Dear Reader,
At times in my blogging career, the expectation that I would review every Taylor Swift album has felt like a burden. It's an entirely self-imposed one that I could ignore at any time, of course — and oh, I have (lookin' at you, Evermore) — but still. Taylor is not my #1 favorite artist, as controversial as that may be. And as blogging has faded increasingly into more college-days relic than active, current hobby, it has sometimes felt unappealing to dust off the ol' DB just for a TSwift review.
With Midnights, that reluctance is gone. Folklore and Evermore were fun experiments, and while this record does have its echoes of the Album That Must Not Be Named (Reputation. It's Reputation.), it mostly gets back to good, old-fashioned pop Taylor — and that is a thing worth blogging about.
If Lover was happy pop Taylor, Midnights is it-is-what-it-is pop Taylor. The album isn't sad per se; that's what the last two were for. But it is heavy. Throughout my first listen — which I did, in fact, stay up late for, thanks to the head start afforded to me by living in Central time — I was struck by how mature it sounds. Not only has Taylor's physical voice matured over time (something we can track most acutely by listening to Taylor's Version re-records of numbers we're used to hearing a teenager sing), but her themes have matured, too. She alludes to disordered eating on this album and to mistreament by an older lover. She talks about high people in ways that imply she's actually been around some. She centered the whole record around insomnia, for Christ's sake, a move that seemed mature even before the music came out, considering that Taylor's cat-lady persona seems more the type to be in bed by 9 than to be up all night agonizing over her struggles and flaws.
Let's be clear: This album is still commercially ear-wormy pop, and it's still Taylor giving us what she knows we want, which is to have a whole lot of fun when we listen to her. But it's Taylor as an adult, and a pretty actualized one at that — just like we, her age-mate fans, are becoming.
Of her recent albums, Lover has traditionally been my favorite, but Midnights is giving it a run for its money. Now, that's not an official declaration. (After all, as one of those aforementioned adults, I had to log into my job this morning at 9, and after staying up til midnight for my first listen, I could only squeeze in one more pre-work pass after getting my mandatory several hours of sleep.) Even from my limited listening, though, I can tell this album is special, and I am delighted to walk with you through its highlights.
Lavender Haze: She starts us off with a catchy one, folks, and one that reveals several new ways in which Taylor the Celebrity Is Just Like Us. First off, there's her interest in the color lavender. Hi, fellow girlies who had pastel purple childhood bedrooms! Secondly, there's her dis-interest in marriage. I assumed she was into the concept after "Paper Rings," but this number tells us that she and Joe are just fine unmarried, thankyouverymuch. As someone who's been with her boyfriend-not-husband almost as long as Taylor's been with hers, I agree: one-nights and wives are the only kinds of girls people see — and what a shame.
Anti-Hero: Quick brag here: I started my second listen at 6:53 a.m. today, and therefore, I got to Anti-Hero at the exact moment that its video was premiering on YouTube. I popped over to the Tube, naturally, and wow, that vid was a delight. Put John Early in more things!
Oh, and yeah, the song's great too or whatever. If you don't relate to "it's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me," I have bad news: You are, in fact, the biggest problem.
Snow on the Beach: This song having a jingle bell backing track is Taylor giving us the Christmas song we all wanted with "'Tis the Damn Season" but, like, very thoroughly did not get.
Midnight Rain: It's been established on this blog that my cheap behind uses the free version of Spotify. Because of this, I'm used to deeply discordant ads blaring at me in the middle of albums, and I cannot lie to you, that's what I thought this song was when it started. Taylor's gettin' a little sonically weird, people! She's also once again getting anti-bride, and while it is a bit "okay, we get it," I'm on board. Neither Taylor nor I have ever heard of gender roles.
Vigilante Sh*t: GUYS. Guys.
From the first line — "draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man" ?!?!?!?! — I was obsessed with this one. It's perfect. The sultry slow-jam vibes are perfect, the rage is perfect, the sudden and inexplicable pivot to crime reporting is perfect...everything is. I'd describe my fashion lately as more "dressing for a sweatpants convention" than "dressing for revenge," but this makes me want to change my ways. For, like, maybe an hour. With this edgy-lite track, she really fed all of us who worshipped emo bands in high school while also being too scared to enter a Hot Topic.
The only problem here is that Taylor (rudely) released this too late for it to be included in the "Diana on the warpath" season of The Crown coming next month. After all, if Taylor is positioning herself as the current queen of revenge dressing, it's possible only because the onetime actual princess of it is no longer alive.
If this is not your favorite song on the album, you are wrong, and I'm not sure that we can be friends.
Bejeweled: This is just a really nice, catchy little number. I'm very into it, particularly the lyric suggesting that "I don't remember" is an acceptable, not-unhinged way to answer the question, "Do you have a man?" It's not a manifesto of badassery like the last track, but it's fun — and it gives a delightful bit of retroactive lore to Taylor's (already frankly iconic) dress from this year's VMAs.
Karma: Remember when people theorized that Disney made a movie called Frozen so people would stop seeing results about Walt cryogenically freezing himself if they Googled "Disney frozen"? This song is Taylor's version (Taylor's Version™️) of that. For those who don't know, there's a rumor that Taylor has an unreleased stray album called Karma, which was written around the same time as Reputation. And now, here she comes with a song called "Karma." HMMMM.
Her bury-the-rumor cause is aided by the fact that this song is a bop. It's fun to listen to, it has fun lyrics, and I envy the kids who can dance to this at their college parties this weekend. Can't wait to...dance to it at my 10-year college reunion, I guess. *insert the sound of my creaking, ancient bones*
Mastermind: She had me in the first half. I was listening to this and thinking, "What if you told me you're a mastermind?" Girl, we know! We been knew! I truly was baffled at the concept that her Machiavellian scheming could be a secret to anyone, even if I did love that she was addressing it so openly. But then — classic Taylor the Storyteller — she gave us that twist at the end where it turns out the guy she's addressing knew all along. That, my friends, was more like it, and it proved once more that our girl Tay truly is the mastermind she claims to be.
Bonus Tracks: It should surprise no one that I did not stay up late enough for Taylor's "3 AM chaotic surprise," so I've had less time to digest the bonus tracks than the original 13. But we need to address the instant scorched-earth classic "Would've, Could've, Should've." First of all, J*hn M*yer is Public Enemy No. 1 (you're off the hook for now, Gyllenhaal), and we need an oral history of his Taylor-related misdeeds, stat. Second, though, let's say this: Notre Dame kids will think that this song is made for them, because religion. They are wrong. It is made for people who are three years out of Notre Dame and have finally encountered their first romantic partner who is either A) an atheist or B) a jerk, but like a secular one, not a jerk who hides behind "I go to daily Mass" nice-boy energy like their exes. This is for the good girls who've been exposed to someone bad, with all the complicated baggage that entails. It is...frankly an extremely dark piece of writing hiding in the guise of a catchy pop tune. Pair this with Sam Smith's Unholy for a double feature exploring all the frontiers of your Catholic guilt.
In summary, folks, Taylor has done it again. This album is banger-filled, it's emotional, and it's adult — just like her and just like us. I can't wait to keep playing it as I go about the business of my 30-year-old-lady life: the parts where I'm working on intimidatingly prominent newspaper journalism and the parts where I'm sitting in my apartment reading two witch-themed romcoms in the span of one October. As Tay Tay would tell us, it's all about balance.
