Taylor Swift has a reputation for surprises. So when she showed up to the 2022 VMAs, it wasn’t exactly out of character. Neither were her wins of Best Video and Best Direction for her All Too Well short film. And neither was her no-warning album announcement in her acceptance speech.

With a release date of Friday (of course), October 21st, the Midnights album has already generated a lot of excitement, both in anticipation of the release and in response to Swift’s crypticity. In her acceptance speech, she spoke of “Thirteen sleepless nights” and told her fans, “Meet me at midnight.” Though most would brush this off as references to the album, Swifties were in a craze for about a month until Swift confirmed their suspicions.

On September 20th at midnight EST, Swift released her first installment of a video series revealing the album’s tracklist one at a time. Titled “Midnights Mayhem with Me,” the videos are posted on Tiktok and Instagram in a seemingly random schedule. Fans speculate that the reveal of each of the thirteen tracks are the thirteen sleepless nights alluded to in Swift’s speech.

Along with the announcement of Track 3 on October 3rd, “Anti-hero,” Swift posted a 1-minute video discussing the importance of this track to the narrative of her life and the album; this is the only song that has been accompanied by such. Swifties are divided on whether Swift is truly letting her hamster wheel of numbered ping pong balls decide which tracks to reveal, or if she’s deciding the order in which to post them. 

Let’s be real, Taylor Swift would never leave her historically uber-planned announcements up to fate. But only time will tell.