number 11 and fans are convinced a lot of the clues about the track harken back to 2016.
This was the year that Kanye West released his controversial track Famous, in which he braggadociously claimed to have made Taylor famous. It’s possible Karma could be her response to her longtime foe, especially as she seemed coy about the song when announcing it in a teaser video.
But there’s an even bigger theory about this year…
In 2016, Taylor was expected to release her sixth studio album which was rumoured to be rock-inspired and titled Karma. However, this was the first time she broke her two-year pattern of releasing songs every two years and the next LP, Reputation, came in 2017.
A social media user also noticed that Kanye released the Famous demo on October 6, 2016, while Taylor announced Karma on October 6 this year.
Midnights is also being released six years after the so-called lost album…
The two-album theory
Will Taylor be dropping two albums on October 21? According to one theorist, this could be what she was referring to when teasing the ‘special very chaotic surprise’ at 3am on release day.
Midnights will hit streaming services at, well, midnight, but if the theory is correct, fans may be getting another album just three hours later.
Fans are bracing themselves for a ‘special very chaotic surprise’ three hours after the album drop (Picture: @taylorswift)
Expanding on the theory, the Twitter user wrote: ‘And you know what is in the music video i bet you think about me Those Numbers on the cake that people cant find out why are they there. And people were always telling that It means double somenthing bc 13 13 26 26=double and even 26:13=2 so it might means double albums??? [sic]’
Who is Niceboy Ed?
Taylor teased the album in a TikTok video showing her working with Jack Antonoff. Sounds pretty normal enough, only the song which soundtracked the clip was titled Life You Lead by an artist called Niceboy Ed.
Never heard of him? That could be because they’re a pseudonym to mask the identity of an already famous musician.
With ‘Ed’ in their name, the most obvious candidate would be Taylor’s longtime friend and collaborator Ed Sheeran, or could it be her boyfriend and actor Joe? Well, he’s already on the Midnights album under another pseudonym of William Bowery so it seems like an awful lot of effort to use two.
Or, could it be Taylor herself? The possibilities are endless.
Lover
It’s widely believed that Midnights will be the darker off-shoot of Taylor’s 2019 album Lover.
That’s not too much of a stretch considering the tracklist features numbers such as Anti-Hero, Karma, Sweet Nothing and Vigilante S**t. When Taylor swears in a song title, you know it’s real.
Is Midnights a sister album to Taylor’s 2019 album Lover? (Picture: Republic)
The two opening tracks are called Maroon and Lavender Haze and it sounds as though Taylor will tackle the reality of being in a high-profile relationship with Joe Alwyn.
Explaining the meaning behind the songs in an Instagram video, Taylor said: ‘I happened upon the phrase Lavender Haze when I was watching Mad Men and I looked it up because it sounded cool and it turns out it was a phrase in the 50s where they would just describe being in love. If you were in the lavender haze, then that meant that you were in that all-encompassing love glow.
‘I thought that was really beautiful. 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. 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.’
She added: ‘My relationship for six years, we’ve had to dodge weird rumours, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it. So this song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff.’
Taylor Swift’s Midnights album is out on Friday.
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Reality or your wildest dreams?
