Taylor Swift has surprised fans for the second time this year with the announcement of her ninth studio album, evermore. The record is the "sister" to her eighth studio album, folklore, released July 24.
On Thursday (December 10), the "cardigan" singer announced the record mere hours before its midnight release. The music video for album lead single "willow" will premiere tonight as well, at midnight ET, with Swift planning on participating in a YouTube live chat to answer fan questions.
The standard edition of evemore will feature fifteen tracks, though the deluxe physical edition will two include extra bonus tracks called “right where you left me” and “it’s time to go.” Swift revealed the album's entire track list, which includes two collaborations: "coney island" with The National and "no body, no crime" with Haim.
Swift created the new music alongside Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, Justin Vernon and WB, a.k.a. William Bowery, the pen name for boyfriend, Joe Alwyn. "We’ve also welcomed some new (and longtime) friends to our musical kitchen table this time around," Swift shared of her lineup of collaborators and co-writers.
On Twitter, Swift shared that she enjoyed the epic escapism of her last album so much that she felt the urge to expand upon it. "I’ve never done this before," she wrote. "In the past I’ve always treated albums as one-off eras and moved onto planning the next one after an album was released. There was something different with folklore. In making it, I felt less like I was departing and more like I was returning."
Swift continued, "To put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs. To try and put it more poetically, it feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of this music. We chose to wander deeper in."
The album comes just ahead of her 31st birthday (December 13). See the full evermore track list, below.