Taylor Swift Announces New Album 'Midnights' as She Wins MTV VMA Video of the Year

Taylor Swift landed a record-breaking third Video of the Year win at the 2022 MTV VMAs — and she used her time at the podium to make a surprise announcement!

Picking up the Moonman for "All Too Well (10-Minute Version)," Taylor graciously pointed out the record-breaking number of female directors in her category (four) before saying, "I had sort of made up my mind that if you were gonna be this generous and give us this, I thought it might be a fun moment to tell you that... that my brand-new album comes out October 21... and I will tell you more at midnight."

Sure enough, promptly at midnight, her social media announced a new album called — what else? — "Midnights."

The cover shows a moody image of Taylor with a flickering lighter. There are 13 songs, but the titles appear to be "Track One," "Track Two, "Track Three," and so on.

The caption reads, "Midnights, the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life, will be out October 21. Meet me at midnight."

A second image, showing a distressed-looking Taylor at a cluttered table in a hotel room, announces:

"We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears. We stare at walls and drink until they speak back. We twist in our self-made cages and pray that we aren't - right this minute - about to make some fateful life-altering mistake."

It goes on: "This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. 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."

The text concludes with the same wording as the caption.

Could October 21 being her old foe Kim Kardashian's 42nd birthday have anything to do with the release date?

"Midnights" will mark her first collection of new work since 2020's "Evermore." She had kept this album a complete surprise — there were no rumblings of her having been in the studio, even among diehard fans, who had at most expect another album of re-recorded work.

Sunday's VMAs marked a crazy-good night for Swift, who also became the first artist to win twice for Best Direction (for "All Too Well") as well as the first to win Video of the Year for a video she directed.

Swift had also taken home Best Long Form Video for "All Too Well" earlier in the evening.