Getty Image / John Shearer
Taylor Swift is proving to be a nearly unstoppable cultural force. That domination continued at the 66th Grammy Awards, an event dominated by the 34-year-old pop star.
Swift not only announced a new original album, stunning the music world in an epic use of misdirection, but also won the most prestigious annual award in all of music, Album of the Year.
Taylor Swift won the award for her 2022 album, Midnights. Given the way the nominations calendar works for the Grammy Awards, music released in the last three months of each year typically are not eligible to be rewarded until the Grammy Awards two years later.
This was a record-setting win, as it was her fourth Album of the Year win, joining Fearless, 1989, and Folklore. That breaks a tie with Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and Frank Sinatra.
But, that was far from the biggest Taylor Swift news of the evening. Swift led her fans and the music world on a wild goose chase, and surprised everyone at the end of it.
Rumors have been swirling about a release date for Swift’s re-recording of her album Reputation. So, when she turned her Instagram profile pic to black and white, had her website go down, and wore a cryptic clock necklace as part of her outfit on Sunday, people strongly assumed that’s what it would be.
Instead, she announced another original album, her eleventh studio album, titled The Tortured Poets Department, which will be released April 19th.
Now, Taylor Swift will head off to Tokyo, Japan to start another leg of her record-setting Eras Tour, before coming back stateside to watch her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.