album review: 'midnights' by taylor swift

At some point Taylor Swift made the transition from the wholesome girl next door to pop icon. Many - and I include myself - said at the time that she sacrificed a lot of her detail-rich, homespun relatability to do it. To many outside the fandom it led to a critical decline for a few albums, and even a few years ago I would have included myself in making that assessment.

But it’s always been more complicated than that, and I’d argue reputation was the album that despite its gaping flaws in execution was the project to unlock the next chapter of Taylor Swift’s creative appeal, at least to me. The album is divisive to this day - critics are mixed on it, the average listen tends not to like it much, but the diehards adore it, less due to the instantly dated sound and more because of Swift’s content and framing, where she was much more willing to play if not a villain a more unlikable character… except to her, it wasn’t play, what many even in her own team thought was camp, she was sincere. Where that album didn’t work for me was execution, where her darker impulses felt more nebulous and veiled and I simply was hoping that she’d take greater ownership of the messy, complicated, deeply flawed humanity at her core, acutely aware of all the projection dumped on her amidst a glittery tangle of artifice - and that’s exactly what she did. The first seeds were planted on Lover two years later as a transitional pop project that I still hold is a lot better than many give it credit, but folklore and evermore saw her take that wide-angle lens not just to herself but to her own mythos and the context of her world. The embrace of indie rock was always going to be seen by critics as reflecting more maturity, but that came most from the writing in storytelling that in going outside herself could feel all the more vulnerable and revealing, and at its best moments allowed her to not be the everywoman anymore, inhabit that larger than life presence that ironically for me re-established a different brand of relatability. But I knew this was a diversion that wasn’t going to last - evermore felt like a homecoming to familiar sounds by the end, and I thought she was setting herself up for a hiatus, start living that more grounded, quiet life she seemed to be craving, she had nothing left to prove…

But I remember in my evermore review referencing the album Something More Than Free by Jason Isbell, where he also thought he was closing a door on his demons or elements of his life that he’d rather seal into the past to keep moving forward… but The Nashville Sound came two years later as a stark reminder that it’s not so easy to do that. And I guess I should have been prepared for that because Taylor Swift was not slowing down, with 2021 featuring two high-profile re-releases of Fearless and Red which if anything only seemed to amplify that mythos and resonance, where the tension between relatability and icon status returned anew and led to interesting reexaminations of old drama. And then the buzz started up around Midnights, a new album produced entirely by Jack Antonoff for this year where immediately folks drew comparisons to the indie material of the early 2010s in some of the marketing, where it was suggesting that she was once again getting darker and quieter, make the ‘mature’ music that her previous two projects had planted but in a different stylistic lane. Not going to mince words, this was the most intrigued by a new Taylor Swift album I think I’ve ever been: Swift’s best writing in the past five years has been moody, complicated, morally dubious material, and while I was a bit concerned given some of my running frustrations with Jack Antonoff - see my coverage of the last album by The 1975 for some of that - even if the fandom wanted another Red or to keep being ‘relatable’, I was deeply intrigued by what new rabbit hole we could get pulled into. So what did we find on Midnights?

…so the odd thing about being a music critic is that you can often see the reactions to an album in real time - and if there’s an album that’s not well-equipped for high speed reactions, it’s this one, which is why there’s a lot of casual fans calling mid for being a much more reserved, electronic slowburn that’s probably the closest thing to a sequel to reputation that we’re going to get, certainly a swivel from the indie rock of her last two. More than that, you can argue this is the most traditionally “difficult” album in Taylor Swift’s discography - it’s more chic and wordy and literate, even if part of her literary focus is pulling from Tumblr, and you can tell for a lot of fans especially after last year it’s not what they wanted; to fully ‘get’ a Taylor Swift album it shouldn’t feel like work. Even for fans who’ll pick over every lyric you can tell this’ll be a divisive album in the fandom - you don’t have the immediate recognizable pop vamping of reputation that’ll at least pull you in, which is why a lot of fingers are being pointed at Jack Antonoff basically repeating what I said about in my review of the last album from The 1975 but without context. So the reception has been somewhat mixed - except among mainstream critics who have been showering this with acclaim but they tend to do that to any heavyweight superstar in fear of a Twitter backlash so I don’t place much credibility there - but where does that place me, with my long-running tempestuous history with Taylor Swift? Well to me… it’s the thematic and sonic continuation of everything I’ve liked from her for the past four albums, only with the haggard, increasingly resigned honesty of someone with nothing left to prove and everything to lose. It’s her best album since Speak Now, could well be among my favourites of this year, and depending on the hour I could argue this is the best thing she’s ever done.

I also say all this with the caveat that what I - and apparently the rest of the mainstream critical establishment - found with this is not what a lot of casual, usually younger pop listeners are looking for in their music, because to start this feels like a very adult album. Not in terms of language - although Taylor swears more freely than ever and I actually don’t mind it at all - or by leaning into the standard sexually charged provocation that’s the usual pop standard for implying adulthood, but in framing in both sound and content. In a way it feels like the natural extension of working with The National on her indie rock experiments, now opting for the classy pop sheen you hear out of sophistipop or the more “cool”, reserved side of indie pop, or even trip-hop, all muted synths, spare vocal loops, and tapping skitters of percussion. It’s a sound that’s normally framed as being more ‘mature’ or tasteful - although ‘Vigilante Shit’ pulling from a bassy pop trap sound somewhere between Pure Heroine-era Lorde and Billie Eilish definitely feels younger despite its content - and that’s where for a lot of fans I can imagine a problem, some of the younger ones just not having that same exposure to the sound - and Swift being screamingly unironic, more on this later - some of the older millennials who are her age contemporaries perhaps not able to find the same inroads via arrested development and by extension class. Any hipster who browsed Pitchfork in 2010 knew the indie rock sounds Taylor Swift was pulling for folklore and evermore and probably attended parties where that music was played - with Midnights for certain folks I imagine it feels like the soundtrack to a party to which they weren’t invited, or if they were they feel out of place, and that’s uncanny coming from Taylor Swift!

And that’s the trick: Swift knows that, and she knows that all the gilded class and chic veneers are transparently phony and that her wealth and success has propelled her into these circles, and while she knows what to say and keep saying to stay in these circles and even to enjoy them - she can appreciate the glamour - she also knows how much of it is a sad illusion around empty people who want to put her in a box that she doesn’t fit… although she very easily could, especially when her more capricious impulses rear their heads. And let’s make this clear: she’s been laying the groundwork for these themes for at least the last five years - ‘champagne problems’, ‘the last great american dynasty’, ‘Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince’, it was the subtext underpinning the heel turn of reputation, where playing the straight-up villain was not the reality and by Midnights she seems to get that. Now this is not new - this has been the messy thematic undercurrent of The National for twenty goddamn years, and Lana Del Rey’s barely heard appearance on ‘Snow On The Beach’ makes all the sense in the world, likely as someone who found that box and is interested in prodding those who feel guilty for wanting to fit within it, Swift likely being one of them in finding a love that fractures her plans. And with Midnights’ more restrained, intimate focus, while the veneers of high Americana are still very much in view right from the start on ‘Lavender Haze’ in its references to the 50s and Mad Men, they’re more internalized subtext than explicit text, of which Swift is endlessly aware given her status in American pop culture. But she doesn’t quite have enough self-control to play to the ideal or even recognize every moment she’s going off the rails, every moment she’s cringe only amplified by restraints of class, femininity, and fame where on some level it’s just her.

Now there are three responses to this that deserve examination, the first being that it’s not like Taylor Swift doesn’t have an army of defenders - she’s absolutely benefited from these systems she now finds stifling or even abusive, the ‘more money, more problems’ argument is stale, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with mocking cringey missteps, no matter how thin her skin is. And while there’s a conversation of scale that comes with having a platform with so much direct access and how some of those targeted social media attacks can be woefully disingenuous, you can argue that some of this is self-inflicted, especially with the megastar machine that could easily insulate her from more and oftentimes will create as many problems. At the same time, though, as much as Taylor Swift trafficks in relatability, this is the album where despite every Tiktok-ready quip she’s realizing that the gulf is ever-widening from the majority of her fans, all the more entrenched in getting older with this sound that feels very authentic to where she wants to be compared to everyone else, and it’s profoundly isolating. And what’s telling is that this is also not new - that neglected girl next door appeal goes back to the self-titled and some of her biggest hits, and while folks would assume as a queen of pop with a girl squad she’d have gotten past it, songs like ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid’ prove that’s not at all the case… and I guess as someone with a platform who’s also seen social media backlash of all stripes, that weary resignation felt more relatable than ever. There’s a profound loneliness across the majority of this album, and while I’d argue that’s been a persistent emotion since at least reputation, here it’s as tangible as it’s ever been, only enhanced by Jack Antonoff’s production.

And it’s here where we have to examine the second response, that Swift got to that point by writing pop music for the masses, the audience gave her that platform, and as much as she wants to make late night self-obsessed rambling musings, if the hooks and production aren’t there, it won’t matter how cryptic and personal you are. This is where a lot of folks are pointing fingers at Jack Antonoff’s production, that the cooler, more ethereal textures drain already limited hooks of their power and produce a project that feels listless - or to quote way too many, ‘mid’. Now I get how Antonoff might be overexposed in mainstream pop - especially as he’s been a primary culprit in not always accentuating the best of an artist’s sound - but the bizarre thing with the backlash here is that many of the hallmarks of his production aren’t even here! If there are touches of fractured Americana they’re like a lingering horn at the back of ‘Sweet Nothing’, or a mix that feels so spacious where you think there could be a little more - go back to Lover, his distinctive fingerprints felt way more obvious there - but this might be one of the albums where that approach works, amplifying the negative space to further create that lingering isolation. The larger factor is likely that Swift wrote a selection of songs that are slow-burners that demand you sink into that atmosphere, but even then it’s not quite consistent. This is where I have to reference the bonus tracks where I’d argue it was a miscalculation to release them the same goddamn evening as Midnights, half because they bloat the album’s tighter construction but also because the majority feel cut for the right reason; without Jack Antonoff as the sole producer the sound feels more diffuse and scattered even if Aaron Dessner is a good fit, material that feels more built for a pop audience even though that doesn’t really match the rest of this album! Yes, the padded shuffle of ‘The Great War’ with its grand romance is potent and ‘Bigger Than The Whole Sky’ with its delicate acoustics and heartbreaking subtext of loss is striking, and ‘Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve’ rides its shuffling, seething guitars to throw another well-deserved haymaker at John Mayer, but they feel like they belong a different album with one major exception - we’ll come back to it.

But even then, even if many Taylor fans will argue that the album gets ‘better’ as it proceeds after a slow opening start, I’d completely disagree - ‘Bejeweled’ with its staccato glitters feels a bit like Swift overextended the metaphor, which she normally does at least once an album, ‘Labyrinth’ is one case where the pitch-shifted vocals on the back-end don’t quite work on an otherwise filmy cut, and ‘Karma’ is probably the closest thing to the pop of reputation and that brand of winking capriciousness has never as effective as Swift has wanted it to be for years now. She’s much more effective at the midtempo, slow-burn cuts where even if the vocal mixing feels kind of inconsistent from track to track, there’s a hypnotic pathos that really connects. ‘Lavender Haze’ and ‘Midnight Rain’ to me feel like slightly lesser cuts, but how they bend vocal samples around the rickety percussion is effective in creating that haunted simmer, and that’s more just in comparison to the impressive early run on the album. The creaking, alcohol soaked drone of ‘Maroon’ with striking vocal interplay, the windswept elegance of ‘Snow On The Beach’, the fizzy padded beat and very spare guitar that builds so effectively across ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid’, and ‘Anti-Hero’ as one of my favourite singles from her in a long time with its terrific harmonies as the percussion feels rougher against a glossy mix. And by the end of the album it swings around with the very muted, playful twinkle of ‘Sweet Nothings’ and then the pulsating buildup to the terrific album closer ‘Mastermind’, which might as well serve as the thesis statement for the entire album.

Because this is where we get to that final response to this thematic arc, and where the conversation becomes the most tricky. Because yes, while someone might find empathy in Swift’s lonely, dreamlike reflections on a struggle to find her place, and they might vibe with the nocturnal grooves and striking vocal interplay, this was a platform she was given, and the more populist appeal she has sacrificed, the more her conscious awareness of power structures without seriously challenging them snaps into view. And while I don’t try to assign a theme to art released across a year, it is very revealing that for major albums from Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, The 1975, and now Taylor Swift we have that same reckoning with where they fit within power structures and answers that will deliberately unsatisfy. And Swift’s framing is unique - it’s not coaxed through therapy or ‘we’re only human’ deflection, there are albums of context she made that Swift can’t escape, set through the symbolism of stains on dresses of blood and wine; it’s not Beyonce curating and empowering from on high, this is Swift reaping everything that she built, and it’s not pretty. It’s why songs like songs like ‘Bejeweled’ and ‘Karma’ and especially ‘Vigilante Shit’ can feel like deflective costumes - I wouldn’t call them inauthentic so much as the amplification of who Taylor Swift thinks she’d have to be to live in that world, and how she very well could….

And this is where we have to take a step back and ask who Taylor Swift is now, and has likely been for a long time, and once again reputation is half of the key. It’s an album that wanted to seize control of a narrative, even play the villain, but could never truly lay claim to everything it meant - it was indistinct and messy and loaded with metatext that folks got sick of trying to contextualize, and that was outside of the swirling rumors off-record where despite the megastar machine around her, she was thin-skinned and capricious and something of a control freak, hard to work with. I would go a step further and at least acknowledge that Taylor Swift writes about alcohol abuse in a way that seems frighteningly real, very acutely aware of how much of a numbing escape it can be for someone like her with that sort of prodigious talent and ambition. Where Midnights works is basically as the admittance of everything that reputation implied, and the framing isn’t about to let her off the hook this time - ‘it must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero’. Where previous albums were set up to imply someone like her would be a monster to be around, this album just outright admits that she is, and doesn’t really ask you to root for her. More than that, it’s the feeling of thinking you’re the smartest person in the room, and maybe it’s even true, but you’re messy and damaged and enough people know it, and people who think they know versions of you will look on in disbelief or with enough snide smiles until they applaud when you actually do swing to make something real… but only after rolling their eyes, as the scenes of ‘You’re On Your Own Kid’ and ‘Question…?’ play out.

Now it’s worthwhile discussing how Swift is perceived in doing this by folks who pick up on that text and then go a little further - because again, she’s got a machine that’s enabling this, and like with reputation, you can argue that unapologetic admission is going to be taken by fans as, well, a cathartic excuse to be insufferable as well. And more than that, it can often feel like it’s in the surface of a glamourous station that will only ever be aspirational for some, and for bad reasons, and a power that Swift doesn’t really disavow. In fact she goes the opposite direction on ‘Mastermind’, outright admitting this is how women have worked within the system for centuries if not millennia, using wiles that most often paints them as the conniving bitch - and it’s not a power she’s disavowing either, of which a lot of the men at her class including exes want her to do. And that can be dicey - it’s the liberal move of working within the system instead of actively tearing it down, which in 2022’s social climate only makes Swift less relatable and more of a target, especially when she acknowledges the voices that constantly scream that she should be doing more and how this sort of material can and will be co-opted. But where I think Swift goes past a simple glorification is the acknowledgement of the human and social cost to living it: indeed, on the bonus cut ‘Dear Reader’ she provides advice with a loaded warning that for as often as so many looked up to her as a role model, she pushes back - she might caution folks to bend when you can and snap when you have to, hold onto your secrets, keep evolving and changing, but also that she’s on her fourth drink and you haven’t seen the real moments of loneliness and loss and you should really go find another fucking role model. It has the same resonance as ‘Say When’ by Dessa, where you might be ‘winning’, but at what cost, and it’s potent for it, even produced by Jack Antonoff… and I also don’t mind that it’s not on the album proper. It feels like a very blunt statement of themes, and that can work, but less for an album this feels this diffuse, especially not as a rambling letter to fans. More importantly, I’m not sure where it would fit on the track list and especially not as a closer, where we get the other side of ‘Mastermind’, highlighting just how much Taylor Swift set up the situation to meet her current partner, played the manipulator… and he saw through it, and you get this rush of incandescent joy that Swift feels like she finally found someone on her level, finding that real, deeper connection for which she has been aching for so damn long.

And yet to more, none of that still will be enough - they’ll highlight all the more artifice in its ‘honesty’, that this sort of mature framework is just another method to manufacturing a connection that doesn’t require her to take any accountability, and at some point disingenuous arguments need to be dismantled for what they are. You don’t make an album utterly lacking in obvious hits or radio singles even more than her last two if you’re trying to assert your dominance, even if you know you’re too big to fail. Hell, there’s a swathe of pop fans who have turned on the most honest and complicated display of humanity Taylor Swift has probably ever put forward, highlighting just how disposable it all is. Meanwhile the accountability police seem to be ignoring all artistic context in Swift bearing some very real, very persistent trauma in demanding an aspirational purity of which her own power could allow her to achieve… but without acknowledgement of a very flawed humanity, and Swift also understands that it would never be enough, and that the systems that set her up to succeed can be just as enticing and just as dismissive of her humanity. It’s why a lot of the grandstanding condemnations of this album have felt really hollow beyond the fact that many haven’t sat with a complicated record where many don’t seem to have any interest in doing the work to untangle it - which proves her point and reinforces that isolation again. I dunno, a will to power used to find love that’s lasting and rare for some of us, I won’t be so quick to condemn it - but that being said, I get why folks won’t like this album. It’s muted, it’s low-key, it’s got Jack Antonoff on production, it’s ‘mature’ but also has enough reckless, decidedly-Taylor flourishes that many will scoff at completely refusing to acknowledge their own petty immaturities… hell, it’s a follow-up to reputation, and I don’t need to tell you for how many folks that album didn’t work! But for me… yeah, there’s a resonance for me here of which on the surface I expected but I had no idea of the coming potency. Legitimately great albeit not one that will work for a lot of her audience, especially those who want the big easy fun hooks… and again, at certain late night hours, I could argue this is her best to date. I think you might want to give this another few more listens - you might find yourself surprised.