‘Meet me at midnight,’ Taylor Swift sings at the beginning of her tenth album, released Thursday night midnights. Swift’s environment is involuntarily in the middle of the night. Awake, staring at the ceiling there are fears and insecurities to look in the mouth. Worrying about why relationships collapsed. Sweet love dreams that turn into purest nightmares. The night has many many colors, especially when her “depression is on night shift” (‘Anti-Hero’), dark thoughts take over.
The album midnights of the American singer is considered “the story of thirteen sleepless nights in her life”. Above all, it also emphasizes, apart from that nighttime theme that immediately gets you involved, what an incredibly prolific pop woman she is. That extreme work drive! This is already her fifth studio album in the past two years. There were the understated, thoughtful indie folk albums Folklore (Grammy: Album of the Year) and Evermore. And she’s been re-recording her old albums for a while too – after years of legal wrangling, her ultimate revenge in a rights dispute with music mogul Scooter Braun. So came Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) from.
Deviating style course
Likewise typical of Taylor Swift: a deviant style course. She’s gone again from the acoustic earthiness she made during the lockdowns. on midnights the pop diva is once again bathed in synth-dominated electro-pop. Often it is now about a modest, bare-tight frame, with hints to dub. Crinkly beats in tingly eighties work make it move more. Although with producer Jack Antonoff it mainly comes to a somewhat hypothermic sway (‘Maroon’) in a style that we also know (through him) from Lana Del Rey and Lorde.
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midnights has strong sides, but it has not become a consistent album. The uniform middle section disappoints too much for that. It seems less elaborate. And the distortion of her voice in ‘Midnight Rain’, Swift in androgynous form: no gain. On the other hand, catchier songs such as ‘Lavender Haze’, ‘Anti-Hero’ and ‘Karma’: enticing hit pop with dark undertones, such as on reputation (2017). Really exciting on a dry trap beat: ‘Maroon’.
Like no other, Swift can name in songs the predicament she is in now. Sharp, reflective and associative, she always leaves room for speculation about what (or who!) she means exactly. Add to that her love for archaic language (‘unbeknownst’) and imagery. Snow on the beach (‘Snow on the Beach’, a very listenable duet with Lana Del Rey): for her as wonderful as a sudden infatuation.