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Midnights Era

2022-2024

“Meet me at midnight.” With the release of her tenth studio album, Midnights, Taylor became more universally loved than ever before. And when 20,000 people regularly started showing up outside her sold out “The Eras Tour” stadium shows a couple of months later, it became clear that something unique was happening: Sixteen years into her career, Taylor managed to hit a new height of popularity. Welcome to Taylormania.

How do you measure the impact of a musician in the 2020s? Streams can be bought. Awards can be finessed. Is it when demand for show tickets leads to a congressional hearing about Ticketmaster’s policies? Or when flight attendants shout out a fanbase making a pilgrimage to see the opening night of a tour, in a city officially renamed to Swift City to mark the occasion? Or when one lyric launches a global resurgence of trading friendship bracelets? Nearly a decade ago, Time ran a headline declaring ‘Taylor Swift Is The Music Industry’ and those with even the slightest pulse on pop culture could tell she’d only grown more omnipresent since. It all led to Midnights and “The Eras Tour.” In March 2023, Taylor debuted a discography-spanning setlist that lasted over three hours and kicked off an aptly-named stadium run, destined to become the highest-grossing concert tour of all time. In 2023, Taylor Swift single-handedly was Pop Culture.

Laying Low in London

The beginning of Taylor’s new career peak was surprisingly quiet. She dropped off the radar during the first half of 2022 while she was working on her secret new project, Midnights, spending most of her time in London with then-partner Joe Alwyn. Over the new year, tabloids had been reporting engagement rumors, which were neither confirmed nor denied by Taylor’s publicist. The media was simply craving new Taylor content because her public appearances had become rare; in May, she received an honoray doctorate degree from New York University and held an inspiring commencement speech for the Class of 2022. She also appeared at select film festivals to promote her short film for “All Too Well.” But that was it. It all felt like the calm before the storm.

Meet Me At Midnight

Just as August 2022 was coming to and end, Taylor shocked the music world by finally announcing her very well-kept secret at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards while accepting the “Video of the Year” award for “All Too Well (The Short Film)“:

«I wouldn’t be able to re-record my albums if it weren’t for you. You emboldened me to do that. And I had made up my mind that if you were going to be this generous and give us this [award], I thought it might be a fun moment to tell you that my brand new album comes out October 21. And I will tell you more at midnight.»

Taylor Swift

She kept her promise, revealing on social media that the record (unsurprisingly) contains 13 tracks. “This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams,” she wrote. “The floors we pace and the demons we face. For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching — hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve … we’ll meet ourselves.”

Songwriter-Artist of the Decade

Ahead of the release of her new album, Taylor was named the “Songwriter-Artist of the Decade” for her work in the 2010s by the Nashville Songwriters Association International. On September 20, she gave a 13-minute speech at the NSAI 2022 Nashville Songwriter Awards, which took place at Nashville’s storied Ryman Auditorium. She discussed her history as a songwriter, the way she categorizes the songs she writes, and the process of re-recording her first six albums:

«I’m up here receiving this beautiful award for a decade of work, and I can’t possibly explain how nice that feels. Because the way I see it, this is an award that celebrates a culmination of moments. Challenges. Gauntlets laid down. Albums I’m proud of. Triumphs. Strokes of luck or misfortune. Loud, embarrassing errors and the subsequent recovery from those mistakes, and the lessons learned from all of it. This award celebrates my family, and my co-writers, and my team. My friends, and my fiercest fans, and my harshest detractors, and everyone who entered my life or left it. Because when it comes to my songwriting and my life, they are one and the same.»

Taylor Swift

Before closing out her speech, she also said: “Writing songs is my life’s work, and my hobby, and my never-ending thrill. I am moved beyond words that you, my peers, decided to honor me in this way for work I’d still be doing if I had never been recognized for it. […] Writing songs is a calling, and getting to call it your career makes you very lucky. You have to be grateful every day for it, and all the people who thought your words might be worth listening to. This town [Nashville] is the school that taught me that. To be honored by you means more than any genre of my lyrics could ever say. Thank you.”

A Real Legacy to Leave

During a 12-month stretch that would’ve been memorable for any one milestone, Taylor took over the fourth quarter of 2022 with Midnights. As always, the build-up to the album’s release on October 21 was impeccably curated. The fixation on details Taylor had left for her fans throughout her career reached a fever pitch during the rollout for Midnights. She teased track titles in a TikTok video series called “Midnights Mayhem With Me”, and published a full cross-platform release schedule on Instagram. The ever-bubbling Swift online ecosystem was at full boil and, as one expert put it in The Atlantic, had almost all the hallmarks of a true metaverse: a huge virtual community unmoored from a single platform, based on a world around Taylor Swift, missing only the 3D virtual space to hang out in.

Upon release, Midnights was streamed a record-breaking 228 million times on Spotify in the first 24 hours. In just one day of sales, it became the top-selling album of 2022. For the fifth time in her career, one of Taylor’s albums sold more than 1 million copies in its first week, moving an astonishing 1,5 million units—a career best for her at the time, and the first album to do so since her own reputation back in 2017. She also became the first artist to occupy the entirety of the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 in history. Speaking to Jimmy Fallon during the record’s release week, she said:

«I’m beside myself, really. [...] I’m feeling very overwhelmed by the fans’ love for the album. I’m also feeling very soft and fragile. The two can exist at once. But the fact that the fans have done this, like the breaking of the records and the going out to the stores and getting it, it’s…you know, I’m 32, so we’re considered geriatric pop stars. They start to put us out to pasture at age 25, I’m just happy to be here.»

Taylor Swift

After the record’s release, Taylor’s subsequent press stops and appearances were carefully picked. She gave a surprise performance during Bon Iver’s October 26 concert at London’s OVO Arena Wembley, during which she and frontman Justin Vernon sang their duet “exile” together in person for the first time. They were also joined on stage by Aaron Dessner, who produced Taylor’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore. Taylor also showed up at the MTV Europe Music Awards and the American Music Awards to accept her awards in person.

Director Swift

In 2022, Taylor invested a lot of time into growing her network in the film industry. But it still came as a surprise when it was announced on December 9 that she would be making her feature directorial debut with Searchlight Pictures. She had written an original script, which would be produced by the Oscar-winning studio behind Nomadland and The Shape of Water. Other key details, like a plot and casting, were still being kept under wraps, but landing the project from the world’s most successful musician was a coup for the studio:

«Taylor is a once in a generation artist and storyteller. It is a genuine joy and privilege to collaborate with her as she embarks on this exciting and new creative journey»

Searchlight presidents David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield

The 14-minute production of “All Too Well: The Short Film,” which Taylor wrote and directed, screened at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. It also had a special screening for the Director’s Guild of America, held at LucasFilm headquarters in San Francisco on November 20.

Midnights

Midnights October 21, 2022 Midnights is Taylor’s tenth studio album, released on October 21, 2022, through Republic Records. A concept record about nocturnal ruminations, it was written and produced by Taylor with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff. She has described the album as a collection of

Breaking Ticketmaster

Taylor celebrated her 33rd birthday on December 13 in New Orleans—writing and recording at a studio with Jack Antonoff, of course. She was turning the page on one of her most industry-influencing years yet (which is saying a lot). One that saw US officials literally making a federal case out of how popular she was.

In fact, in addition to the US congress more than four dozen of Taylor’s fans were suing Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation over the technical-difficulty-plagued rollout of ticket sales for her “The Eras Tour“, alleging fraud, misrepresentation and antitrust violations. Though verified fan club members were supposed to have a leg up on the competition with invite codes, it almost felt as if the shows were sold out before the pre-sale even began. At least 12 million unique visitors, including automated bots, joined the fray, resulting in hours-long waits and a crashing website, though 2 million tickets were ultimately purchased in one day. Ticketmaster announced on November 17 that it had cancelled the general public sale “due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.” Taylor wasn’t happy about this turn of events at all:

«It goes without saying that I'm extremely protective of my fans. We've been doing this for decades together and over the years, I've brought so many elements of my career in house. I've done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans' experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It's 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.»

Taylor Swift

The next day Ticketmaster apologized to Taylor’s fans and whoever had a “terrible experience” trying to secure “The Eras Tour” tickets. At the behest of Taylor’s team, Ticketmaster started reaching out to fans who were registered to participate in the pre-sale to offer them an “additional opportunity” to buy seats. But Live Nation and Ticketmaster weren’t out of the woods yet: The Justice Department had opened an antitrust investigation into their business practices, so the cost of superfandom was destined for a clash on Capitol Hill.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held its much-anticipated hearing into Live Nation and the lack of competition in the ticketing industry at the end of January 2023. During the hearing, several lawmakers credited the Taylor debacle—and her vocal fanbase—with putting Ticketmaster back in the spotlight, though they acknowledged that the problem is much bigger than any one artist. The hearing, which stretched on for more than three hours, included probing questions, defiant statements and more than a few Taylor references.

Omnipresence In American Culture

It seemed like Taylor was, once again, an omnipresent force in American culture, this time around without actually having to lift a finger. Apart from her statement regarding the Ticketmaster pre-sale, she didn’t share how she felt about this situation. The line between her private life and career had never been more clear. Up until the start of “The Eras Tour” on March 17, 2023, she was once again laying low, busy with tour rehearsals in the UK and US – and presumably trying to work through the breakdown of her long-term relationship, as the world would soon find out.

To be fair, Taylor didn’t need to go out and promote Midnights; the album stayed atop the charts around the globe for weeks on end, while “Anti-Hero” officially became her longest-running No. 1 in the US to date. Apart from a surprise performance of “Anti-Hero” at a The 1975 show in London in January, her only public appearance between December and March was the night of the Grammys on February 5, 2023. She lost out on what would have been a very deserving win in the “Song of the Year” category for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” but she still took home an award for “Best Music Video” and was the brightest star of the night, being the darling of the host, audience, and social media crowd. With a relentless barrage of triumphs leading up to “The Eras Tour”, the stage was set for Taylor to become bigger than ever before.

The Eras Tour

Fan demand broke Ticketmaster, and that was just the prologue. A Taylor Swift stadium tour – her first since 2018, owing to the pandemic – was always going to be an event. But “The Eras Tour” had surpassed mere pop spectacle and became a mass cultural phenomenon. It existed in the physical world, bringing record-breaking crowds to a different US city each weekend between March and August. It generated unceasing buzz, with headlines on anything from the Ticketmaster Controversy to her romantic life to how far people were willing to go for tickets. (One Massachusetts father, for example, shelled out $21k to go last-minute.) And it existed in a vast, ever-expanding digital world of clips, reactions, live-streams, dissections and analysis. Discovery pages on Instagram and TikTok were predominantly filled with “Eras Tour” content; even the algorithm loved Taylor Swift.

The global takeover by “The Eras Tour” was owed in a large part to the show itself of course, which was a stunning showcase of pop’s most prolific songwriter’s ridiculously prodigious catalog. Music critics found it stupefying – a concert the length of the movie Titanic, covering 17 years worth of potent nostalgia, turbocharged by the screaming of 70,000 people. It was fan service at its most bombastic and virtuosic – a flex and a celebration, tying together years of growth and hype.

It was also the culmination of years of world-building and Swiftian mythology. Ever since her debut in 2006, Taylor had cultivated a uniquely close relationship with her fans, posting on MySpace, commenting on their Instagrams and Tumblr blogs, embedding secret messages in the liner notes of her CDs, and holding Secret Sessions. With each album cycle, she had expanded on Easter eggs and clues playing on color coding, numerology and of course her lyrics. The result was a very loyal (and enormous) fan base primed to close-read Taylor’s every move, on-stage or off, as an all-consuming search for clues with personal ties to the star. As Taylor told Entertainment Weekly in 2019 of her fans’ detective work: “I’ve trained them to be that way.”

Split from Joe Alwyn

On April 8, 2023, shortly after embarking on “The Eras Tour”, it was announced that Taylor and Joe Alwyn had broken up in February, after more than six years of dating. A source close to the pair, assumed to be Taylor’s publicist Tree Paine, confirmed the news to People:

«They had plenty in common and fell in love in a safe bubble while she was retreating from the world during reputation. Then the pandemic hit, and they were locked down together and able to continue growing their relationship in this insulated way. But he didn't really 'know' her yet outside of that bubble. Joe has struggled with Taylor's level of fame and the attention from the public. The differences in their personalities have also become harder to ignore after years together. They've grown apart.»

Official statement by Taylor Swift's team

According to multiple sources, it was “more of Taylor’s decision” to break up. She and Joe had been “talking about marriage as recently as a few months ago.” But at the end of the day, the couple wasn’t ready for a future together. “Taylor didn’t see them working out in the long run,” said the insider. “Taylor is staying very focused on her tour right now.”

The couple may have been growing apart for a while, but to Swifties this was a very big shock. And “The Eras Tour” indeed provided ample material for fans to dissect, at an obviously crucial time in Taylor’s personal life. Her habit of switching out acoustic songs every show meant she had fans hyper-trained on each stop of the tour. There were videos scrutinizing her behavior on stage (Did she seem sad after the breakup?), her interactions with fans, changes in her stage banter or song choice (swapping out the love song “invisible string” for the wistful “the 1” after news of her breakup seemed pointed, or was it?). It’s best to understand “The Eras Tour” not so much as a series of concerts, but as a sprawling, interactive and ever-mutating reality show, with new chapters every week. Understandably so, since Taylor hadn’t given an in-depth interview in multiple years and was strictly using her shows to communicate with her fanbase.

Taylor Swift performing on "The Eras Tour" (2023)

Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour

Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour 2023-2024 This article is about the tour. For the concert film, see Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour (2023).“The Eras Tour” (stylized as “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour”) is Taylor’s sixth headlining tour. A homage to her entire discography, she has described it as a “journey through all of her musical eras“. Her

Best Believe She's Still Bejeweled

Three days after the announcement of the breakup, Taylor officially entered her “Bejeweled” era and fans couldn’t have been happier. For those not in the know of this phenomenon, during her relationship with Joe Alwyn Taylor was rarely seen in public, let alone caught by the paparazzi. Newly single, she seemed to have decided that she does in fact like going out and living her life freely without having to hide indoors most of the time. She looked effortlessly glamorous stepping out in New York City on April 10 to grab dinner with her close friends Jack Antonoff and his fiancée Maraget Qualley at Italian restaurant Via Carota.

From then on, Taylor was usually seen at different hotspots around town during the week, while she spent her weekends on the road on “The Eras Tour”. She spent a lot of her time with her close friends at private clubs, trendy restaurants or heading to Electric Lady studios to work on new music. As people got wind that Taylor had moved from London back to New York City, crowds of hundreds of people started to gather wherever she went. In her documentary Miss Americana (2020), Taylor clearly stated that she doesn’t like being followed, but at the same time she wasn’t willing to let the public interest in her stop her from living her life.

The Key to Every City

Taylor being a proud resident of New York City didn’t stop other cities around the US from showering her with honors when she visited with “The Eras Tour”. The trend was started with Glendale (Arizona), where Taylor kicked off the tour. It officially temporarily changed its name to “Swift City” in honor of her impending arrival. Soon, other government officials were falling all over themselves to welcome her in similar fashion.

“We know Glendale changed its name, Arlington made a street sign and Vegas illuminated their Gateway Arches. But here in Tampa, we’ve got a reputation to uphold. We want to go bigger.” Those were the words of Tampa’s mayor, who presented Taylor with a key to the city on April 10. Taylor was invited to reign as many a city’s honorary mayor for the duration of her stay. She ignored every single one of those honors, except for one: Swiftie Clara.

«[My team] will tell me about some of the cool [articles written about her] and they will be like, 'Hey, did you know that they changed Santa Clara to Swiftie Clara?' For two days. And then they were also like, 'You know, they made you the mayor.' So sick.»

Taylor Swift

There were also fireworks shows in Swiftie Clara, which illuminated the night sky while Taylor was singing “Enchanted“. Much to her delight: “You know why they did that,” she excitedly asked the crowd. “Because I’m mayor.”

Friendship Bracelets

Another key factor of the Midnights era are the friendship bracelets. For most people, the last time they tried to thread craft beads onto plastic string was at summer camp. Swifties changed that. From the very beginning, trading colorful, beaded friendship bracelets officially became a fun activity for attendees of “The Eras Tour,” with fans taking to social media to show off their arms full of fun bracelets that made references to various Taylor songs, album eras, inside jokes among fans and lyrics. The inspiration for the bracelets comes from the lyrics to “You’re on Your Own, Kid”:

’Cause there were pages turned with the bridges burned
Everything you lose is a step you take
So make the friendship bracelets
Take the moment and taste it
You’ve got no reason to be afraid

The trend became so widespread just weeks into the tour that even celebrities were joining in on the fun. Everyone from Jennifer Garner, Gigi Hadid and Jennifer Lawrence to Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Aaron Dessner and even Taylor herself were spotted accepting friendship bracelets from Swifties, and took to social media to show off their colorful presents. As a result, trading friendship bracelets became a global trend for all kinds of events, from music concerts to sports events like F1 or American football.

The Controversial Rebound

Weeks into the tour, in May, it was suddenly rumored that Taylor was casually dating Matty Healy, the lead singer of the band The 1975. The two of them had already dated for a brief time in late 2014 but Taylor had never publicly acknowledged the relationship. Sure enough though, that weekend Matty attended “The Eras Tour” in Nashville. There were videos capturing him in the VIP area, feeding the gossip trades with footage of him conversing with Taylor’s famous friends and family or singing along to her songs. He was seen at her following concerts as well, and him and Taylor were photographed together multiple times.

For a small but very vocal subsection of Taylor’s fanbase, news of her rumoured relationship with Matty was nothing short of a nightmare. His history of controversial comments had thrown some of them into turmoil. As one Twitter user put it, the gossip around Swift-Healy was like “the inner workings of the Catholic Church … worth keeping tabs on since it effects the wellbeing of millions and has tremendous financial influence”. Literally. These fans were posting lengthy reflections on Twitter justifying their attendance (or lack thereof) at Taylor’s tour, and launching a campaign – #SpeakUpNow – implicitly demanding that she break up with Healy in the name of justice. The letter was clearly overstepping boundaries and read as massive, incomprehensible overreach: an example of people acting in a bizarrely paternalistic and proprietorial way over a star whom they supposedly love. Policing musicians’ relationships was the natural next step for young fans whose para-social relationships with artists were stoked during pandemic years, when artist engagement on platforms such as TikTok went into overdrive.

Taylor didn’t respond to the letter. But she has always taken certain cues from her fanbase to protect her image. For reasons unknown to the public at the time, it was announced in early June that her brief association with Matty Healy had ended. Taylor immediately worked through her emotions regarding this intense time how she knows best; by creating art. On THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, her eleventh studio album released on April 19, 2024, she likens her life during the first couple of months on “The Eras Tour” and her relationship with Matty Healy to a “manic episode.”

Taylor Swift for 1989 (Taylor's Version) (Beth Garrabrant, 2023)

The Eras Era

The Eras Era 2021-present Taylor kicked off the 2020s decade by embarking on the very ambitious mission to re-record the six studio albums released by her old record label. Even though she had just written her two most acclaimed projects with folklore and evermore, beneath those dreamy soundscapes was an artist who had been fighting for years to manage the

Taylor-Gating, Rain Shows, And Earthquakes

The dating controversy didn’t have impact in “the real world” at all. After demand for “The Eras Tour” overwhelmed Ticketmaster’s system, tickets sold for thousands above face value on the secondary market, and prices only increased after opening night in March. With tickets out of the question for many, fans had gotten creative. As the tour began playing outdoor stadiums in spring, they encouraged one another to meet up just beyond the gates, bringing up to 20,000 people together in cities nationwide like Tampa, Florida, Philadelphia and Nashville. Media outlets called this tailgating trend “Taylor-gating.” Attendees kept the celebrations going after the shows, complete with food and more sing-alongs.

Another factor that helped make many an “Eras” show unique was the weather. For one, in Nashville Taylor‘s song “Midnight Rain” lived up to its name when it was performed after 1 a.m. local time when it finally came up in the set list. The finale of her hometown three-night stand was pushed back hours from its scheduled start time due to lightning strikes; once it did finally get underway after 10 p.m., the second half of the three-and-a-half-hour set was marked by a steady downpour, hitting Taylor as hard as it did the audience in the roofless venue, before the show finally wrapped up just after 1:35 a.m.

«The fact that you stayed for us, that you gave us everything you had—we love you so much, Nashville. We will never forget this night.»

Taylor Swift

Another memorable “rain moment” happened at Gillette Stadium (well-known within the fanbase for Taylor’s first “Rain Show” back in 2011) during the acoustic section of the show. Before Taylor could begin to play the notes on the piano—or even announce the song the audience—the keys started playing without her touching them. ”I didn’t play that. So that means-,” she said as she got cut off from the booming low notes once again. That’s when Taylor’s jaw dropped as over 65,000 crowd members laughed and screamed at what was unfolding. “This has clearly broken my keyboard,” she told the crowd. “It was like, literally underwater. I didn’t know how any of the instruments were working last night. So this is broken, I’m just gonna get the guitar. It’s gonna be fine.”

The final highlight was definitely the two nights of earth-shaking dancing at Taylor’s Seattle “Eras Tour” concert at Lumen Field on July 22 and 23. Enthusiastic Swifties caused seismic activity equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake. “Swiftquake”, as media outlets called it.

The Til Dawn Edition

May was a busy month for Taylor. Apart from headlining multiple shows every weekend, she also announced a new deluxe version of Midnights, the Til Dawn Edition. It features Ice Spice as her guest on a fresh version of “Karma” and additional, newly recorded lead vocals from Lana Del Rey on their “Snow on the Beach” collaboration.

Digital and physical editions each have a format-exclusive track. For the digital release, it is “Hits Different,” a song that was previously only available on the Target version of Midnights. More interestingly for fans, the physical edition has a “Vault” track never before heard from the Midnights writing sessions. The song is called “You’re Losing Me,” the title of which obviously set fans’ minds aflutter even before they heard it, given recent revelations about Taylor’s personal life.

$55 Million in Bonuses

While Taylor was having the most successful year for any musician this century, she clearly recognized that she couldn’t have done it on her own. She reportedly gave bonuses totaling more than $55 million to those working on her show. That money was distributed to her dancers, riggers, sound technicians, catering—and truckers. Multiple sources reported that Taylor gave $100,000 bonuses to each of the 50 truck drivers of her tour before the Saturday night (July 29) show in Santa Clara, California—those amounts alone total more than $5 million. Mike Scherkenbach, founder and CEO of Shomotion trucking company, had worked on several Taylor tours. He referred to the money as “unbelievable,” “generous,” and “life-changing:”

«It's a life-changing sum of money for somebody to be able to become a homeowner and for drivers that have children are starting at the age that they're going off to college. It's a game changer.»

Mike Sherkenbach

Scherkenbach noted that some of his drivers initially thought it was a joke—most artists touring stadiums typically give drivers an extra $5,000 to $10,000. But, he said, in addition to the check, Taylor even included a handwritten note of gratitude to each driver.

Taylormania

Then, in August, Taylor wrapped up the first US leg of “The Eras Tour”. For better or worse, the Taylormania continued, this time in the streets of New York City or outside of private gatherings, like the wedding location of Jack Antonoff and Margaret Qualley on the Jersey shore. Hundreds of wedding crashers showed up in hopes of glimpsing Taylor.

Footage from the event depicts a massive crowd of “Swifties” gathered at the New Jersey venue as Taylor made her way over to the wedding rehearsal dinner. Photos show onlookers waiting outside the ceremony and reception too. In the videos shared on social media, fans could be heard screaming and chanting Taylor’s name while the rapid flashes of paparazzi cameras illuminated her shocked face. Police cruisers can also be seen among the throng of spectators, blocking off parts of the street where the dinner was held. The clips of the people causing a scene during the wedding festivities sparked a discourse on social media about toxic fan culture. A handful even went so far as to call the uninvited guests “stalkers.”

Taylor didn’t let these intense moments stop her from living her life. As she had done all summer, she met up with her friends and went to the studio, even though some (strange) people followed her car around town, all the way to the garage at her apartment building. She also made the whole place shimmer when she showed up at the MTV Video Music Awards on September 13, when she won nine awards, including the one for “Video of the Year” for “Anti-Hero”, for the second time in a row:

«This is unbelievable. I just want to say that the fact that this is a fan-voted award means so much to me based on the memories that we’ve made recently. I’ve just been on a tour that has been the most joyful and exhilarating experience. And we’re not even halfway done with it. It’s really felt like the adventure of a lifetime this past year. I cannot believe that it was a year ago at the VMAs that I announced the Midnights album. And all I have to say tonight is thank you. I’m blown away. Thank you so much to the fans. I love you so much.»

Taylor Swift

Outside cleaning up at the VMAs, Taylor was then set to enjoy a relatively quiet period before re-entering her “Eras era“. She was set to return to the road in November with a run of shows in South America. Of couse, all sense of peace and quiet was gone the moment she stepped out in Kansas City during the last week of September to support her new boyfriend, NFL player Travis Kelce.

Midnights: 3am Edition (Republic Records, 2022)

Midnights Songs

Songs on Midnights Prologue & Songs Prologue (2022)What keeps you up at night? It’s a momentary glimmer of distraction. The tiniest notion of reminescent thought that wanders off into wondering, the spark that lights a tinderbox of fixation. And now is irreversible. The flame has caught. You’re wide awake. Maybe it’s that one urgent question you meant to ask someone

Reaching Billionaire Status

By October, “The Eras Tour” officially catapulted Taylor to billionaire status, according to Bloomberg, making her one of the few recording artists to build a 10-figure fortune almost entirely from her music. The “most definitive account yet” of her wealth claimed that Taylor now had a total net worth of about $1.1 billion. The bump into billionaire territory was achieved by her blockbuster tour. According to the Bloomberg News analysis, the 53 concerts on the US tour added $4.3bn to the country’s gross domestic product. Bloomberg called its analysis “conservative”, based only on “assets and earnings that could be confirmed or traced from publicly disclosed figures”.

The calculation took into account the estimated value of her five homes ($110m) and music catalog ($400m for music released since 2019), some of which she had reclaimed through re-recording; earnings from streaming deals ($120m from YouTube and Spotify), music sales ($80m), concert tickets and merchandise ($370m); and the impact of income tax, tour production and travel costs, and commissions paid to managers and agents.

The outlet predicted plenty of earnings potential in Taylor’s future, based on the value of her vast songwriting catalog. While the conservative estimate of her music’s worth is around $400m, Bloomberg noted a more bullish multiple of future royalties puts it around $1bn – far higher than her music “peers.”