Midnights Taylor Swift

With its confident songwriting and understated synth-pop, Swift's sophisticated 10th album indicates that she no longer feels she has to compete with her ...

Last time she broke cover with new material, she released [Folklore](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/24/taylor-swift-folklore-review-bombastic-pop-makes-way-for-emotional-acuity) and [Evermore](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/dec/11/taylor-swift-evermore-rich-alt-rock-and-richer-character-studies), two pandemic-fuelled albums of tasteful folk-rock produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner. There’s an appealing confidence about this approach, a sense that Swift no longer feels she has to compete on the same terms as her peers. Everything has been [pored over for potential information](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/oct/14/taylor-swift-celebrate-album-release-midnights-pop-acclaim) about its contents, up to and including the kind of eye shadow she wears on the album cover. Meanwhile, Anti-Hero offers a litany of small-hours self-loathing set to music that feels not unlike the glossy 80s rock found on Swift’s Elsewhere, if the Swift you love is Swift in vengeful mode, settling scores with a side-order of You’re So Vain-esque who’s-this-about? [more of the same](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/16/go-easy-on-me-why-pop-has-got-so-predictable): building an immediately recognisable brand in a world where tens of thousands of new tracks are added to streaming services every day. It’s an album that steadfastly declines to deal in the kind of neon-hued bangers that pop stars usually return with, music brash enough to cut through the hubbub. In fact, Midnights delivers her firmly from what she called the “folklorian woods” of her last two albums back to electronic pop. There are filtered synth tones, swoops of dubstep-influenced bass, trap and house-inspired beats and effects that warp her voice to a point of androgyny on Midnight Rain and Labyrinth, the latter a leading choice given the preponderance of lyrics that protest gender stereotyping, or “that 1950s shit they want from me”, as Lavender Haze puts it. [Taylor Swift](https://www.theguardian.com/music/taylor-swift)’s 10th studio album, Midnights. It’s an approach that Midnights’ one marquee-name guest, [Lana Del Rey](https://www.theguardian.com/music/lana-del-rey), knows a lot about, but not one to which Swift has adhered. Instead, breadcrumbs of mysterious hints and visual clues are very gradually dropped via the artist’s social media channels.

Taylor Swift has released her 10th album, Midnights, after weeks of hints. The 13-track album includes “Snow On the Beach,” which features Lana del Rey, ...

Swift appears in the [songwriting credits](https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/taylor-swift-midnights-song-writers-credits-zoe-kravitz.html) for every song on Midnights and teamed up with [minion](https://www.vulture.com/2022/05/diana-ross-tame-impala-minions-soundtrack.html)/collaborator Jack Antonoff for most of the album. Swift has sorted her discography into [three different vibes](https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/taylor-swift-fountain-quill-glitter-gel-pen-playlists-apple-music.html): fountain pen, quill pen, and glitter-gel pen. Over the past two months, she revealed her track-list titles through [surprisingly straightforward TikToks](https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/taylor-swift-introducing-midnights-track-names-on-tiktok.html). [Midnights](http://www.vulture.com/2022/10/taylor-swift-midnights-theories-clues-tiktok.html) o’clock. [Described](https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1564100815069106176/photo/2) by the singer as “a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams,” Midnights was first [announced](https://www.vulture.com/2022/08/taylor-swift-new-album-release-date.html) during Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards in August. After a monthslong wait, [Taylor Swift](https://www.vulture.com/article/all-taylor-swift-songs-ranked-from-worst-to-best.html) has dropped her tenth studio album.

The album treads aggressively familiar territory—but with new wisdom and confidence. By Spencer Kornhaber. A portrait of Taylor Swift. Beth Garrabrant.

On the delightfully trollish “Anti-Hero”—“Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby, and I’m a monster on the hill”—she makes the highly specific insecurities of a celebrity land as a (The lovely “Snow on the Beach,” for example, is almost ruined by a pointless Janet Jackson reference.) But the concision of Swift’s songcraft and the nuances of her phrasing should keep the listener tuned in. (Please diagram this double negative: “Karma’s a relaxing thought / aren’t you envious that for you it’s not?”) For the opener, “Lavender Haze,” the cartoon-villain smolder of her voice has human creaks and squeaks. “Maroon” and “Question…?,” two songs about hot memories, churn with a near-tragic blend of energy and frustration. That knack for relatability is her superpower—one so potent that it almost makes Midnights’ insularity seem noble. [Reputation](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/11/reputation-taylor-swift-first-review/545561/) in 2017 and [Lover](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/08/taylor-swift-lover-review-faith-religion/596725/) in 2019—tinged with extremity and experimentation, brilliance and [cringe](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/04/taylor-swift-me-song-review/588118/). The concept behind the album title—Swift documenting “13 sleepless nights” over her lifetime—is an excuse to tour through old obsessions: exes, haters, feuds, her beau’s talent for distracting her from all of the above. Yet compositionally, Midnights is sleek and sturdy in a way that no previous album of hers is. Last year, she expanded an old ballad, “All Too Well,” [into a 10-minute saga](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/11/snl-taylor-swift-all-too-well-red/620706/) that flickered with controlled fury. What’s distinct about her return to synth pop is just the flavors she stirs in: oozing bass, surmountable melancholia, and the same type of confession and awkwardness that appears 45 minutes into an office happy hour. The choice of moodily distorted vocals feels especially dated; putting humanoid whale moans in an album’s first moments, as Swift and Antonoff have done, is like opening an IPAs-and-bacon bar in 2022. Transcending expectations is its own expectation, and Midnights makes clear, with modest poignance, that Swift has burned out on her own hype.