Taylor Swift’s highly-anticipated 10th studio album Midnights dropped today (October 21) and fans have been going wild on social media. Swift surprised fans with seven bonus tracks when she dropped Midnights (3am Edition) at 3 am. They include “The Great War,” “Bigger Than the Whole Sky,” “Paris,” “High Infidelity,” “Glitch” “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” and “Dear Reader.” As promised, she released the music video for track 3: “Anti-Hero.” Per her Midnights Manifest schedule, lyric videos to the album will be released at 8 pm ET Friday.
Directed by Swift herself, the award-winning singer-songwriter dropped Easter eggs and cinematic parallels throughout the whole video, calling back to previous eras. Here’s a thread pointing out all of those hidden details from the mastermind herself. As always, Swift took to Instagram to debut some behind-the-scenes pictures from the “Anti-Hero” music video shoot. The singer introduced the video by writing, “Watch my nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts play out in real time.”
Watch the “Anti-Hero” music video below.
Swift wrote of her bonus tracks, “Surprise! I think of Midnights as a complete concept album, with those 13 songs forming a full picture of the intensities of that mystifying, mad hour. However! There were other songs we wrote on our journey to find that magic 13. I’m calling them 3am tracks. Lately I’ve been loving the feeling of sharing more of our creative process with you, like we do with From The Vault tracks. So it’s 3am and I’m giving them to you now.”
One of the bonus tracks in particular was noticed by Swifties as being a dig at Taylor’s ex-boyfriend John Mayer. She already wrote “Dear John” about him on her Speak Now (2010) album. The two dated briefly between 2009 and 2010, when she was 19 and he was 32. Now, track 19, titled “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” seemingly calls out Mayer once more, firing up Swifties once again. The song’s chorus features lyrics: “I damn sure never would’ve danced with the devil / At nineteen / And the God’s honest truth is that the pain was heaven / And now that I’m grown, I’m scared of ghosts / Memories feel like weapons.” Following that, Swift’s lyrics are: “If you never touched me, I would’ve / Gone along with the righteous.”
“Taylor really put Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, a song directly about her relationship with John Mayer when she was just 19, as TRACK 19 ON THE ALBUM. SHOTS WERE FIRED,” wrote one person on Twitter. “john mayer was sleeping peacefully but was awoken at 3am with a chill down his spine” wrote another. “something tells me john mayer just jumped out of his sleep with a gasp. i know he felt a shift,” wrote one person. Another found it amusing that Mayer was called out, writing, “i cant stop laughing taylor really said actually i don’t want to wait for speak now taylors version to be released to drag john mayer i need him to suffer NOW.”
Check out the songs from Midnights below:
