Taylor Swift’s Midnights: All the conspiracy theories around the album release

Taylor Swift has turned her music into an escape room-esque adventure, and her fans are more than happy to play detectives. Here are their wildest theories about the pop superstar’s latest album, Midnights.

Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album, Midnights, is coming out on Friday at 3pm Sydney time (midnight in the east of the US), and her dedicated fanbase of Swifties have already lost a lot of sleep over it.

The pop superstar is renowned for teasing music releases, track titles, and themes in her social media posts, music videos, interviews, and even outfits.

No clue or wink at fans in Swift’s two decade-long career has proved unintentional.

As a result, the 32-year-old has created a ravenous fanbase of pseudo-detectives who analyse her every move for hidden messages.

In an interview with Jimmy Fallon in 2021 Swift famously said: “All I started thinking of was, how do I hint at things, like how far is too far in advance? Can I hint at something three years in advance? Can I even plan things out that far? I think I’m going to try to do it.”

Taylor Swift’s long-awaited Midnights album will be released at 3pm on Friday (Australian time). Picture: Getty Images

Since she announced Midnights at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), fans backcombed Swift’s socials for any clues to the album’s release — and realised they’d missed a lot.

Swift actually unveiled the title and release date, multiple times, in old Instagram posts.

Swift’s 10th studio album has sent fans into a frenzy of conspiracy theories …

“I think that it is perfectly reasonable for people to be normal music fans and to have a normal relationship to music,” Swift said. “But if you want to go down a rabbit hole with us, come along, the water’s great.”

The biggest theory circulating about Midnights is that we’ll actually be getting not one, but two albums.

The “Karma” theory goes like this: Up until 2016, Taylor had released an album every two years like clockwork.

Her debut came out in 2006, Fearless in 2008, Speak Now in 2010, Red in 2012, and 1989 in 2014. And then in 2016, nothing.

But that was the year Kim Kardashian leaked a snippet of the phone call that supposedly took place between Swift and Kanye West about his song “Famous”.

The Snapchat story dominated global headlines and brought Swift so much social media hate that she disappeared from the spotlight for nearly a year — the full emotional impact of which she detailed in her documentary Miss Americana.

Fans believe this long lost album “Karma” may be the “secret chaotic surprise” Swift has diarised in the photo of her calendar for Friday, three hours after Midnight’s release (although the surprise may simply be a 2023 World Tour announcement).

Their key “evidence” for this comes from the 2020 music video for The Man, in which

the word karma is graffitied on a wall alongside Swift’s other album titles.

And there’s also a big MISSING sign right between it and 1989.

@kenzieh0esley

she knew exactly what she was doing #tsmidnights#midnightsmayhemwithme#karma

♬ The Man - Taylor Swift

Another big clue was a 2016 interview with Vogue, in which Swift cryptically said “Karma is real”.

Meanwhile, others believe the 11th song on Midnights (titled Karma) may just be a Kanye diss track.

The original demo of Kanye’s song leaked on October 6, 2016, and Swift announced the song Karma on October 6 of this year.

A separate cohort of Swifties believe Midnights to be the B-side of her seventh studio album Lover, which was originally called Daylight.

In the outro of the song Lover, Swift talks about how she hopes to be defined by the things she loves rather than things that “haunt her in the middle of the night”.

All will be revealed at 3pm on Friday.

According to fans, Midnight is the antithesis to Swift’s Daylight, and therefore must be the sister to the 2019 record, which came out three years ago.

Coincidence or crazy?

Or given, Swift’s propensity and flare for the dramatic, is it crazy enough?

We’ll soon find out.

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