Taylor Swift knows she has a, well, reputation for dropping bread crumbs across her social media and music for eagle-eyed fans to decode and decipher. But that’s not what she’s up to this time around.
She’s ready to give her fans some straightforward information, posting a TikTok first thing Wednesday (Sept. 21) — at the stroke of midnight, naturally — with a very cable-access vibe and the title “Midnights Mayhem With Me.” The superstar singer/songwriter, wearing a mustard blazer and sitting in front of a brown crushed-velvet backdrop, had a gold lottery-ball cage next to her with ping-pong balls labeled 1 to 13, representing each track on her Midnights album, due Oct. 21.
“I know I have a habit of dropping cryptic clues and easter eggs when giving you information about new music, and I’m not here to deny that, but I am here to defy that,” she says to intro the clip. “Welcome to a new series I’m calling ‘Midnights Mayhem With Me.’ I am going to be using this technologically advanced device to help me allow fate to decide exactly what track titles I’m going to be announcing and in what order.”
She proceeds to draw the first ball from the cage, and what do you know? It’s Track 13, representing Swift’s very famous lucky number. “The first track I’m going to tell you about is Track 13, because of course,” she says with a smirk, before picking up a red phone and revealing into the receiver: “Track 13 is called ‘Mastermind.’”
So maybe she isn’t beating around the bush this time around, but she isn’t exactly spilling her guts either, as that’s the only intel fans will get… for now.
“Midnights tracklist reveal!!” the TikTok video is captioned. “Introducing: Midnights Mayhem with Me.”
It remains to be seen how often she’ll roll out episodes of this series, but it seems like we can count on a showtime of midnight when she does.
Before the song-title reveal, Swift was honored at NSAI’s Nashville Songwriter Awards on Tuesday night as the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade. She gave a speech and delighted the crowd with a surprise performance of her 10-minute “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version).” Billboard was on the scene, so stay tuned for our reporting from Nashville.
Watch the inaugural episode of Midnights Mayhem With Me here.
