Can Taylor Swift get softer? Like many high-performing workaholics, I imagine she’s lost the instinct and, practically girl, is using improvements. In the evening, with her lover nearby, does she vaporize a little Lavender Haze CBD Rosin and focus on the tranquility that creeps into her body under the relentless chatter of her thoughts? Does she take his hand and put it on her cheek? On a therapist’s couch, does she give up her hard-earned dignity and confront the little, little anti-hero in her? Alone with her memories, does she sometimes shred them, refusing to untangle them into elegant morality tales and instead remain in their thicket of sadness, frustration and longing? And then, in the studio, she can bring a lyric based on questions, turn to her trusted collaborator and say, “I don’t care if this song is a hit, I want it to be weird”?
All of these open-ended scenarios – in which a well-groomed woman begins to expose herself -, however skewed, emerge on Midnights, Swift’s 10th and most provocative album. When Swift announced it two months ago, she promised new levels of self-exposure, citing the classic midnight confession trope, music made in the spirit of “the floors we walk on and the demons we face,” as she said in a statement . And she is redeemed, but not by offering many concrete permissions. She’s more focused on how such revelations might sound before settling into a story to share. Swift uses Midnights as a way to rethink the sonic rhetoric of first-person storytelling and access the vibes projected by the TikTok confessionals that are her spiritual children and the genre-agnostic singer-songwriters reconfiguring indie pop and R&B. as she once did in the country. shedding habits that have served her artistically and commercially for more than a decade. Sometimes she succeeds; sometimes she clings to her old habits. But the attempt intrigues everywhere.
Midnights doesn’t challenge listeners by aggressively adopting a wide variety of new sounds like her blockbuster breakthroughs Red and 1989. Nor does it cleanly redraw Swift’s musical parameters like folklore, a surprising twist on release that’s now proven an ideal 21st century adult contemporary album. On Midnights, she worked exclusively with her soulmate producer Jack Antonoff, bringing in just a handful of collaborators (the most notable being Lana Del Rey, who gives amazing feminine energy on “Snow On The Beach”), digging into a sound that could become called ahistorical chillout music. Awash with synthesized elements ranging from the vintage Moog and Juno 6 synths to laptop-generated atmosphere and vocal manipulations, Midnights envelops Swift’s story numbers in a soft and changeable glow that at times brings to mind certain sources – the layered vocals and synthesizers. drums point to Whitney Houston on “Lavender Haze”, get Twin Peaks-y with “Maroon”, lean more to Billie Eilish on “Labyrinth” – but ultimately puts the listener in the immediate nowhere of a private space, bedroom or chat room, true, apart from the outside world, stories can turn into a whisper.
Swift has said Midnights relays 13 specific after-hours pains, most ostensibly from her own life, though a few songs, like the highly theatrical “Vigilante S***,” could be read as the kind of fiction that still strongly represents experiences. from the author. Many of these songs are easy to make with Easter eggs, as they pick up on the same thread that has dominated her writing since her breakout in pop music. “You’re On Your Own, Kid” is a Nashville story, with its callous heroine playing industry parking lot parties, quickly surpassing the mentor figure she covets and longs for. ‘Maroon’ hails from her wine-drinking New York days, probably referring to the same elusive free spirit that haunts her down Lover’s ‘Cornelia Street’. “Anti-Hero” makes her misbehave over tea, a nod to her current London home. The album features two tracks clearly dedicated to her partner Joe Alwyn (he wrote one under his pseudonym William Bowery), praising his patience with her ever-changing moods and defending himself against outside forces that constantly challenge their privacy. . (The album’s most political phrase: “The only kinda girl they see / is a one night or a wife.”)
These stories won’t surprise anyone, but their form can catch those who love Swift’s easygoing singing style by surprise. She’s still singing, doing those expert, subtle interpolations of the cadence of hip-hop and the relaxed timbre of country crooners. But often she and Antonoff twist and push her shiny vocals in new directions.
That’s where the softening takes place. For all her kindness in the world and empathy and commitment to openness as a songwriter, Taylor Swift is essentially sharp. Her vulnerability hides a knife. This quality is in her voice, a weightless instrument that Swift has honed over time into Valyrian steel – glamorous, shiny, but more deadly than it seems. Sharpness is also key to Swift’s perspective, which emerges in her love for the telling detail, for the response that cuts through all the bulls that the object of her love/hate has saddled her with. It is a quality associated with masculine women, boyish in their agility and their cool refusal to be seduced. It’s not lush; by some definitions it is not feminine. It can be misconstrued as pettiness or even cruelty.
On Midnights, Swift and Antonoff change her voice in a way that fights against the cool shimmer, multitracks until it glows, and sometimes changes the pitch so that it’s barely recognizable. On “Midnight Rain,” it’s auto-tuned to swing between birdy high notes and an almost masculine lower register, accentuating the story the verses tell of a young woman outgrowing a relationship with a sound that evokes that process of unfold into a new self. “Labyrinth” – as much as any song inspired by one of her favorite subjects, the experience of still holding on when you have to let go – melts her voice into countless streams of light, some as twisted as in a Bon Iver song , other clear hair. These synthetic renderings go against the high craftsmanship of Swift’s meticulous songwriting, the neatness and control that make her songs powerful, but can also lessen their emotional impact. Usually she explains every move she makes, but here the music pulls her into the eternal now of her emotions, working against her persistent impulse to understand them. While always returning to the clarity at Swift’s core, these efforts are reminiscent of the metamorphic effect of songs like SOPHIE’s “Is It Cold in the Water?”
Those who cherish Swift’s Dorothy Parker side, her wit and wit, need not worry. She sticks to her old habits in songs like “Karma” (it’s her boyfriend, the wind in her hair on weekends, a relaxing thought) and “Vigilante S***”, a vampire song whose drop beat recalls “killer” of FKA twigs. “Ask…?” is the kind of story number only Swift can write, dipping into gel pen poetry to cultivate a faint mood, then focusing on a scene of romantic conviction and betrayal, drawn so sharply it stings. “Have you ever had someone kiss you in a crowded room / And all your friends laughed at you / But 15 seconds later they clapped too?” Swift sings and describes perfectly the way insecure love can be solidified by social pressure, the way women in particular can be cornered by the desires of others for them. Then, of course, the pushy lover leaves in the middle of the night. This is the kind of truth that has earned Swift the devotion of her fans. She still sees the little things that destroy a person.
The question this album asks is: who is that person? At its deepest level, Midnights is a first-person interrogation, an attempt to find its origins not in well-made confessions, but in the more confused and prescient utterances that come before conclusions are drawn. That Antonoff and Swift explore this misty space through sound rather than more directly, through words, sometimes gives Swift and Antonoff’s experiments a semi-finished quality. A certain kind of listener will wish Midnights were stranger, more devoted to its distortions. That listener might also draw an odd parallel to 808s & Heartbreak, the artistic breakthrough of Ye, her former antagonist (who then went through Kanye West). That was also a work about disordered emotions that rely on technology to express the kind of vulnerability that cannot be contained in standard rhymes. In 2022, there is no doubt that Swift is the artist who is still growing and pushing himself to understand what it means to be a public figure who is also a person with mistakes and unresolved pain. She’s still working on loosening the Old Taylor’s grip—of the many Old Taylors she’s built through her music and celebrity. The polymorphic voice on Midnights suggests the New Taylor is still emerging from the haze.