Taylor Swift and/or New Jersey Ice Spice fans likely feel they’ve accumulated some good karma of their own — at least those who made it through the challenge for tickets to Friday’s MetLife Stadium show — as the surprisingly dynamic duo gave the crowd two doses of ” Karma” at the end of Swift’s long-running collection.
One was in the form of a video premiere for the song, which came out to the world not too long ago, and bowed out on various platforms at midnight ET. The other was a live debut for the duo, featuring the rapper featured in a remix onstage to join the headliner of “Karma,” which has ended Swift’s concerts every night since the start of the Eras Tour in April.
The music video for the collaboration, which Swift teased deeply but didn’t announce until Swift made it official with the MetLife Stadium crowd Friday night, is full of digital effects from start to finish and includes plenty of cosmic or celestial imagery. Kind of Hell is flipped to reveal Swift as a comic Pollyanna type. Finally, a forested mountainscape is revealed to be swift as a green giant on display, while Ice Spice is now both sides of a cyan cloud formation.
On stage in East Rutherford, Swift preceded the video’s first public premiere with a short speech about hooking up with the sexy newcomer. (Watch her introduction along with the music video itself, below.)
“At the beginning of the year, when I was just rehearsing for this tour…I was approached by Ice Spice,” said Swift. She sent a note: ‘If you’d like to do a collaboration, I’d love it.’ What you didn’t know at the time was that when I was streaming for the tour, I pretty much only listened to her music… I’d go to the area to tour. Because of her. And so I said, “Sure, when can you do that?”… And when we went into the studio, not only did I fall in love with her, I decided she was the whole future… I’ve been with so many artists that are getting started, but I’ve never met Someone who is prepared, curious, and focused on what she wants.”
In regards to his video that recently followed and was kept secret, under a supposedly unimaginable cloud of non-disclosure agreements, Swift ushered audiences into premiere status. “I’ve never done this before, but I was hoping for a few minutes we could turn this stadium show into a world premiere… I thought, Oh, that’s so big a screen; we can just watch it there.” She added, “This is not like a movie premiere where you have to be quiet. I want you to feel your feelings always.”
The worldwide music video release followed with the audio debut of 24 Hours for the “Karma” remix. It appears on two new deluxe editions of the “Midnights” album. The first is “Midnights (The Til Dawn Edition)”, a digital edition released at midnight Thursday. The other is “Midnights (The Late Night Edition)”, a nearly identical – except for one critical track left off – released as a CD to mix the stands at MetLife Stadium on Friday afternoons, followed by a 24-hour digital-only release starting Friday night on Swift’s webstore.
The two new deluxe editions of “Midnight” include the original album and bonus tracks “3 am” from last fall, along with Ice Spice’s “Karma” remix and an updated version of “Snow on the Beach” that features “more Lana Del Rey” from the origin. The difference between them is that the widely available “Til Dawn” includes the digital arc of “Different Hits”, a song previously only available on the Target CD exclusive of “Midnights”. Meanwhile, the version of “Late Night” includes “You’re Losing Me,” a previously unheard “Vault Track” that set Swift’s world on fire when it was released on Friday afternoon.
