The lavender haze is creeping up on Taylor Swift, and she's ready to invite fans into the Midnights mist.
"Meet me at midnight…" Swift wrote in an Instagram post teasing the first seven seconds of an all-new music video. "…for the 'Lavender Haze' music video premiere (!!!!!!!!!!!!!)."
In the teaser, all that can be seen is someone in a lavender shirt — presumably Swift, 33 — sitting on a bed as lavender smoke trickles by.
The "Lavender Haze" video is the third video the 11-time Grammy winner will release from her tenth studio album, Midnights.
Videos for "Anti-Hero" — which recently became Swift's longest-running No. 1 hit as it topped the Billboard 100 for the eighth week — and "Bejeweled" previously debuted, with fans loving the signature Swift over-the-top storylines and scenes. "Bejeweled" even featured a host of star-studded cameos, including Laura Dern, Dita Von Teese, and the Haim sisters.
Swift announced that Midnights, which she's called "a complete concept album," would have a whole host of music videos to accompany the 13 tracks. The day before the album's release, she shared a teaser of clips of the videos that fans could expect, and each clip, in true Swift style, seemed to promise a hidden easter egg or two.
Lavender glitter, an ode to her Speak Now guitar, Alice in Wonderland-esque tea parties, and a photo of her grandmother, Marjorie, are just a few of the details fans have spotted in the two videos she's released so far.
Fans will have to meet Swift at midnight tonight to see what further clues she might share about future Midnights videos and maybe even her upcoming Eras tour — which was the subject of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday following the Ticketmaster fiasco that left millions unable to purchase tickets to the tour.
"Lavender Haze" is one of the few songs Swift has ever explicitly confirmed is about her longtime boyfriend, Joe Alwyn.
Ahead of the album's release, she shared clips diving into some of Midnights' thirteen tracks and revealed the surprising source of inspiration behind "Lavender Haze."
Swift said that, "when you're in the lavender haze, you'll do anything to stay there," even though the world is often quick to "weigh in on" who a person is in love with.
"I happened upon the phrase Lavender Haze when I was watching Mad Men, and I looked it up because I thought it sounded cool," she said in a video shared two weeks before Midnights dropped. "And it turns out that it's a common phrase used in the '50s where they would just describe being in love, like, you were in the lavender haze, and that meant that you were in that all-encompassing love glow, and I thought that was really beautiful."
She shared that the song is inspired by her and Alwyn's focus on keeping their relationship private. "My relationship — for six years, we've had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it. This song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff."
As the first track on Midnights, "Lavender Haze" serves as the gateway into the world Swift has built around the concept album. An ode to "sleepless nights scattered" throughout her life, Swift called the album "a collage of intensity, highs and lows and ebbs and flows."
"Life can be dark, starry, cloudy, terrifying, electrifying, hot, cold, romantic or lonely," she wrote on Instagram the night of the album's release. "Just like Midnights."
