WIth the release of Taylor Swift’s tenth album, Midnights, rapidly approaching, many swifties are experiencing some late nights of their own courtesy of fan theories, social media clues, and tiktoks from Taylor herself. Taylor’s tiktok series Midnights Mayhem with Me has prompted many swifties into overdrive with their fan theories.
One such theory, and one of my personal favorite fan theories, is that of the long lost album Karma.
Karma has been a long time fan theory. After 1989, fans were convinced that Taylor’s next album would be named Karma. The theory was that her reputation got bad, so Big Machine Records, her old label, did not let her release it.
Then Reputation was released, and fans thought that Karma could have been the second side or sister album to Reputation. In Look What You Made Me Do, there’s the line “but not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma.” However, this line also fits into the whole theme of Reputation, so many fans brush it off as a potential Karma clue.
Then, Lover was released. Taylor herself told us she was already planning her next album right after Lover’s release. The most conclusive evidence, in my opinion, is that midway through the Lover era, Taylor switched aesthetics. Any fan of Taylor knows that she has very clear, distinct aesthetics with each album she releases. It doesn’t make sense for her to switch aesthetics so soon unless she was teasing a new album/era. In January 2020, Taylor was the cover of British Vogue with a very Midnights-esque aesthetic. Fans think this new aesthetic is for Karma, of course.
Then in February, the The Man music video is released, and karma is graffitied on the wall twice, next to all the other names of her albums: 1989, Red, Speak Now, etc. If album names are graffitied on the wall, and Karma is there twice, wouldn’t it make sense to believe Karma is an album?
But then, time passed and Karma seemed long forgotten. We got Folklore, Evermore, and the re-recordings of Red and Fearless (taylor’s version of course). Karma truthers, as the fans have dubbed themselves, were concerned the album was officially gone forever.
It is worth noting that some believe the Karma theory could go another way; Karma the album and Midnights are the same album, and it was supposed to be released right after Lover.
On a livestream in 2019, Taylor announced that Lover was called Daylight for a few months. Many believe that Midnights (or Karma) would have been the sister album to Daylight (or Lover), similar to how Folklore and Evermore are sister albums. With the previous evidence of the Midnights aesthetic randomly thrown in the middle of the Lover era, it is not that hard to believe this theory.
The clues for Karma are endless, and spread throughout Taylor’s career. So, when Taylor released the eighth episode of Midnights Mayhem with Me, and couldn’t stop herself from laughing after announcing Karma as a song, fans went crazy. We may never know if Karma the album ever existed, or if it was always just a song, but we at least know Taylor enjoys our crazy theories.