midnights

When Taylor Swift first released her Midnights track, âSnow on the Beach,â fans were confused. The song featured Lana Del Rey, but the singer was barely heard throughout the track.
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Swift listened to her fans and soon released an updated version in May titled, âSnow on the Beach (Feat. More Lana Del Rey).â The track highlights Del Rey more, as she sings the entire second verse. In a new interview with Harperâs Bazaar shared on Tuesday (Nov. 21), Del Rey explains that she actually had a huge role in the first iteration of the song.
âThat was actually the song Taylor wanted me to sing on. If I think someoneâs song is perfect, I will act as a producer in it,â she explained. âI can mimic almost anyone, so I am all over the first version of âSnow on the Beach.â I layer and match her vocals perfectly, so you would never even know that I was completely all over that first song. She wanted me to sing the whole thing, but if it ainât broke, donât fix it.â
The original version of âSnow on the Beachâ became Del Reyâs highest charting song on the all genre Billboard Hot 100 to date â following the release of Midnights in November, the track debuted and peaked at No. 4 on the chart, where it spent a total of six weeks on the all genre tally. In a previous interview with Billboard, Del Rey that she wasnât aware she should have added more to âSnow on the Beach.â
âI had no idea I was the only feature [on that song]. Had I known, I would have sung the entire second verse like she wanted. My job as a feature on a big artistâs album is to make sure I help add to the production of the song, so I was more focused on the production,â she said. âShe was very adamant that she wanted me to be on the album, and I really liked that song. I thought it was nice to be able to bridge that world, since Jack [Antonoff] and I work together and so do Jack and Taylor.â
Elsewhere in the Harperâs Bazaar interview, Del Rey gushed over having the same tattoo as Adele â the word âparadiseâ written on the side of their hands. âI think we must have been on the same wavelength,â Del Rey said. âThatâs actually a cool little connection. I like that. Thatâs amazing.â
Adele performs on stage as American Express present BST Hyde Park in Hyde Park on July 02, 2022 in London, England.
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Watch the full interview below.
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After topping the chart for five weeks in late 2022 â including a decade-best debut in November, with over 1.5 million equivalent album units moved â Taylor Swiftâs Midnights returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart this week (chart dated June 10), interrupting Morgan Wallenâs 12 straight weeks atop the ranking with One Thing at a Time.
While the album didnât have far to climb â it was No. 3 on the June 3 chart, and has spent all of 2023 in the top 10 â Midnightsâ return to No. 1 comes off a 389% spike in equivalent album units in the United States this week, up to 282,000. Thatâs thanks to a variety of new physical and digital re-issues of the album, released May 26. Those included the new âlove potionâ purple marble variant of Midnights that was available in independent stores (and was also briefly for preorder sale on her web store earlier in the week), as well as two new deluxe editions.
Thereâs also the Til Dawn edition of Midnights that includes three bonus tracks: another version of the original albumâs Lana Del Rey-featuring âSnow on the Beachâ (this time with more Del Rey), a remix of âKarmaâ featuring buzzy rapper Ice Spice and âHits Different,â previously available only on the Target-exclusive physical edition of Midnights.
And thereâs also Midnights (The Late Night Edition) â which was very briefly for sale as a digital download on Swiftâs web store, and then in CD form at her three live shows at New Jerseyâs MetLife Stadium on May 26-28 â which includes those new takes on âSnowâ and âKarma,â and an original bonus cut, âYouâre Losing Me,â which is not yet available for streaming.
This is all in addition to the previously existing 3am Edition of Midnights, originally released just hours after the setâs standard edition.
All those variants combined to give Midnights its biggest week of the year, as well as â in terms of pure sales â the biggest single-week number for any album since Midnights debuted in November. Of the weekâs 282,000 equivalent album units, nearly 70% came from album sales (196,000) â with a decent chunk also coming in streaming equivalent albums (SEA) and a much smaller sliver also in track equivalent albums (TEA).
Of those 196,000 total unit sales, 62% were digital with 122,000 units, while the venue sales during those three MetLife dates also contributed about 22% for 43,000 units and internet/mail order purchases made up almost 11% for 21,000 units.
Breaking it down by format, digital still ruled the day for Midnights the past week, with 122,000 units sold — followed by CD (45,600) and vinyl (27,300), with cassette sales (100) making up only a small fraction of the pie.
Of the four editions of Midnights available for sale, the most purchased version was the Late Night Edition that was for sale at the MetLife shows and featured the previously unreleased “You’re Losing Me.” That version accounted for almost 75% of all sales with 146,300 units. The album’s standard edition sold 30,600 units, making up almost 16%; and the Til Dawn Edition sold 18,500 units for over 9% of all sales.
When you look at total sales of all four editions of the album since its Oct. 21 release, however, the standard edition is still dominant. That version has sold over 2 million units, while the 3am Edition and Late Night Edition follow with 162,800 and 146,300 units, respectively.
Breaking down Midnights’ total overall sales since release, vinyl leads with 1,167,300 units, followed by CDs with 786,900 units and digital sales with 391,300 units.
* Midnights (standard edition) = (13-tracks, physical + digital) – inclusive of: the newly released the “Love Potion” color vinyl variant; plus the previously released iTunes-exclusive version with a bonus spoken word track, four standard CD editions (each with a different cover); four vinyl LP editions (each with a different cover and colored vinyl) and a cassette tape; a Target-exclusive âLavenderâ edition of the album on CD and colored-vinyl LP, with the CD including three bonus tracks; signed copies of the four standard CD albums and the four standard vinyl LPs; and a deluxe boxed set with a CD edition of the standard album and a Swift-branded T-shirt, exclusively for Capital One cardholders; four digital alternative cover variants, each with a “behind the song” spoken word bonus track from Swift.
Midnights (The 3am Edition) = (20 tracks: 13 standard tracks + 7 bonus tracks; digital sales only, not available as a physical album)
Midnights (The Til Dawn Edition) = (23 tracks: 13 standard tracks + 7 â3am Editionâ tracks + 3 new bonus tracks; Digital Sales Only, not available as a physical album)
Midnights (The Late Night Edition) = (21 tracks: 13 standard tracks + 5 â3am Editionâ tracks + 3 bonus tracks; Physical + Digital)
Additional reporting by Keith Caulfield.
We got through Midnights, through 3AM and, now, weâve arrived at dawn. Taylor Swift unveiled a second deluxe version of her 10th studio album on Friday (May 26), titled Midnights (Til Dawn Edition). This iteration of the project features a remix of âKarmaâ with Ice Spice, a different version of the Lana Del Rey collaboration […]
Once again, Taylor Swift had fans meeting her at midnight on Friday (Feb. 10) for a new release â this time, a remix of Midnights album opener âLavender Haze.â
The remix of the violet-hued love song comes just two weeks after Swift dropped the dreamy âLavender Hazeâ music video, which she directed and co-starred alongside the sultry model and trans activist Laith Ashley. âThis one really helped me conceptualize the world and mood of Midnights, like a sultry sleepless 70âs fever dream. Hope you like it,â Swift said of the inspiration behind the music video.
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The original song, which was co-written by Swift, Jack Antonoff, actress ZoĂŤ Kravitz, Mark Anthony Spears, Jahaan Akil Sweet & Sam Dew, opens the 12-time Grammy winnerâs 10th studio album, Midnights. With the album, Swift made one of the most historic weeks in the 64-year history of the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, as she became the first artist to claim the surveyâs entire top 10 in a single frame. âLavender Hazeâ clocked in at No. 2, just behind lead single âAnti-Hero.â
Listen to the remix of âLavender Hazeâ below.
Taylor Swift encouraged her fans to âmeet me at midnightâ on Friday (Jan. 27), when she unveiled the much anticipated music video for her Midnights opening track, âLavender Haze.â
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Swifties have been waiting for the âLavender Hazeâ music video for months, especially since the âBejeweledâ music video premiered in late October. Swift shared the Cinderella-inspired âBejeweledâ visual just two weeks after dropping the first Midnights music video, which was for the albumâs No. 1 lead single, âAnti-Hero.â
Swift actually shared a teaser video for all of the albumâs music videos during Thursday Night Football, mere hours before Midnights hit streaming services Oct. 21. âThose projects are the Midnights Music Movies, the music videos that I made for this album to sort of explore visually the world of this record,â she said at the time. âI love storytelling, I love songwriting, I love writing videos, I love directing them ⌠Iâm really proud of what we made and I really hope you like them. We worked with some amazing actors.â
Watch the âLavender Hazeâ music video below.

Taylor Swiftâs Midnights continues its hot streak atop Billboardâs Top Album Sales chart, as the set spends its 12th consecutive, and total, week at No. 1 on the list dated Jan. 21. The album sold 25,000 copies in the U.S. in the week ending Jan. 12 (down 58%) according to Luminate.
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Midnights now has the most weeks at No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart since the Frozen soundtrack ruled for 13 nonconsecutive weeks in 2014. Midnights has the most weeks in a row at No. 1 since the Titanic soundtrack logged all 16 of its No. 1 weeks consecutively in 1998.
Midnightsâ total U.S. album sales now stand at 1.140 million.
Billboardâs Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chartâs history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
BTSâ Love Yourself: Her re-enters Top Album Sales at No. 2 following the setâs Jan. 6 release on vinyl. The effort, initially released in 2017, bounds back onto the chart with 20,000 sold (up 2,130%), with most of that sum from vinyl sales (18,000). Itâs the first time BTS has released an album on vinyl in the U.S., though the group has issued singles on vinyl.
Love Yourself: Her also debuts at No. 1 on Billboardâs Vinyl Albums chart, the first time a K-pop title has led list. It also halts Swiftâs stranglehold of the top spot with Midnights, pushing the album down to No. 2 after 11 straight weeks at No. 1.
Back on Top Album Sales, ATEEZâs Spin Off: From the Witness falls one spot to No. 3 (14,000; down 66%) while French Montanaâs Coke Boys 6: Gangsta Grillz, hosted by DJ Drama, debuts at No. 4 (11,000).
Fleetwood Macâs Rumours dips 4-5 (just over 7,000; down 17%), RMâs Indigo descends 3-6 (7,000; down 22%) and Michael Jacksonâs Thriller falls 6-7 (nearly 7,000; down 16%). Stray Kidsâ former No. 1 MAXIDENT re-enters the chart at No. 8 with nearly 6,000 sold (up 378%) after a new Target-exclusive CD edition of the album was released on Jan. 6.
Rounding out the top 10 are two former No. 1s: Harry Stylesâ Harryâs House (5-9 with nearly 6,000; down 32%) and Tyler, the Creatorâs Igor (7-10 with 5,000; down 23%).
In the week ending Jan. 12, there were 1.837 million albums sold in the U.S. (down 13.5% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.512 million (down 14.7%) and digital albums comprised 325,000 (down 7.5%).
There were 589,000 CD albums sold in the week ending Jan. 12 (down 13.6% week-over-week) and 915,000 vinyl albums sold (down 15.4%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 1.27 (up 3.4% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 1.996 million (up 33.2%).
Overall year-to-date album sales total 3.961 million (up 11.8% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 3.285 million (up 19.8%) and digital album sales total 676,000 (down 15.4%).

Taylor Swiftâs âAnti-Heroâ holds at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart this week, logging an eighth total week on top. The achievement also marks the superstarâs longest Hot 100 reign, surpassing âBlank Space,â which stayed at the summit for seven weeks in 2014-15.
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To celebrate, Swiftâs co-writer and producer Jack Antonoff took to his Instagram Stories on Tuesday (Jan. 17) to share a film-style photo of the two pouring drinks. âRemembering right before anti hero came out Taylor saying itâs her favorite song lyrically and thatâs why itâs [the] first single,â he wrote under the picture. âBut itâs a strange and personal one and we shouldnât expect it to ever go number 1âŚ. anti hero 8th week at 1 .. insane ..â
Antonoff is credited with co-writing 11 of the 13 songs on the original version of Swiftâs most recent studio album, Midnights, and even recorded a remix of âAnti-Hero,â featuring Antonoffâs solo project Bleachers.
In an Instagram post, Swift elaborated on the duo working on the project. âWeâd been toying with ideas and had written a few things we loved, but Midnights actually really coalesced and flowed out of us when our partners (both actors) did a film together in Panama,â she wrote. âJack and I found ourselves back in New York, alone, recording every night, staying up late and exploring old memories and midnights past.â
See below Antonoffâs celebration of eight weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 thanks to âAnti-Hero.â
Jack Antonoff vĂa IgâRecuerdo que cuando Anti-Hero se estrenĂł Taylor dijo que era su canciĂłn favorita en cuanto a composiciĂłn y eso es por lo que fue el primer single, pero es una canciĂłn extraĂąa y personal y no esperĂĄbamos que fuera #1 pic.twitter.com/AXxJEtFeX8â La Tia Puercaylor (@LaPuercaylor) January 17, 2023
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For this yearâs update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard is counting down our staff picks for the top 10 pop stars of 2022 all this week. At No. 3, we remember the year in Taylor Swift â who got started a little late in the calendar, but certainly didnât need long to make up for lost time.
After back-to-back years of releasing two full-length projects, Taylor Swift began 2022 on a relatively low-key note â well, as low-key as things can ever be for a global superstar still at the peak of her powers, at least.
There was the out-of-nowhere feud with the frontman of Blur and Gorillaz (yes, Damon, she really writes her own music), the first of two college courses announced in her honor (one at NYU, the next at Texas), a nostalgic reunion with one of her musical besties (Ed Sheeranâs âThe Joker & The Queenâ remix) â and letâs not forget the Virginia Tech scientists who cemented their Swiftie status in April by naming a new species of millipede âNannaria Swiftae.â In May, the singer/songwriter emerged to make her biggest public appearance of the year so far to give the NYU commencement address, urging the Class of 2022 to hold on to their enthusiasm, coolness be damned. âNever be ashamed of trying,â she said in the 20-minute pep talk. âEffortlessness is a myth.â
Billboardâs Greatest Pop Stars of 2022:Introduction & Honorable Mentions | Rookie of the Year: Steve Lacy | Comeback of the Year: Sam Smith | No. 10: Nicki Minaj | No. 9: Future | No. 8: Jack Harlow | No. 7: Doja Cat | No. 6: Lizzo | No. 5: Drake | No. 4: BeyoncĂŠ
Things started to pick up in the Swift cycle in the late spring/early summer, when the pop auteur continued to make strides in the film and TV worlds, including three new soundtrack moments: âThis Love (Taylorâs Version)â was re-recorded for Netflixâs teen drama series The Summer I Turned Pretty, the woodsy âCarolinaâ was written specifically for the book-to-big-screen adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing, and âBad Blood (Taylorâs Version)â was brought out of the kennel for DC League of Super-Pets. She also kicked off a still-ongoing film-festival circuit, promoting her self-directed All Too Well: The Short Film at Juneâs Tribeca Film Festival.
So now that weâve reviewed the first eight months of our reigning 2021 Greatest Pop Star, forget everything you just learned about Taylorâs 2022 â because the Swift Calendar Year didnât truly begin until Aug. 28. Thatâs when she hit the MTV Video Music Awards â a stage where sheâs made more than a few headlines over her 16-year career â to not only collect the eveningâs highest honor, but also to announce that she had a brand-new album called Midnights coming in October. All year, fans had been speculating about which of her Big Machine releases sheâd re-record next (all signs pointed to either 2010âs Speak Now or 2014âs 1989 as the likely contenders), never stopping to think that they might get a whole new album instead.
Thus began Swiftâs master class in modern-day album promotion, during which she set out to hit every corner of the music-buying public. There were the TikTok song-title reveals that kicked off on Sept. 21; then Midnights lyrics popped up on billboards from New York to London to Sao Paolo, Brazil, starting Oct. 17; and on Oct. 18, she began unveiling five things âthat kept me up at night and helped inspire the Midnights albumâ via Spotify, also in daily doses. But if youâre not on TikTok or Spotify and missed the global billboards, do you watch football? Because Swiftâs final pre-release push was an album teaser that premiered during Thursday Night Football, hours ahead of the albumâs arrival.
With all of these teasers and previews, there was one thing that wasnât revealed ahead of midnight on Oct 21: any music. Despite almost two months of lead time, no lead singles or music videos were released â which only bolstered the intrigue surrounding the album. Would it be stripped-down and understated like her most recent original albums, 2020âs folklore and evermore? Would it channel the adrenaline-rush pop of the trio of projects before that, 2019âs Lover, 2017âs reputation and 2014âs 1989? Or would Swift be newly inspired by revisiting the young country songwriter behind 2008âs Fearless and 2012âs Red for her pair of 2021 re-recordings?
The answer was really all of the above. You could recognize bits and pieces from all of Swiftâs eras throughout the project, with songs that are alternately dreamy (âSnow on the Beachâ with Lana del Rey, âSweet Nothingâ written with boyfriend Joe Alwyn), dancey (the shiny âAnti-Heroâ and âBejeweledâ), and razor-sharp (âVigilante Shitâ). A lot of the familiarity could be attributed to the omnipresence of Jack Antonoff, whoâd worked with Swift since 1989 and was the lone co-producer credited on the 13 songs. In the headline for its review, The New York Times said Swift was âcaught between yesterday and tomorrowâ on the album, but it feels more apt to look at Midnights like a massive snowball that has all of Taylorâs previous albums rolled up inside it, while still glistening and new on the outside.
And to keep that snowball rolling, only three hours after the standard albumâs release, Swift surprised fans with the expanded 20-song 3am Edition, this time teaming up with her other go-to producer, Aaron Dessner, for six of the seven songs. Fans who had already had time to listen to the 44-minute original at least four times since midnight were thrilled to have even more lyrics to decode and soundscapes to live in â including the buzziest bonus track âWouldâve, Couldâve, Shouldâve,â which fans speculated was about her brief relationship with John Mayer and their 13-year age gap. Five hours after that, Swifties had yet another new release to devour: The âAnti-Heroâ video â the first of many Midnights Music Movies promised in the Thursday Night Football teaser â dropped at 8 a.m. ET on Oct. 21 and features the pop star attending her own funeral, with Mike Birbiglia, John Early and Mary Elizabeth Ellis playing her adult children. That wasnât the only release-week music video either: On Oct. 24, the appropriately blingy clip for âBejeweledâ arrived, co-starring Laura Dern and Haim as the wicked stepmother and stepsisters in Swiftâs very own Cinderella story.
While all of this is a lot, even by Swiftâs overachieving standards, the full-court press paid off in spades when Midnights scored the largest week for any album since Adeleâs 25 in 2015, moving 1.578 million equivalent album units in its debut frame, and the biggest sales week since Taylorâs own reputation in 2017, with 1.14 million in traditional album sales. The blockbuster easily conquered the Billboard 200, and over on the Billboard Hot 100, Swift became the first artist in history to hold all top 10 slots, led by the chart-topping âAnti-Heroâ; in addition, all 20 songs from the project hit the tally.
In the month-plus since Midnightsâ release, Swift has continued to fend off some pretty fierce competition on the chart, with the catchphrase-spawning âAnti-Heroâ besting new music from both Rihanna and Drake to hold strong at No. 1 on the Hot 100 for six weeks â only falling to Mariah Careyâs perennial Christmas chart-topper this week. In the early frames, she got a sales boost from a series of âAnti-Heroâ remixes, including one featuring Antonoffâs band Bleachers. (Drake seemingly took notice of his Republic labelmateâs aggressive strategy, covering up Swiftâs No. 1 slot with emojis when he re-posted the Hot 100 top 10 the week that Her Loss, his joint album with 21 Savage, hit the chart.)
While this year has been another monumental one for Swift, 2023 is shaping up to be even more massive, with the Nov. 1 announcement of the Eras Tour, her first proper trek in nearly five years, which is setting out to encapsulate all the material sheâs released in the past decade and a half. The overwhelming demand to be at one of Taylorâs 52 shows just about broke Ticketmaster (in both the immediate and long-term senses), which is currently being sued by disgruntled Swifties locked out of the ticket-buying process and was even taken to task by Swift herself. âItâs truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them,â she said in an Instagram statement on Nov. 18. Following her crusades to get better pay for artists from Apple Music and grant ownership of master recordings to musicians, perhaps reforming Ticketmaster can be Swiftâs next pet project.
In addition to her tour and whatever Taylorâs Versions that may await her, Swift has several major awards shows to attend next year too. After being the top winner at the 2022 American Music Awards, MTV EMAs and Peopleâs Choice Awards â and being named songwriter-artist of the decade at the Nashville Songwriter Awards â Swift has a shot at winning her first Golden Globe in January (original song for âCarolinaâ) and could nab four more Grammys in February to add to her 11, including one Big Four possibility: song of the year for âAll Too Well (10 Minute Version) (The Short Film).â Then thereâs her new side hustle as a filmmaker: After getting a taste of directing with her music videos and All Too Well (The Short Film), Swift is set to make her directorial debut with an unnamed Searchlight Pictures production for which she wrote the original script.
Given Swiftâs staggering accomplishments in 2022, it might be hard to believe that she doesnât repeat as Billboardâs Greatest Pop Star this year â but the wildest part is just how much of her year was piled into these past few months. Looking at whatâs on the horizon, it looks like sheâs ready to snatch the crown right back in 2023. Remember what she told those college kids: âNever be ashamed of trying.â
Sadie Sink is a Swiftie through and through â and not just because she starred in Taylor Swiftâs All Too Well: The Short Film.
In a new interview with Elle, the Stranger Things actress revealed that she listened to Swiftâs 10th studio album, Midnights, and her top tracks are âLabyrinth,â âSweet Nothing,â and âYouâre on Your Own, Kid.â The third one on the list, she explained, is âtrack five â itâs always the best one.â
Sink was hand-picked by Swift to star in the epic âAll Too Wellâ short film alongside Dylan OâBrien, chronicling seven chapters of a coupleâs relationship. The 10-minute, expanded version of the fan-favorite track was featured on Red (Taylorâs Version), released in November 2021. âOf course itâs such an iconic song and the way she brought that to life on screen was really special so it was an honor to be a part of it,â Sink previously told Glamour.
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Swiftâs recent album, Midnights, spent five nonconsecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200 albums chart, and was recently dethroned by Metro Boominâs superstar-filled album Heroes & Villains on the Dec. 17-dated chart.
The last Swift album with more weeks at No. 1 is Folklore, which notched eight nonconsecutive weeks atop the list in 2020. Since then, sheâs claimed four more chart-topping albums: Evermore (four weeks at No. 1 in 2020-21), Fearless (Taylorâs Version) (two weeks, 2021), Red (Taylorâs Version) (one week in 2021) and Midnights (five weeks so far).