"Anti-Hero" was released on October 21, 2022, as the lead single from Midnights, Taylor Swift's tenth studio album, which came out the same day. Swift wrote and produced the song with Jack Antonoff, her longtime collaborator, and described it as one of the most personal songs she had written, a look at her insecurities and at the pressure of living in constant public view. Its chorus line "It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me" spread quickly online and became one of the most quoted lyrics of the year.

The music video, which Swift also wrote and directed, was released during the album's first week. It shows the singer confronting exaggerated versions of herself, and it features a cameo tribute to her grandmother Marjorie Finlay, the opera singer whose story is told in Family. The video extended the directing work she had begun with All Too Well: The Short Film in 2021.

The song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, replacing "Unholy" by Sam Smith and Kim Petras, and that week songs from Midnights filled the entire top 10, with "Lavender Haze," "Maroon," "Snow on the Beach" and "Midnight Rain" in the next four places. No artist had ever held all ten positions at once; the closest had been Drake, with nine of the top 10 in September 2021. The album itself had the biggest sales week for any release in seven years, since Adele's 25, and it became Swift's eleventh No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, tying Barbra Streisand for the most among women at the time.

"Anti-Hero" went on to spend eight nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1, one more than "Blank Space" had managed in 2014 and 2015, making it Swift's longest running No. 1 single at the time. It held that distinction until 2025, when "The Fate of Ophelia," from The Life of a Showgirl, passed it.

Midnights also won Album of the Year at the 66th Grammy Awards on February 4, 2024, making Swift the first artist to win the award four times, after Fearless, 1989 and folklore, the third of which is told in Folklore. The album's songs became a new act of the Eras Tour, which opened in March 2023.