Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift. Shutterstock (2)
Long live Taylena! Selena Gomez is just like Us — listening to Taylor Swift’s Midnights the moment it dropped.
“That she is,” the Only Murders in the Building star, 30, captioned a Friday, October 21, screenshot of her Apple Music account, in which “Mastermind” was playing.
Swift, 32, released her 10th studio album — chock full of cryptic Easter eggs — at midnight on Friday to much fan excitement.
“Midnights is a wild ride of an album, and I couldn’t be happier that my co-pilot on this adventure was @jackantonoff. He’s my friend for life (presumptuous I know but I stand by it) and we’ve been making music together for nearly a decade HOWEVER… this is our first album we’ve done with just the two of us as main collaborators,” the “Christmas Tree Farm” songstress captioned an Instagram post at the time. “We’d been toying with ideas and had written a few things we loved, but Midnights actually really coalesced and flowed out of us when our partners [Joe Alwyn and Margaret Qualley, respectively] did a film together in Panama. Jack and I found ourselves back in New York, alone, recording every night, staying up late and exploring old memories and midnights past.”
She added: “Midnights is a collage of intensity, highs and lows and ebbs and flows. Life can be dark, starry, cloudy, terrifying, electrifying, hot, cold, romantic or lonely. Just like Midnights.”
Midnights features 13 powerful songs, including “Mastermind.” Swift also released a “3 a.m.” bonus version with seven additional “from the vault” tracks. Upon its release, several of the Cats actress’ famous besties and celebrity fans praised her work, including Gomez, Janet Jackson and Reese Witherspoon.
“I feel like I’m dreaming. I have so much love and gratitude for you and all you’ve done to inspire female artists everywhere,” Swift replied to Jackson, 56, via Twitter after the “Together Again” singer shared footage of her jamming out to “Snow on the Beach.”
The “You Belong With Me” artist has long been vocal about her best friends, known affectionately as her “squad.”
“In my 20s I found myself surrounded by girls who wanted to be my friend,” Swift wrote in an Elle essay in May 2019. “So, I shouted it from the rooftops, posted pictures and celebrated my newfound acceptance into a sisterhood, without realizing that other people might still feel the way I did when I felt so alone.”
She continued at the time: “Something about ‘we’re in our young 20s!’ hurls people together into groups that can feel like your chosen family. And maybe they will be for the rest of your life. Or maybe they’ll just be your comrades for an important phase, but not forever. It’s sad but sometimes when you grow, you outgrow relationships. You may leave behind friendships along the way, but you’ll always keep the memories.”
Gomez and Swift, for their parts, became fast friends after they met in 2008 while dating brothers Nick Jonas and Joe Jonas, respectively. While neither romantic relationship panned out, the Texas native and the “Shake It Off” singer have remained close.
“I knew from when I met [Selena] I would always have her back,” Swift told the Wall Street Journal in January 2020. “In my life, I have the ability to forgive people who have hurt me. But I don’t know if I can forgive someone who hurts her.”
