Taylor Swift Explains the Sleepless-Night Inspiration Behind ‘Midnights’ Album
As the “Anti-Hero” video arrived, Swift reflected on why late-night vulnerability has shaped so much of her songwriting.
As promised, Taylor Swift’s music video for “Anti-Hero,” the lead single from her tenth studio album, “Midnights,” arrived at 8am ET this morning.
According to Taylor, the 13 tracks on “Midnights” represent the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout her life. In “Anti-Hero,” she sings that midnights become her afternoons when her “depression works the graveyard shift.” The music video, which Taylor wrote and directed, represents “my nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts [playing] out in real time,” she tweeted.
In a SiriusXM Hits 1 exclusive, Taylor answered the fan question, “What drew you to the concept of creating an album based on sleepless nights of the past?”
“I think that I’ve always been fascinated with sleeplessness,” she explained. “My fans have pointed out over the years that I constantly am writing about 2am, you know, middle of the night, things like that, because I think that it’s just such a vulnerable, isolated time. It’s a time when I’ve written a lot of my songs. It’s a time when the catharsis of songwriting has helped me the most.”
