It’s been a week since Midnights’ release, and the album has already broken three different Guinness World Records. It reached number 1 within hours of its release and is clearly adored by millions. Taylor Swift has explained that the album to her is “a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams.” And it is, the album takes you through several emotions: the unpredictable rise and devastating fall of romance; self-loathing; and the dreary acceptance of her own fallibility. Swift’s tenth studio album pursues a new kind of pop sound that is subdued and amorphous rather than chasing trends.
Despite nearly a decade of increasingly high-profile collaborations, Midnights marks the first album recorded entirely recorded by Jack Antonoff. He has enhanced Swift’s ambitiously vivid storytelling with expressive technicolor synth pop. The album starts off with strong lyrics that protest gender stereotyping, or as Swift puts it, “that 1950s shit they want from me” as stated in the colorful “Lavender Haze.” The album then goes into the moody, superb “Maroon” where the ambient electronics and droning shoegazey guitar back Swifts’ voice. The subdued nature of Folklore and Evermore also permeates Midnights. It's an album that resolutely shuns the neon-hued bangers that pop artists typically follow up with, music that's brazen enough to cut through the din. Misty, ambient, and elegantly restrained describe the sound.
The Lana Del Rey partnership “Snow on the Beach” is masterfully executed, a seamless fusion of their two musical genres with a gorgeous tune, but it's far from a showy summit between two pop icons. Instead, there's a startling lightness of touch and a subdued blending of their vocals. While all is going on, “Anti-Hero” presents a long list of late-night self-pity set to music that sounds a lot like the dimmed-down version of Swift's 1989's shiny 80s rock. Reminding the fans of Reputation , the Swift you adore is Swift in vengeful mode, settling scores with a side-order of Who's-This-About? in the vein of You're So Vain, where else? “Vigilante Shit” and “Karma” have verses that could be directed at foes like Scooter Braun and Kanye West by referring to them as “spider boy,” and pointing out how they “weave your little opaque web” and how her “pennies made your crown.”
That assurance and confidence is the factor that binds Midnights together. There’s a sure-footedness to Swift’s songwriting, packed with subtle, tremendous touches: the instance on “Question…?,” where, as they describe a drunken conversation, the lyrics concurrently accelerate their rhythm and forestall rhyming; “You’re on Your Own, Kid”’s excellent description of a now-well-known Swift returning to her domestic metropolis and feeling like a promenade queen, albeit a completely precise promenade queen. It’s an album that’s fresh, amassed and mature. It’s additionally filled with excellent songs and at a mild elimination from the whole lot else presently occurring in pop’s higher echelons. You wouldn’t want to be expecting what Taylor Swift will do next; however, what she’s doing in the meanwhile is superb indeed.
