We Meet Ourselves – Midnights Review

(The Swiftening Series: 1. folklore | 2. Lover | 3. reputation | 4. 1989 | 5. Red | 6. Speak Now | 7. Fearless | 8. Taylor Swift

Bonus: Red TV | Midnights)

And now, a slight interlude.

For this entire month so far I’ve been reviewing media my friends wanted me to, to great fun. But when I set out to do this theme for the month of October, I knew a major obstacle stood in its way – the release of Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated tenth studio album, Midnights. Because, well, I had to review it.

So I apologize, but I’m breaking my own rules this week and reviewing some media I wanted to review. If it makes you feel any better, my interest in Taylor Swift does stem from a friend getting me to listen to evermore, spawning an eight-part series where I reviewed all of Taylor’s discography. Consider this an extension of that. Or don’t. It’s my blog, not yours!

The lead-up to this album was the most fun I’ve ever had with a music release. In recent times, I’ve realized this is one reason I became a fan of Swift’s so readily. My entire life, I’ve loved music so excitedly and passionately but… there just wasn’t many other people interested in sharing that with me. Online fandoms for artists were scarce and though I searched for them, mostly small and unresponsive.

The Swifties, though? They are massive, passionate, and very interactive. The speculation and anticipation for this album was incredibly infectious. I’ve had my criticisms of some sects of the fandom, but in general I’ve enjoyed finally having a common musical touchstone with a lot of other people just as willing to talk about music as I am.

Another major excitement factor was the timing, I think. After the surprise drops of folklore and evermore, the massive amounts of new fans these albums brought in, and Swift’s ongoing effort rerecording her old albums, the prospect of a brand new album was quite an exciting one. As one of the many fans brought in by her previous new albums, it was really exciting to be present for the lead-up to a brand new album for the first time.

Plus, the marketing for Midnights was, let’s say, unique. Rather than drop a lead single for the album, as she may have previously done, Swift opted instead for a cryptic series of TikToks called “Midnights Mayhem with Me,” where she randomly drew bingo balls marked 1-13 from a spinner and revealed the track titles that way. In keeping with the theme of sleepless nights, each of these videos dropped at midnight on a fixed schedule, until one extremely chaotic night on October 7 when she released the final five track names once an hour starting at midnight (with the final track name released at 4 am. Yes. Really.) Plus, of course, the merch flowed, including the release of five separate versions of the album on both CD and vinyl, all before anyone had heard a single track. (What can I say, she’s a capitalist queen.)

Let’s just say that, in all of this, Swifties got a little overzealous. What else is new?

So how did Midnights stack up to all of that hype? Shockingly well.

Though I’ve heard a lot of people say this album goes back to the Swift sound from before folklore and evermore, I vehemently disagree. Midnights is a careful melding of the soft, folksy styles of the two albums that came before it and the polished pop of Taylor’s previous career.

Overall, it’s a deeply introspective look at Taylor’s life throughout her career, no doubt influenced by her revisiting past eras as she rerecords her previous work. Despite the tone and messaging, though, the album has a certain cynical wit to it. In a move clearly opposed to the common criticism that she “always plays the victim,” several songs on Midnights serve as a sharp self-criticism.

A key example is the song that perhaps could best be described as the album’s lead single, “Anti-Hero.” The song’s goofy, sarcastic chorus of “It’s me, hi. I’m the problem, it’s me,” is a pretty good thematic core of the album. The song is soft, driving, and atmospheric, feeling very much like a bleary, lonely nighttime self-hatred session. Far from the up-tempo pop of Lover or 1989, Swift purposefully drags and slurs her lyrics, getting across the tiredness she feels toward herself.

The album’s introspective feel lends to many a heartbreaking moment from throughout Swift’s life and career. “Maroon” revisits the Red era with this beautiful, heartbeat-like production. This is the song that most exemplifies that Swiftian knack for writing those telling little details into her lyrics. In some ways, it feels like a lyrical parallel to “Red,” assigning different colors to images from the doomed relationship, but in this case all of the images take on a red hue.

Perhaps the most potent of the looks back in the 13 tracks, though, is the fifth, “You’re On Your Own, Kid.” In it, Taylor swoops over many points of her life, pinpointing moments along the way when she persevered despite great emotional hardship. From her Pennsylvanian roots, to her first break into the industry, to the whirlwind of her early fame, she gives her younger self the credit she deserves for surviving it all. The slowly increasing speed and intensity of the song gives the song the feeling of the life journey it is. It’s… emotional, to say the least, though ultimately hopeful.

And really, not all of Midnights is focused on tragedy. One of my favorite tracks is the opener, “Lavender Haze.” Though it has a similar understated production and soft vocal style, it’s a love song. It actually reminds me a lot of “False God” from Lover, which is my favorite track on that album. With a great beat, Swift calls to 1950s slang for being in love while also rejecting the pressure she feels from the public to marry her long-time boyfriend, Joe Alwyn. I’m really happy she opened the album with this track – it really set me up for the tone of the album. Many people, including me, assumed the album would be all sad, but this track successfully set the introspective, slightly cynical but genuine feel.

But my absolute favorite track from the album is probably “Sweet Nothing,” another happy love song. When I saw this was co-written with William Bowery (Joe Alwyn’s pen name), I was unreasonably excited. Taylor’s collabs with Joe have yielded some of my favorite tracks off the last two albums, like “betty” and “champagne problems.” This has probably risen above both of those tracks, though. A soft, nursery-rhyme like melody scores a song about a comfortable love in the face of the terrifying pressure of the outside world.

I’ll be honest, I cry just about every time I listen too hard to these lyrics – they’re such perfect little moments of intimacy and happiness. My favorite line is hands down the second verse – “On the way home, I wrote a poem / You say, ‘What a mind.’ / This happens all the time.” The simplicity of the statement speaks volumes of the safety and love between the two, a kind of admiration so constant and casual that it can be said to “happen all the time.” It just gets to me.

Midnights also has its share of what we in the business call bops. “Karma” was a song everyone assumed would be a scathing, revenge-obsessed anthem. I suppose in some ways it is, but it’s mostly just a swagger song as Taylor flexes the way she’s managed to roll out of the various controversies she’s been in the center of over the years. It’s goofy, extremely catchy, and though I worry what it might say about the album if it becomes a big radio hit, I can’t be too mad.

My favorite bop, though, has gotta be “Bejeweled.” The instrumentation has that Antonoff bling that matches the song’s title and concept so well. The chorus is WICKEDLY catchy, with these fun little interjections throughout. I love the way she hits the word “shimmer” in the chorus – the song just feels like it embodies the lyrics. I cannot wait until the next Taylor Swift night I can attend so I can yell “Nice!” at the top of my lungs with all the other Swifties.

Overall, I was shocked and impressed by how cohesive this album is. It has a unifying sound and thematic consistency that I’ve yet to see from a Swift album. Not since reputation could I truly feel comfortable calling an album of hers a concept album but… I’ll say it, Midnights is.

Of course, after the core 13 tracks, Taylor was not done with us. As she cheekily hinted in her “Midnights Manifest,” at 3 am she dropped her “chaotic surprise,” the 3 am edition of the album, which contained 7 more songs. Taylor explained that these were a sort of “vault” for the album, similar to those she had been compiling for her rereleases, songs that she loved but just didn’t make the cut of the core album.

I’m of two minds on this. On one hand, I do love getting more content for this album, and several of these 7 songs are legitimately great. I prefer having them over not. On the other, I really love the 13 tracks of the original release as one singular statement, and I feel that the 3 am tracks, though wonderful, do somewhat pull focus. But, Taylor’s gotta Taylor, huh?

In perhaps a bit of an odd move, I think I’m going to only focus on my favorite of the 7 bonus tracks – “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve.” I’ll be honest, this is the shining standout not only because it’s a cuttingly written and heartbreaking song, but it’s a song very clearly touching on the same relationship spoken about in her Speak Now masterpiece, “Dear John.”

This brings up something I’ve sort of hinted at throughout this review, but I’ll state outright here – I think Midnights is absolutely an album that directly comments and parallels musical moments of Taylor’s past. This makes sense to me, as she revisits old eras and rerecords songs, it’s not at all as surprise that she finds herself reflecting on the same subjects of old songs. Taking this song in conjunction with “Dear John” is what kills me so much, though. In my original review of Speak Now, I mentioned my shock at how dark and mature the song was. For someone so young, it’s clear-sighted about how one of the main sources of the relationship’s toxicity was her age.

Yet, “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” documents the aftermath of such a relationship. As clear-sighted as young Taylor was at the time, it’s obvious she wasn’t yet ready to speak about how much the relationship took from her. But now, the 32-year-old Swift (notably the same age as the man she was dating at the time, by the way), expresses such potent grief at what she lost.

I want to end the review by returning to the core album tracks, though. Swift chose to end the 13 tracks with “Mastermind,” a song that stands as a sort of admission of guilt for her manipulations over the years. Swift characterizes the success of her current relationship as coming from her underhanded manipulations, explaining that “No one ever 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. / This is the first time I’ve felt the need to confess.”

The feeling of being a manipulator aligns well with the rest of the album, which tends to skew quite self-critical. But what I love about this ending is the slight twist it adds to the end, when she admits all of this to her lover: “I laid the groundwork, and then saw a wide smirk on your face / You knew the entire time that I was a mastermind.” The song hints that in this case, her lover knew she was doing everything she could to make their relationship work, and seemingly never viewed it as underhanded. As Taylor’s songs often do, it hit a little close to home, as someone who admittedly does often assign the worst possible interpretation of my own actions.

But beyond that, I find it to be a clever ending to this album as a sort of meta statement on Taylor’s career and fans. The common interpretation is that Taylor is always hinting at something secretive, always planning something new over the horizon. When this song title was revealed, with no other context, fans were already joking about Taylor being the mastermind in the title, with all her little hints and clues.

Particularly in the bridge, I find Taylor’s assertion that she is only “cryptic and Machiavellian because [she] care[s]” to be a message to fans who spent the album’s run-up obsessively searching her every move for hints as to what was coming next. It’s a cheeky little wink and admission of a little bit of guilt in the chaos that characterized this album’s release – and I can’t help but love it.

She got us again.

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