THE CLOCK IS TICKING

Taylor Swift’s ‘Midnights’ Easter Egg Is Her Most Complicated Yet

Swift has always been big into leaving breadcrumb trails for her fans. But this one, for her upcoming tenth album? This one is the biggest series of breadcrumbs ever.

We should’ve known all along that Midnights would be delivered to our Spotify and Apple Music accounts on October 21, 2022. We weren’t counting. We weren’t doing the math. None of us have truly been following Taylor Swift to the extent that she expects us to all be doing. But Midnights, her tenth album, has one of the artist’s biggest Easter eggs in her entire career, and it’s bonkers.

The iconic Rent tune “Seasons of Love” has drilled the number of minutes in a year into all of our minds—I don’t even have to say “525,600” to remind you. You already know. And now, with Midnights, Taylor Swift will make us remember an entirely different unit of measurement: the number of days old she is.

How many days old is Taylor Swift today, you ask? Today, the artist marks 11,998 rotations on planet earth. Tomorrow, she’ll hit 11,999. And on Friday, the day Midnights drops, she’ll hit 12,000 days old. Get it? Midnight is 12 a.m.

Taylor has also been using plenty of clock imagery with this album, so each thousand days marks a new notch on her timekeeper.

I have so many questions, most of which are about how many years Taylor took to plan out this album, but I’ll save them. I do wonder if, when the singer started to actualize the album, she thought to herself, “Well, I ought to have something out for my 12,000-day birthday, and it’s only apt for the album to be midnight/time themed.” This must’ve been at least before she started working on Folklore. Which means Midnights has been in the works for a long time, guys, which makes me think it’s going to be a real home run.

Swift has spent the last few weeks teasing the album—not with singles, nor any sort of hint at what the music will actually sound like, but with a taunting bingo game called “Midnights Mayhem” that offers up just the track names of her upcoming album. Though I’m admittedly not a Swiftie and haven’t been following along with this charade, I have to applaud the singer’s commitment to her Easter egg mystery bit, especially her ability to string fans along for a period of time without any of them losing interest.

Because somewhere along the line, a fan of Swift’s had to figure out the 12,000 days shtick. This fan must’ve felt like a caveman in the olden days, discovering how to make fire, or the first person who whipped eggs long enough to turn them into fluffy meringues. How do people get these brilliant ideas in their heads? How do they figure these puzzles out? Commitment. Taylor Swift’s fans have commitment.

After pondering this, I had a bad thought: There’s a chance this sweet little detail could’ve been missed entirely. If Taylor’s fans weren’t so dedicated (luckily, she knew she could rely on them), perhaps this gem of a revelation would’ve slipped through the cracks. This makes me anxious over the fact that we could be missing out on other details, other tiny Easter eggs Swift has scattered over her tweets and album release announcements.

Taylor has a few other numbers up her sleeve, like her lucky one, 13. Let’s do the math here. Swift will be 35 when she hits 13,000 days old in 2024, but it’s trickier to figure out the exact date that 13,000 days lands on in her life. There will be 225 days left over after she turns 35, which means that Taylor Swift will be exactly 13,000 days old on July 26, 2025, which is a Saturday. Is Taylor opposed to releasing albums on Saturdays? Let’s hope not.

I wonder what new levels of depth Swift can add to any upcoming albums. After Midnights, she’ll be counting each breath of the day to have the perfect 13,000 as she drops a new single. We’ll all be checking the timestamps on her tweets. She’ll chop down a tree and make us count all the leaves. Who knows what’s next—all I know is that I’m excited for the hunt.

Midnights premieres on October 21.

Fletcher PetersEntertainment Reporter

Allegra FrankEditor

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