Taylor Swift's Midnights : The 6 biggest takeaways from the new album
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After months of speculation and Easter egg-searching, Taylor Swift's 10th album Midnights has finally made its bow.
The album marks a return to form of sorts for Swift, who had ventured into a completely new sound and a more fictional style of songwriting with her last two releases, Folklore and Evermore. Midnights, on the other hand, though it's unique among her past offerings in the genre, does see the singer-songwriter return both to a pop sensibility and a more personal subject matter in her songs.
The standard version of the album is only 13 tracks long, but like the "cryptic and Machiavellian" mastermind that she is (more on that reference in a bit), it's a lot to take in. With Swift, nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
Below, EW attempts to make sense of it all.
It's Ms. Swift, if ya nasty
The album's opening moments make it clear that Swift and her longtime love Joe Alwyn have heard all those marriage rumors and questions — and it's not anyone's business, thank you very much.
In "Lavender Haze" the singer takes aim at "the 1950s s--- they want from me." If that's not clear enough, a few lines later she sings, "All they keep asking me / Is if I'm gonna be your bride / The only kinda girl they see / Is a one-night or a wife." The will they, won't they, or are they, is not answered here, and that's the point. She just wants to live in that "lavender haze," and other people can feel free to "get it off your chest," just please, she says in the bop's chorus, "Get it off [her] desk!"
A 'cryptic and Machiavellian' queen
It's clear Midnights revisits moments from Swift's life, many of which she's written about before, and yet the album is surprisingly cryptic. Sure, one could argue because "Question...?" seems to sample "Out of the Woods," a 1989 track largely believed to be about Harry Styles, that "Question...?" is also maybe about her looking back on that relationship. And it certainly wouldn't be wrong to claim that "Lavender Haze" is about Alwyn, since Swift herself admitted that much, or that the song they co-wrote together, "Sweet Nothing," which mentions their travels to the U.K., could also be based on their pairing.
Fans will always attempt to dissect each lyric looking for hints as to who, or what, each song is about, but with a lot of Midnights, the themes are easier to parse than the subjects. For instance, "Anti-Hero" is about her insecurities, and "You're on Your Own, Kid" dabbles in that, too. "Snow on the Beach" is about falling in love at the same time someone else is falling for you, and on the flipside, "Midnight Rain" looks back at a lost love, what went wrong, and what could have been. And then there's "Karma" and "Vigilante S---," which are like two sides of a revenge-seeking coin — the latter is about fantasizing about revenge, while the former is Swift knowing karma was on her side, which is the ultimate form of revenge.
In past albums, the references might have been more direct, but here she's more broad, speaking in metaphors and leaving things more to a listener's imagination. She seemingly both alludes to and cheekily apologizes for her cryptic nature in the album's closer, the very aptly titled "Mastermind." In the song she sings, "This is the first time I've felt the need to confess, and I swear, I'm only cryptic and Machiavellian 'cause I care." A mastermind, indeed.
A walk down memory lane
Though it might be impossible to say for sure who Swift was thinking about when she wrote each track, it is fitting that her tenth studio album resembles each of its predecessors in some small way.
An argument could be made that each song on Midnights ties into a different previous album of hers — "You're on Your Own, Kid" references an unrequited love not unlike the one mentioned in Fearless' "You Belong With Me." Meanwhile, "Sweet Nothing" feels like it could belong on Folklore or Evermore, lyrically and musically. "Karma" in turn is a clear nod to Reputation, where she told us "all I think about is karma" on that album's lead single, "Look What You Made Me Do." "Maroon" seems like a grown-up version of "Red," etc.
Midnights stands on its own as a unique album to be sure, but it feels like Swift is reaching through the veil of time and taking us down her jaunt through memory lane in the process.
Vulnerability is strength
By returning to more personal songs, Swift also got more vulnerable. She previously revealed that "Anti-Hero," the album's first single, was one of her favorite songs that she's written because of how honest it is. "I don't think I've delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before," she said in a clip on her Instagram. "I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized, and not to sound too dark, I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person." Sure enough, Swift gets into all of those insecurities in the song, saying that she feels like "a monster on the hill, too big to hang out." She describes a dream about a future daughter-in-law killing her for money. She worries about loved ones leaving, and about how she's perceived: "Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism like some kind of congressman?"
Swift gets candid on "You're on Your Own, Kid" as well, with references to her struggles with body image. She writes, "I gave my blood, sweat. and tears for this. I hosted parties and starved my body."
Swift is also a master at self-deprecating humor (see: 1989's "Blank Space"), and that certainly continues on Midnights. On "Mastermind," in addition to nodding to her "cryptic and Machiavellian" tendencies, she also admits, "No one 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."
Karma is a cat
Swift's legendary status as a cat queen remains intact. First, she brought in Catwoman herself to collab on "Lavender Haze." Yes, Zoë Kravitz not only helped to co-write the album's opening banger but she also provides background vocals on it. And Swift's love of her feline friends makes a starring appearance in "Karma," with the incredibly cheeky line, "Karma is a cat, purring in my lap because it loves me." Meow.
Aaron Dessner is a mastermind, too
Remember earlier when we mentioned nothing is ever simple with Ms. Swift? Well, just hours after the release of Midnights, she released seven new songs — vault tracks of sorts. Though most of the songs see Swift again teaming up with Midnights collaborators such as Jack Antonoff, fans of Folklore and Evermore will be pleased to see Aaron Dessner's return here as co-writer and co-producer on "The Great War," "High Infidelity," and "Would've, Could've, Should've." Dessner produced both of Swift's last two albums, but was, until now, absent from Midnights.
He seemingly alluded to his covert involvement when a list of collaborators on Swift's new album leaked earlier this week, and his name was nowhere to be found. At the time, he cryptically tweeted, "Always have to remember things aren't necessarily how they seem!" Sneaky, sneaky.
And, though, we mentioned earlier that the original 13 Midnights tracks didn't include a lot of direct references to Swift's starry past, we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that two of the new bonus tracks do appear to. In "High Infidelity," for instance, she mentions a specific date: "Do you really want to know where I was April 29?" Eagle-eyed fans have noticed this corresponds with the date she and ex Calvin Harris released their song "This is What You Came For" in 2016, leading some to believe it's about the end of that relationship.
And on "Would've, Could've, Should've," Swift sings, "I damn sure never would've danced with the devil at 19 / And the God's honest truth is that the pain was heaven / And now that I'm grown, I'm scared of ghosts." The parallels to Speak Now's track "Dear John" (believed to be about her rumored involvement with John Mayer) are obvious here. On both tracks, Swift laments about being too young and her lost innocence — with "Would've, Could've, Should've" she says, "Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first." On "Dear John," she writes, "Dear John, I see it all, now it was wrong / Don't you think nineteen is too young / To be played by your dark twisted games, when I loved you so? / I should've known." And, perhaps more interestingly, both songs make reference to her being 19.
While these songs didn't quite make Midnights' official cut, they do provide just enough of the fun little Easter egg hunts of albums past for diehard fans to unpack.
Midnights, and its 7 bonus tracks, are available to stream now.
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