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Album Review: Midnights by Taylor Swift

(approx. 4000 words)

I don't know a lot about Swifties but here are the two facts I've absorbed over the course of Taylor Swift's long career:

Their enthusiasm borders on a cult-like mania that I find both envious and frightening.

A not insignificant percentage of Swift's fans believe that she is secretly gay.

These so-called "gaylors" became a blip on my radar around the time folklore/evermore came out (I guess something about America's Supreme High Femme in a flannel coat was just a little too butch for some people to handle) but their presence really ramped up with the release of Midnights, specifically the album's first track, "Lavender Haze." It is, in fact, the only thing I ever heard about this album, other than the song's first single "Anti-Hero," the one song I've already heard before this listen and have thoughts about that we will certainly get to.

Given that she has since married a football player, arguably the most heterosexual thing a woman can do, I suspect this theory has aged like milk. But I'll be keeping it in mind while I listen.

First Impressions:

The album is thirteen tracks long (a recurring theme for Swift, who is famously obsessed with the number) and, according to Genius Lyrics, each track is meant to represent a number of "sleepless nights scattered throughout [her] life." As an aside, I will be listening to the original studio album release. I am well aware that Taylor Swift releases a frankly absurd number of different versions of her albums and, to be honest, I don't have the time or patience for all that. If you wanted me to hear those songs, you should have put them on the main album.

The cover art is quite simple, mostly white with the title and track list and a close-up photo of Swift staring into the flame of a Zippo lighter. The concept of "playing with fire" immediately comes to mind, evoking a sense of Swift returning to the more villainous persona she played in her Reputation era. The track list, with titles like "Anti-Hero", "You're On Your Own, Kid", "Vigilante Shit", and "Mastermind" also hint at the possibility of Swift acting dangerously. The track "Sweet Nothing" also catches my eye; normally the phrase referring to kind things said quietly to a loved one is plural, "sweet nothings". Could the use of the singular be hinting at a play on words? The "sweetness" of an absent lover who is giving her "nothing"? Or maybe the lover himself is "sweet" but, ultimately, "nothing" to her?

Without further ado, here is my track-by-track analysis, followed by my final thoughts:

Track-by-Track Analysis

Lavender Haze: It's worth noting that the "lavender haze" Swift is referring to is apparently a reference to a 1950s slang expression used for someone in a dreamy tranquil state, often associated with being in love, which she learned about from the show Mad Men. If you didn't know that, however, I could absolutely understand why the gaylors were calling this song queerbaiting. Is "the 1950s shit" they want from Swift marriage to a man she just wants to fuck or is it the specifically heterosexual aspect she dreads? Unfortunately, all signs point to the former. Sorry, gays. The downtempo beat is an interesting start to the album, setting up the feeling of being up late at night thinking instead of sleeping. It also maintains the continuity I've noticed in Taylor Swift's songs, shifting from bouncier radio pop to a moodier, more mature sound. Reputation with less teeth. It's not a bad sound for Swift, though I'm still getting used to expecting it from her. It's hard for me not to think of her as the Fearless girl, even all these years later. I suspect it's the old cranks like me whose opinion she has been desperately fleeing from all these years, culminating into this current sound. As for the lyrics, there's not really much I can say. Taylor Swift has made a career beating to death the concept of her struggle with love and her ongoing conflicting feelings about various boys she's dated. Dealing with the contemporary dating scene is its own hell; I can sympathize that it must be several orders of magnitude worse when you're America's Pop Princess. I don't think she's said anything here that she hasn't said a thousand times before, but at least she says it in a way that sounds good and has a nice hook. Although, from what I can extrapolate, this lover she's singing about doesn't really seem to care any more about her feelings than the greater public does, so I'm not really sure why she's wasting her time. Maybe she SHOULD try dating other women if someone who doesn't talk to you, notice that you're melancholy, or is more interested in "going viral" and "[getting] it off [their] chest" than they are in like, your feelings. This song also touches on a specific beef I have with Swift about her lamenting being scrutinized. I agree that famous people don't ask for or deserve the extreme levels of depravity and scrutiny they get on a daily basis. But, like... if you don't want people paying such close attention to you, maybe just release your albums once?

Maroon: We again have another Taylor Swift song that sounds perfectly fine without really doing anything new or interesting. "Maroon" is, at best, a thoughtful continuation of Swift's recurring interest in the color red. I don't know how something can be "so scarlet [it's] maroon" since those are very much different colors, but I've noticed that Swift will sometimes sacrifice a lyric making sense if it sounds good enough. Unfortunately, thanks to poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins, this is considered a legitimate strategy in writing poems and lyrics. It's a tough sell for me, though, and the scorned lover angle is such well-trodden ground at this point that I find myself rolling my eyes and checking my watch. There's also just something about Taylor Swift saying curse words that feels so disingenuous to me. This could just be another side effect of my mental image of Taylor Swift having aged at 1/4 the speed of the actual artist, but it reminds me too much of the student body president trying to appeal to her cooler friends by using their cool kid words.

Anti-Hero: This is the only song I've heard from this album before listening and, for all my complaints about it, I do still like it on the whole. It's always interesting to see Taylor Swift acknowledge her own flaws since much of her marketability is her seemingly universal appeal. By and large, though, it feels more tongue-in-cheek than genuinely reflective. "You all made me a monster so I guess I'm a monster now." It reminds me very much of "Look What You Made Me Do," a phrase abusers like to throw around after abusing their victims. I don't think Taylor Swift is as toxic or evil as her louder detractors think but I also think she is imperfect and repeatedly hammering on about how she knows she's problematic gets unsatisfying fast. When people do wrong or act poorly, I don't want them to self-flagellate. I want them to do better next time. But that requires a level of emotional maturity I'm not convinced Taylor Swift has, through no real fault of her own. They say we get mentally trapped in the age we suffered the worst trauma and I can't think of anything more traumatizing than child stardom, so it makes sense to me that Taylor Swift has been stuck in high school for the past 20 years. I'm white enough to always appreciate a lyrical miracle moment and think the pre-chorus is great and the hook of the chorus was destined for Tiktok audio virality. I agree that it can be exhausting to root for the anti-hero. Unfortunately, this song also suffers from some egregious sprung rhythm lyric choices that I just cannot forgive. The "sexy baby" line has genuinely driven me to distraction. I've been told the "tea time" thing is a Kardashian reference, which I find shocking. This album came out a full five years after everything that went down in the Reputation era. Are they still fighting? Or has Swift just not moved on? Either answer is disappointing. This is still the most played song on the album according to Spotify, suggesting it's the best, which I find disheartening since I still have 10 more tracks to go.

Snow on the Beach (feat. Lana Del Rey): I'm going to be honest, I don't really know Lana Del Rey's music that well, but I know enough that I knew right away that her voice was going to mesh well with Taylor Swift's, and I'm pleased to say I was right. Del Rey's voice gets a little lost in the mix, making it sound more like she's just an echo of Swift's voice. I find this to be an apt metaphor for Swift's music career in recent years. Shrewdly releasing multiple versions of albums to dominate the charts, timing album updates to coincide with releases and marketing campaigns from competing pop musicians, it is almost as if Taylor Swift cannot cope with the idea of a music industry without her front and center in it. She can't even bear to be anything but the main character in her duets. The song itself is a nice and sweet song about falling in love. It reminds me of a Hallmark Christmas movie, in some ways. I can picture two of the most heterosexual people I've ever seen chastely kissing to the chorus of this as snow falls on the beach thanks to a Christmas miracle/deus ex machina. Again, it lacks substance to such a degree that it's hard to have anything thoughtful to say. It's fine.

You're On Your Own, Kid: For a moment, I'm transported back to that Fearless era of Taylor Swift, naively thinking a man is going to love her as much as she loves him. It's bittersweet, knowing she's so much older now. I certainly can relate to the feeling of having come so far in my personal development only to still be surprised to find there are parts of me that haven't changed at all. There can be something profoundly painful and healing about uncovering a stone and finding an unhealed inner child you didn't know about beneath it. The blood-soaked gown near the end is an interesting reference and makes me think of Carrie White, from Stephen King's Carrie. She was also a naive young girl desperate to be loved by someone, anyone, but who was also on her own. I wonder if Taylor Swift feels like Carrie? A social outcast with a special power? Is Swift's career just her version of Carrie's destructive march through her hometown at the end of the book? If Anti-Hero was cheeky self-reflection-but-not-actually, "You're On Your Own, Kid" is a far more earnest look at how Swift genuinely thinks about herself. Even in her 30s, she's still that kid who didn't get invited to sleepovers. Of course she can't handle the thought of anyone in the world ignoring her. And now she has more than enough money and power to ensure that nobody is ever able to ignore or exclude her again.

Midnight Rain: This song's intro immediately reminded me of another Taylor Swift song and I had to stop everything to find out which one it was. It was "All You Had to Do Was Stay" from the 1989 album. "Midnight Rain" feels like a more mature, more somber version of that same song, but from the other perspective. "Stay's" singer is the one who got hurt, while "Midnight Rain's" protagonist is the one doing the hurting. The songs are in F and C major, respectively, neighbors in the Circle of Fifths, so it at least sort of makes sense that I thought they sounded similar. I think it's more that I latched onto that sudden high note in the chorus and was like "hey, she's done that before!" It's interesting to see Swift take on the role of the scorner instead of the scorned in a relationship. It sounds like she's talking about a relationship that happened much earlier in her career and she chose the career over her then-lover. The gamble obviously worked out in her favor, yet her decision also clearly keeps her up some nights. Even if we don't regret our choices, per se, it can sometimes be hard not to think back on them and wonder "what if?" Swift locks in on that feeling, reminiscing on a love story that could have been, except it never could have been. Of all the tracks we've covered so far, this one feels the most on theme of what Swift thinks about in the middle of the night when she can't sleep.

Question...?: We have another "what if" kind of song but this time Swift is directly addressing her ex-lover with questions. Taylor Swift is returning to form here as the one whose heart was broken. It's clear this person had an impact on her; I found the lyric "you painted all my nights a color I've searched for since" to maybe be her most evocative line so far. It fascinates me every time Taylor Swift brings up her gripes with traditional gender roles when nothing about her feels particularly feminist. Everything I know about Taylor Swift leads me to believe that the only woman whose liberation she's ever really cared about is her own. Maybe she has a philanthropic and activist streak I don't know about.

Vigilante Shit: "Vigilante shit" is reminiscent of Reputation and I wouldn't be surprised if the night of reflection this song comes from happened around that time. She writes about some pretty specific stuff, helping a woman divorce her husband and reporting a man's crimes to the FBI. Genius annotations suggest these could be allusions to the Kanye West and Kim Kardashian situation or to Scooter Braun. The "dressing for revenge" hook is fun but it does maybe get a little repetitive, given the song is under three minutes long and she sings it five times. But docking a pop song for being too repetitive feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of the genre so I'm willing to give it a pass. I am surprised that this is one of the lesser-played tracks according to the Spotify numbers; I thought the girlbosses would bolster those numbers more. I'm a little disappointed, girlbosses.

Bejeweled: Terrible news, I was misinformed, I have heard this song before. I watched the music video. I have absolutely no memory of said music video but I do remember thinking this song also suffered from that Gerard Manley Hopkins-style of "it's okay if it reads weird as long as it sounds good" lyricism. "Didn't notice you walkin' all over my peace of mind / in the shoes I gave you as a present" is a mind-boggling line that works as long as you don't think about it too long. "Don't put me in the basement when I want the penthouse of your heart" is one of those metaphors that works I guess, but suggests maybe Swift has already written all of her better ones and now she's scraping the bottom of the barrel for whatever vibes when put up against a synth beat. Truthfully, I can't tell if Swift wants to save this relationship or drop it entirely by the end of this song. Maybe she can't tell, either. Love can do that to a person. This song reminds me of "Anti-Hero" in that it sounds good and stands out among the other tracks with its incredibly hook-y chorus. But if I read the lyrics too closely or think about them too long I just get mad. Taylor Swift may polish up real nice but this song definitely needed some more time under the buffer.

Labyrinth: In a fascinating reversal, this track does seem to be lyrically well-edited and has way fewer metaphors thrown at the wall to see what sticks. We get another intimate look in Swift's mind as she falls in love, presumably after a recent and painful breakup. We see that she didn't want or anticipate falling so hard so fast, something I find a little surprising given Taylor Swift's entire music career and love life, but her cautious optimism is so earnest that it's kind of sweet. The extra drums and voice altering effect near the end was a turn-off for me; I think it added some artificiality to what was, up to that point, a pleasantly real song. This is like the anti-"Bejeweled" for me where the lyrics are good but the sound is lackluster. She really can do it all!

Karma: To my surprise, I have also heard this song before and just didn't realize it. I've never listened closely, though, just Tiktok clips and stuff. Listening to it now, I assume this song is also about Scooter Braun and his nonsense. I am of the controversial opinion that the people who write and perform the songs should own the rights to the songs, so I have nothing but animosity for Scooter Braun, and if Taylor Swift wants to make an entire album that's just a giant middle finger to him, I support her without question or judgment. I don't particularly mind any of her descriptions of karma here, except maybe "flexing like a goddamn acrobat" which just feels out of place, even though I get she means "flexing" in the less literal sense. Of her three peppier songs so far ("Anti-Hero" and "Bejeweled" being the other two), "Karma" is the best final product. I have a very hard time believing that Taylor Swift "keeps [her] side of the street clean," however, given how often she's patient zero of controversy and drama.

Sweet Nothing: Slowing down again for another romantic ballad, "Sweet Nothings" is another peek into Swift's actual inner world and her struggle to balance her public persona with her private human self. Her lover in this song is not another obstacle but a balm for her weary soul and she finds herself occupied with the affection he has for her. I didn't grow up with many positive romantic relationship models; it wasn't until my mom met my stepdad that I got to see a healthy and loving relationship for the first time. I've seen firsthand the transformative experience genuine love can be for someone and I'm not surprised that being nice to Taylor Swift is all it really takes for her to become obsessed. I relate a little too deeply to that sentiment, in fact.

Mastermind: Rounding out the album with "Mastermind," a song about Swift admitting that she strategically courted the lover she's singing about (but it's okay because he knew the whole time and didn't care). We again find ourselves up against some questionable lyricism: rhyming "groundwork" and "clockwork" was weak but forgivable, but rhyming "mastermind" and "mastermind" was unimpressive, to put it charitably. Overall, "Mastermind" an interesting song in the sense that Swift is regularly accused of thinking strategically in her career, doing things like carefully timing releases or stepping into the political sphere only when it bolsters her reputation. Through this lens, the bridge is especially telling and reaffirms this while also explaining the reason: "No one wanted to play with me as a little kid / So I've been scheming like a criminal ever since / To make them love me / and make it seem effortless." My friends and I watch some competition reality shows like Project Runway and RuPaul's Drag Race, and often the most controversial contestants are the ones who "play the game" and put themselves first. We're not all put on this Earth to make friends and I can respect Swift for admitting it. But I find myself wondering if she genuinely believes this about herself or is she just saying it because it's what she thinks we want her to say? Does anyone know the authentic Taylor Swift? Does that person even exist anymore? Or did that Taylor Swift die the day the Taylor Swift we have now internalized that people liked her more as a singer than as a person? What must that do to a middle schooler?

Final Thoughts:

I would call Midnights one of Taylor Swift's more lackluster entries in her robust discography. The songs themselves are a series of inoffensive but unimpressive synth beats and Swift's lyrics leave a lot to be desired. This was my first time really close reading her lyrics and I have to say, if I didn't know any of her other work, I probably wouldn't go looking for more after what I got from this album. If anything went well here, it was Swift's vocals; I enjoy her time spent in the lower registers of her voice and her breathy ballad voice is enjoyable to listen to. She's come a long way from her screaming country days. I am still not surprised that this album has all but faded from people's memories. There are quite literally dozens of better Taylor Swift songs out there than anything you'll find on Midnights.

Swift clearly had a vision and executed it faithfully but the individual tracks are by and large not her best work. Most of her songs reiterate stories and messages we've heard several times before. Even when she sounds good, she sacrifices good lyrics to get there, which is disappointing. The only real novelty are in songs like "You're On Your Own, Kid" and "Mastermind" where we see Swift struggling with why she is the way that she is in ways I haven't seen before. Midnights offers a unique perspective into Swift's true inner thoughts about herself, her relationships, and her career, and I found that fascinating and compelling enough in its own way to a degree that I almost didn't care that the album as a whole was kind of mid. There were just enough flashes of insight to keep me listening.

Before Midnights, when I thought of Taylor Swift, I pictured a woman who is probably nice and maybe even genuinely kind, hard-working, and who obviously has a passion and affection for her craft and for the pop music industry as a whole. But I also picture someone who, having grown up in the duplicitous comfort of the spotlight, simply doesn't know how to cope without it, to her detriment. Taylor Swift has, by her own admission, ruined relationships, burned bridges, cause controversy, and made enemies while clawing her way to the top of the pop music food chain. Midnights is my first time encountering a Taylor Swift who is really wrestling with the things she's done and whether it was worth it. Maybe Midnights is her way of trying to explain herself to critics, detractors, and exes. She's not apologizing, necessarily, or planning to change her ways any time soon. And maybe she doesn't even have to change; to paraphrase a point she made in her Lover album, would we even be picking her apart for centering herself and her career if she wasn't a woman?

I'm only two years younger than Taylor Swift. I also find myself reflecting on the path I took to get where I am now. I was also excluded and alienated as a child, albeit for probably very different reasons. But, instead of finding something I could do to make people like me, I opted to fade completely into the background and disappear from the real world entirely. Taylor Swift has fame and fortune and is the biggest American pop star of the 21st century, stumbled her way through at least half a dozen relationships, while I opted for obscurity and solitude. But we also had wildly different access to resources. Taylor Swift had money growing up that I did not. If I'd been in her place, would I have taken that path, too? Would the spotlight have done to me what it's done to her? Is there a timeline where I'm writing my own Midnights album? Taylor Swift has established herself as a sort of American princess; she stands apart as her own thing while simultaneously being all of us. She became what we needed her to be and now we hate her for it. But are any of us really any better than her? Isn't Taylor Swift just the grindset personified? Isn't she just American exceptionalism given form?

She is an icon and I am a nobody. I wonder which one of us is happier? I think the answer would surprise both of us.

Final Grade: C

Tracks I Saved:

None, but I thought the standout tracks were "You're On Your Own, Kid" and "Karma" and am unsurprised that "Anti-Hero" and "Bejeweled" were the other two major hits.

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