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Content warning: this article discusses eating disorders and miscarriage
On October 21, I was one of many fans who anxiously counted down to midnight. I mouthed the countdown from 11:59:50 to 12:00:00 and hit “play.” Instead of hearing the first notes of “Lavender Haze,” I saw the message: “We’re sorry, but something went wrong. Please try again.” I tried again many times, even closing the app and reopening it (the Wi-Fi in my room is very weak). But, many other listeners experienced this as well: Swift had crashed Spotify. Fortunately, Spotify worked again about ten minutes later. But let’s backtrack.
On August 28, 2022, Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well Short Film” earned her the Video of The Year award at the VMAs. In her acceptance speech, she shocked fans by announcing, “My brand-new album comes out October 21st.” Later, Swift shared a post on Instagram, revealing the title: Midnights. In a series of TikTok videos she posted from September 21 to October 7 called “Midnights Mayhem With Me,” she revealed the new album’s tracklist in random order.
The album opened with “Lavender Haze,” a song detailing the “all-encompassing love glow” of a relationship. With a pop beat, Swift makes it clear that she wants to stay completely in love with her partner and not worry about future plans or questions from the media. Many Swifties found the track’s beat similar to “I Think He Knows,” the sixth track of Swift’s seventh studio album, Lover. The second track, “Maroon,” explores the complexities of a relationship. The chorus describes different aspects of Swift’s relationship in different shades of red, such as “the burgundy on my t-shirt,” “the blood rushed into my cheeks, so scarlet,” and “the lips I used to call home, so scarlet, it was maroon.” Track three, “Anti-Hero,” became a fan favorite, as Swift delves into her insecurities, declaring, “It’s me / Hi / I’m the problem, it’s me.” One lyric in the second verse confused some fans; Swift sings that she feels like everybody is a “sexy baby” and she is the “monster on the hill.” This refers to Swift’s insecurities about her age (in her 2020 Netflix documentary, “Miss Americana,” Swift comments on a “phenomenon of famous women being discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they’re 35”).
The fourth track is titled “Snow on the Beach” and features singer Lana Del Rey harmonizing in the background. As Swift states in an Instagram video, the song details the experience of “falling in love with someone at the same time as they’re falling in love with you.” The simile of snow on the beach refers to how surreal this experience can be. The fifth track, as many Swifties know, is typically the most emotionally vulnerable track of a Taylor Swift album (i.e. “All Too Well” and “Dear John”). Swift continues this pattern with the song “You’re On Your Own, Kid.” This track expresses Swift’s harsh realization that friendships and romantic relationships are fleeting, and that she has to face life on her own. Swift alludes to an eating disorder that she first discussed in Miss Americana, when she sings, “I hosted parties and starved my body like I’d be saved by a perfect kiss.” The sixth track, “Midnight Rain,” threw some people off, myself included, when it began with a lower-pitched version of the chorus. However, the song has grown on me. Swift explains why a past relationship ended, “He wanted a bride, I was making my own name,” and reveals that she wonders what could have happened had the relationship worked out.
The seventh track, “Question…?,” not only samples, but parallels Swift’s hit single “Out of the Woods” from her album 1989. Both of these songs are speculated to be about her very public relationship with Harry Styles from late 2012 to early 2013. The song describes a very turbulent and fragile relationship, much like Swift has stated that “Out of the Woods” described. The eighth track, “Vigilante Sh*t,” tells a story of revenge. Swift adopts the role of a man’s mistress, who teams up with his wife to get revenge on him by reporting his “white-collar crimes to the FBI.” The album’s ninth track, “Bejeweled,” should not be confused with the popular matching game. Fans speculate that the song is about Swift’s former boyfriend, Calvin Harris, telling off a lover who doesn’t appreciate her.
“Karma,” the eleventh track, criticizes people with whom she has previously feuded, such as Kanye West and Scooter Braun. Swift describes karma as her “boyfriend” and “a cat/purring in my lap ‘cause it loves me.” Swift has alluded to karma previously in her career, stating, “karma is real” in a 2016 “73 Questions With Vogue” video, and referencing it in her hit song, “Look What You Made Me Do.” Fans even suspect that if her 2016 feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West had not caused her to spend a year in hiding, she might have released a sixth studio album titled Karma, as she changed her hair and had a pattern of releasing albums every two years. The twelfth track, “Sweet Nothing,” was written with the collaborator William Bowery, who she worked with on her album folklore, and revealed in the companion documentary folklore: the long pond studio sessions to be Joe Alwyn, who she has dated since her disappearance in 2016. It gives an insight into Swift’s happiness with her current relationship, which is beautiful. The thirteenth track, “Mastermind,” lays out Swift’s careful planning in order to make her relationship work. This proves to be the antithesis of “invisible string,” from folklore, which claims a series of coincidences brought her and her partner together.
At 3:00am, Swift released a deluxe version of the album, titled Midnights (3am edition), with seven bonus tracks. The first bonus track, titled “The Great War,” describes Swift and her lover experiencing a conflict, but coming out of it stronger. The second bonus track is called “Bigger Than The Whole Sky,” grieves the loss of a loved one, and for this reason, has resonated with many people who have experienced miscarriages, as it grieves a seemingly senseless loss of someone who had a massive impact on the narrator, despite never getting to know the person lost. The third bonus track, “Paris,” describes Swift being madly in love. “High Infidelity,” the fourth bonus track, details a relationship burning out, and detailing that Swift is moving on. The fifth bonus track, “Glitch,” details an unplanned romance, as Swift and her lover were “supposed to be just friends.” “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” is another fan favorite, a more retrospective version of the song “Dear John”, off of Swift’s album Speak Now. It appears to provide another look at her relationship with singer John Mayer when she was nineteen and he was thirty-two. The seventh and final bonus track, “Dear Reader,” provides advice to the listener based on her experience in the spotlight.
My personal favorite tracks on the album, in no particular order, were “Anti-Hero,” “The Great War,” “High Infidelity,” “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” and “Mastermind.” I relate the most to “Anti-Hero” and “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” while the lyrics of “The Great War” and “High Infidelity” are a somber kind of beautiful that I have always liked, and the lyrics of “Mastermind” are a perfect match to the synthesized beat. Overall, Midnights is one of my top three favorite Taylor Swift Albums.
