Singer Taylor Swift has unveiled three additional album covers for her October release “Midnights,” each of which is being promised as only being available for the next seven days, as a pre-sale in both vinyl and CD formats. Even more than the more permanent cover that was revealed Sunday night, these album jackets very much look designed to evoke the 1970s, sometimes subtly, sometimes more blatantly.
There’s the touch-tone phone. There’s the LP jacket on the floor. (Well, that one evokes the 2020s, too, but the reckless disregard for the treatment of a piece of vinyl, left loose to collect carpet debris, is very retro.)
Maybe she meant to call her new album “1979.”
One other recurring motif: Swift looks fairly sullen about being stuck in the ’70s. As those of us who lived through the decade can attest, this is actually period-appropriate. In one of the new cover images, she holds her hand up to her head, in a pose of Deep Fret.
This may add grist for the tweeters who thought the verbiage in Swift’s initial rollout of the album concept Sunday night leaned toward the… dramatic. But the pose is self-knowing, maybe even tongue-in-cheek. As Swift vowed in the song “Lover”: “Swear to be overdramatic… and true!“
Does Swift still have anything up her sleeve, packaging wise? For certain: the webstore description of the products promises that each of the variants will have a different photo on the back cover as well as the front.
So get your bonnet and basket ready, because with the contents of the music being as much of a mystery as the rear-jacket art, the next seven weeks are likely to be a nonstop Easter season for the faithful.