Monthly Music Column: "Midnights" By Taylor Swift Review
Antonia Fusco
Taylor Swift has left the “Folklorian woods” and invited us into her dreams and nightmares at midnight.
Whether or not Swift is a catalyst for change in the music industry is widely debated. However, with the notable decrease of the album as an entity, Swift overthrows these modern-day entrapments. To be a Swift fan is an experience; never is an album simply and quietly released. Instead, Swift creates an entire experience – an era. Met with months of theoretical discussions from fans and Swift’s “breadcrumbing” of easter eggs and hints, the puzzle is never complete, even after the album is released.
This applies to Swift’s tenth album, Midnights. Before the release, she prefaced it as “a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams”. The album perfectly encapsulates this, capturing the experiences and emotions of the small hours with its subdued production and lyrical themes of a nightly stream of consciousness, jumping between daydreaming, psychoanalysing, and plotting revenge.
Swift returns to electronic pop with producer Jack Antonoff, whom she has worked with for a decade. The production glistens with its dream-pop and synth tones, reminiscent of past pop projects 1989, Reputation and Lover. This nostalgia fits the album, as it reflects on “thirteen sleepless nights” throughout Swift's life and returns to her distinct, diaristic style. With this release, Swift’s pop style is more refined than ever. No longer maximalist pop, she turns towards the minimalist, perhaps drawing influence from Folklore and Evermore. There is a power in the misty haze of the subdued, held by the Reese Bass, synth-pop beats and the connecting threads of Swift’s lyricism. This allows Swift to maintain her love of world-building in albums, connecting the world of Midnights, interlinking each dream and nightmare, to make it seem like it all occurred in one night.
Swift has never been so overt with her self-loathing as she is in “Anti-Hero”. The lead single sets up Swift’s most prevalent nightmare, as she describes the song as “a guided tour throughout all the things I tend to hate about myself” in her Instagram announcement of the track. An anti-hero in literature is a protagonist lacking in heroic qualities – typically exhibiting one of the dark triad personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, all of which Swift directly lists in the song. Its 80s synths and springy melodies contrast the subject, as though she’s poking fun at her psychoanalytical breakdown. Containing Swiftesque cultural references like Godzilla and the “sexy baby” from 30 Rock expands Swift's suffocating self-awareness of herself.
Swift’s romanticism doesn’t go amiss with “Lavender Haze”, one of her most robust album openers. Its sultry and sparkling production places it as a standout track. The album's first line “meet me at midnight” demands listeners to meet Swift in the world she has created with this album, in the dead of night. It’s a critique of female domesticity in the 1950s, a feminist commentary that tips on the verge of surface-level liberal feminism (which she has been accused of in the past). Still, she takes a unique turn on the sexist one-dimensional view of women in heterosexual relationships, with the 1950s-coined “lavender haze” which Swift describes as “an all-encompassing love glow” as though she’s decided to ignore these notions and maintain the honeymoon period of her relationship.
“Maroon”, a stunning nostalgic rush of falling in love, is reminiscent of the alluring “Dress” and offers a more sophisticated take on love. Swift’s past colour theories of love as “burning red” transition into maroon to show the complexities of real love. The highly anticipated “Snow On The Beach”, featuring Lana Del Rey, sonically sparkles like a Christmas song in dream-pop ballad style. Both Swift and Del Rey are known for solid bridges, but this is where this song fails, as the bridge flattens out. Only Del Rey’s whispers can be heard, but the music sustains a magical quality. Hopefully, a version will be released with Del Rey having an entire verse of her own.
The vengeful “Vigilante Shit” and “Karma” recall Reputation, referring to past drama with Kanye West and Scooter Braun. Both Swift and her listeners receive catharsis from this callback to the Reputation era, as her enemies here destroy themselves. Stylistically, it’s similar to Lorde’s Pure Heroine and the signature style of Billie Eilish. Some lines are admittedly corny – like “karma is a cat” – but sonically the songs express the heart of lively pop.
The best songs come from her collaboration with The National’s Aaron Dessner. There’s an immediate shift in production and lyrical styles. Until Dessner, the soundscape lacks intimacy, which he helps to fully flesh out. “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” is possibly the strongest song on the album, evoking “Dear John” in reference to Swift’s relationship with then 32-year-old John Mayer, when Swift herself was 19. It uses religious imagery to evoke the corruption of innocence by an older man, and the lingering trauma this caused. Trauma typically manifests later in life, as Swift declares with her matured perspective: “Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.” It’s built up like an impending breakdown until the outburst at the incredible bridge – much like the triumphant ending to “Dear John”.
Unlike anything in the current pop canon, Swift proves she doesn’t feel the urge to compete with her peers. Like a bildungsroman, Midnights proves that even when we think Swift has released her final masterpiece, her work only blossoms more and more as the years pass.
Antonia Fusco is a Culture Columnist at The Scoop and a third year English student at Queen’s University Belfast.