Explore Taylor Swift’s ‘Midnights’

by Olivia Williams

For anyone who’s spent a considerable amount of time with Taylor Swift’s music, the title and theme of her newest album are not surprising. She’s called it “Midnights,” a time that has echoed through her previous work. She’s been picked up by a car with no headlights at midnight (“Midnight/You come and pick me up, no headlights” off of “Style” on the 1989 album) and eaten breakfast at midnight (“It feels like a perfect time/for breakfast at midnight” off of “22” on the Red album), among several others. In one of several promotional posts, Swift explains that midnight is a time when “We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears,” and thus this is a “collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams.” From the introduction of this album, there has been a sense of juxtaposition between that love and that fear, that terror and those sweet dreams, and it is a sense that continues throughout the album.

The album was originally slated to be made up of 13 songs (unsurprising to anyone familiar with Swift), although she did release seven more songs three hours later as part of a “special, chaotic surprise.” The original track list is 13, however, and it is out of loyalty to Swift’s love of the number that those songs take center stage in this review.

“Midnights” starts with a song that is firmly in the camp of love and sweet dreams. It’s called “Lavender Haze.” If the phrase seems unconventional, that’s probably because it’s fallen out of common usage.

“I happened upon the phrase ‘lavender haze’ when I was watching Mad Men,” Swift explains on Instagram. She continues, “...it turns out that it’s a common phrase used in the ’50s where they would just describe being in love. If you were in the lavender haze, then that meant you were in that all-encompassing love glow, and I thought that was really beautiful.” The sense of complete comfort and love that Swift based the song around is evident from the first chord. The song – and, thus, the album – starts with strong drums over a faded melody that could be coming from another room. Swift’s distorted voice invites: “Meet me at midnight,” and you are immediately transported into another world.

“And you don’t really read into my melancholia,” Swift sings, and it’s an ironic lyric set against the peppy electro-pop beat and supported by Swift’s voice in the background, which has been edited to be androgynous. From this first song, Swift has diehard fans up and dancing and even skeptics will find it hard not to nod along with the infectious beat. The lyrics are simple and repetitive, and Swift delivers them in a high register sandwiched between “yeah, oh yeah”s, conjuring up images of stadium concerts and dancing at clubs.

The lyrics in “Maroon,” the next song, are more complex, which fans heralded on social media as being a continuation of the hard-hitting lyrical approach of Red, widely regarded as Swift’s most successful album. Swift also stays in a lower register in the song, sometimes harmonizing with her own voice. A drum machine gives a steady beat to this song as Swift travels through her color metaphor, from “the burgundy on my t-shirt when you splashed your wine into me” to the red of “the lips I used to call home.”

Consistent drums lead us into the next song, “Anti-Hero,” as well. The song is perhaps the most vulnerable and certainly Swift’s favorite on the album, if her Instagram posts are to be trusted. Despite her singing sounding as overproduced as a club song, Swift is not happy in “Anti-Hero.” “When my depression works the graveyard shift, all of the people I’ve ghosted stand there in the room,” she admits before going into the chorus.

“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me,” she sings, before delineating some of those problems: she has “covert narcissism” she “disguise(s) narcissism as altruism like some kind of Congressman,” and fears that her partner will leave because he is tired of her “scheming.” The best part of the song, however, comes after the chorus, when Swift gleefully sets a scene of her own wickedness. She describes a dream she has where her daughter-in-law kills her for money before realizing that Swift has not put her in the will.

“The family gathers ‘round and reads it and then someone screams out, ‘She’s laughing at up at us from hell,’” she sings triumphantly, and you can already hear the thousands of fans screaming it back to her. By the end of the song, Swift has told you that she is the problem so many times that she sounds exasperated, even sarcastic, and there’s a sense of relief as the xylophone finishes up the song.

The fourth song on “Midnights” is the only one featuring another artist, Lana Del Rey. Del Rey’s influence is seen throughout “Snow on the Beach,” from the bells that echo Christmas carols to the wistful vocals. Her hypnotic voice echoes Swift’s in a way that is almost ethereal, singing of “stars by the pocketful” and how “your eyes are flying saucers from another planet.” It seems that Swift and her producer have tampered with this song the least on the album; Swift's voice stays undistorted for the most part and no shrieks from the synths punctuate the song. It’s a calm song, setting a hopeful tone (“Can this be a real thing, can it?”) that continues into “You’re on Your Own, Kid.”

Swift does not let go of the dreamy, breathless tone she took on in the previous song, and her voice starts by being underscored by a sweet guitar before the synths take on an almost tinny quality. As Swift tells some of the perils of her journey to stardom, perhaps the most heartbreaking lyric is “I hosted parties and starved my body/Like I’d be saved by a perfect kiss.” This is a lyric instantly recognizable to anyone who has watched the pop star discuss her experiences with disordered eating in her documentary “Miss Americana.”

“I searched the party/of better bodies/just to learn/that my dreams aren’t rare” is also a contender, especially when Swift follows it up with an almost quavering realization: “You’re on your own, kid/You always have been.” The pop star gathers her resolve by the end of the song, though, advising her listeners to “Make the friendship bracelets/Take the moment and taste it/ You’ve got no reason to be afraid.”

“Midnight Rain,” the next song, sprints out of the gate with its distortion of Swift’s voice; from the first moment of “Rain/He wanted it comfortable/I wanted that pain,” it’s hard to even tell that it’s her. Even if the distortion itself doesn’t serve the song well, the other electro-pop mechanics that are added in certainly do. Swift is in a dead-end relationship in this song. Her relationship is “a wasteland/Full of cages, full of fences/Pageant queens and big pretenders” that she wants desperately to leave, “but for some it was paradise.” She tells this story with support from big-time synths and drums that guide her from verse to distorted chorus and back to verse again. The first few times they are exciting, but her dramatic changes grow tiring, and when she finally sings the chorus in her normal cadence it feels like a victory.

The entire next song, “Question ...?” is a victory as well. In this song, bolstered by drum machines and exhausting autotune, Swift has a few simple questions for her listener, questions that she repeatedly stresses are not big deals: “Did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room/and every single one of your friends was makin’ fun of you/but fifteen seconds later they were clapping, too?/Then what did you do?” It’s a whirlwind, big brother of a song that grabs you by the collar and spins you around until you’re dizzy, and it takes you a few minutes to realize you loved it. If nothing else, “Question...?” will be in the background of movies and TikToks for years to come.

If not evidenced by the title, “Vigilante Sh*t” is the song on this album that is most squarely in the “turmoil” camp of Swift’s late-night escapades. This song, which starts with the cheesy lyric “Draw the cat eyes sharp enough to kill a man,” would have also fit right at home on Swift’s album Reputation, her pouty, femme fatale album about revenge. Drums of every kind (and not much else) support Swift’s voice, which has been auto-tuned to silky perfection, and she’s clearly having the time of her life leaning back into the villainess character that was behind the success of “Blank Space” and “Look What You Made Me Do.” In this song, Swift explains, “I don’t dress for women/I don’t dress for men/Lately, I’ve been dressing for revenge.” And it’s revenge she takes, encouraging her listeners to imagine her as “thick as thieves with your ex- wife” (“She had the envelope/Where you think she got it from?” Swift challenges) and as the “someone (who) told his white-collar crimes to the FBI.”

Title aside, “Bejeweled” is immediately the most sparkly of the songs on the album, with a beginning that sounds like it came straight out of an old pinball machine. This playful quality is accentuated throughout the song, with its giddy melody and heavy focus on electronic sound effects that wouldn’t be out of place in a “Barbie” movie. After Swift sings the chorus of “I polish up real, I polish up real nice,” a refrain of her edited voice sings back an exclamation (“Nice!”) which starts fun but gets a little too cutesy as you continue listening. This is also probably the weakest song lyrically, with phrases like “Familiarity breeds contempt/Don’t put me in the basement/When I want the penthouse of your heart” or “But some guy said my aura’s moonstone/Just ’cause he was high.” Although not one of Swift’s strongest, it’s a fun song, and it will settle into its place playing over club speakers or at Sweet Sixteen parties. After all, “a diamond’s gotta shine.”

If you listen closely to the beginning of “Labyrinth,” you’ll hear a faded, slightly distorted voice keeping time, which fans on social media suspect is from the well-known voice notes that Swift is known to keep. Soon, Swift’s voice, soft and gentle, laments a new relationship: “Uh oh, I’m falling in love again/Oh no, I’m falling in love again.” She continues to earn her title as a respected lyricist on this track as well, with lines such as “You know how scared I am of elevators/Never trust it if it rises fast/it can’t last” and “break up, break free, break through, break down.” It’s a gentle, confessional song that will feel familiar to Swift listeners, albeit slightly more produced than her usual fare.

Naming a song “Karma” is one of Swift’s many nods to her fans in this album, as there is a fan theory that there is a mysterious secret album of the same name that Swift has yet to release. This song starts off faded, as if it’s coming from an old gramophone, before Swift breezes confidently, steady in her lower register, to chastise someone who has hurt her. The switch from her lower register to the syrupy, almost mocking tone of the chorus catches the listener off guard at first, and that’s intentional. Swift sings a chorus of what karma is to her in a peppy, poisonous voice covered in sugar (“my boyfriend,” “a god,” “the breeze in my hair on the weekend,” “a relaxing thought”). She then returns to her darker verses with another trademark line: “Spider-boy, king of thieves/Weave your little webs of opacity/My pennies made your crown.

Perhaps hinted at by the title, the lullaby “Sweet Nothing” contains a different kind of sweetness than the fake tease that Swift offers in her previous song. This one is written with her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn (credited as William Bowery). Alwyn also adds a calming piano to the piece, a stark change from the produced pop that makes up the rest of the album.

“Outside they’re push- and shoving,” Swift sings softly. “You’re in the kitchen humming/ All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing.” It’s a simple, gentle song, meant to reflect the simple gentleness of being with someone who expects nothing more from you than exactly what you are.

The album rounds out with “Mastermind,” a celebration of Swift’s cunning business tactics through the metaphor of getting someone to fall in love with you (with the twist ending that the pair were in cahoots the whole time). It’s a smooth, sleek song where Swift masterfully draws out her words and uses simple harmony to layer her voice.

“No one wanted to play with me as a little kid,” she explains. “So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since/to make them love me and make it seem effortless.” It is effortless, as is everything Swift does. It’s a perfect song to end a fantastic album. Swift has gone out of her comfort zone to experiment yet again and, in doing so, proven what millions already know so well: she’s a mastermind.

(Republic Records)                                   

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