Songfacts®:

• Taylor Swift closes her Reputation album with this acoustic ballad, with the singer backed only by Jack Antonoff's piano. Set during the aftermath of a New Year's Eve Party, she celebrates the lover who's there to help with the clean up when the party ends.
  
  Don't read the last page
  But I stay when you're lost, and I'm scared
  And you're turning away
  I want your midnights
  But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day
• Swift explained the story behind the song to her fans at an iHeartRadio Reputation Release Party:
  
  "We threw a big New Year's Eve party in London this year, and I was thinking about how everybody talks and thinks about who you kiss at midnight. Like it's this big romantic idea of like, 'Who are you gonna kiss at midnight, like ring in the New Year.' And I think that is very romantic. But I think there's something even more romantic about who's gonna deal with you on New Year's Day. Who's willing to give you Advil and clean up the house. I think that states more of a permanence. So I was thinking about that, and I wrote this song called 'New Year's Day.'"
• Taylor Swift debuted the song a day before Reputation's release, during a special performance shot at her Rhode Island home, that aired during the November 9, 2017 episode of Scandal. The pre-recorded footage showed her singing the ballad in a candle-lit living room and surrounded by fans.
• Co-writer and producer Jack Antonoff tweeted the day after Swift performed the song on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon:
  
  "That song means a lot to me. Happened so quickly at my apartment. We texted the next morning to make sure it wasn’t a dream."
• The song was released to country stations on November 27, 2017, marking Swift's first release to country radio since she went pop with the 2014 release of 1989. It reached #33 on the country chart.
• This was one of six songs on Reputation that Jack Antonoff co-wrote. He recalled the collaborative process with Taylor during an Entertainment Weekly interview.
  
  "The sessions were just her and I," he revealed. "She would come over to my apartment, and we would talk and eat and talk more, and the things we talked about turned into songs."
  
  "She is great at remembering the heart and soul of the process. But she's really great at knowing what it's about: talking about what the hell is going on in your life and somehow finding a way to take that exact emotion and make a song out of it," Antonoff continued. "That was the theme of those sessions: 'Let's just tell this story, whatever that story is, because that's the whole point.'"