To All the Midnights We’ve Spent with Taylor Swift
The pop queen's new album implores listeners to come along on her journey of self-discovery—and we're here for the ride
Words by Teresa Tran
Taylor Swift has always fought tooth and nail to be viewed in multitudes. She’s not just the country singer with the infamous blonde curls and a questionable Nashville-esque twang, she’s a young woman with a dream and her heart on her sleeve. She’s not the only singer-songwriter known for writing about her love life, she simply is the target of the most media scrutiny. She was politically apolitical before, but now she’s purposefully political. She’s not the perpetrator of music celebrity spats, she’s the victimized white woman, self-claimed well-meaning ally distilled in a single person. She’s never been “like other girls,” but she’s like many musicians whose master recordings got fucked over by greedy executives. She can do country, alternative, electropop, pop, rock, indie-folk, synth-pop, girlboss; don’t box her in.
Forever immortalized in the form of albums, eras, and the internet wayback machine, we have the power to browse through Swift’s various identities over the years whenever we want and construct our own narrative about her, favorable or not. While Swift knows she’s a celebrity subjected to the fickle whims of the public, she’s always attempted to wrestle back whatever control she could over her own image. With her 10th studio album, Swift tries once again to assert agency.
Midnights riffs off of the concept of a lifetime of sleepless nights, staying up because there are too many thoughts swirling inside the mind, and marks Swift’s latest foray into autobiographical storytelling. Where with Folklore and Evermore Swift flexed her chops exploring electroacoustic folk music, cottagecore ballads, and fictional narratives, Midnights brings us back to the deeply personal pop music she’s perhaps best known for. It has the most delightful callbacks to her pre-pandemic catalog, with teases of 1989, Reputation, and Lover in the mix. It’s more elevated, grown as she has, layered with honesty, and dripping with sonic and lyrical twists.
With Midnights, we’re invited to join Swift in the peak hours of her relentless search for herself, in hopes that both artist and listener hear her for who she truly is. As a fellow insomniac, I too have spent many nights lying awake, rifling through my own hopes, fears, darkest thoughts, and escapist dreams, emboldened by the cloaked safety of the night. As someone who’s also stayed up until the 12th hour for many Taylor Swift album releases, Midnights captures the unique thrill and turmoil that only occurs when you’re sleep deprived. Here’s our late-night review of the album:
SHE IS IN LOVE, TRUE LOVE: “Lavender Haze;” “Snow on the Beach;” “Question…?;” “Labyrinth;” “Sweet Nothing”
Swift is at her best when she speaks to the inherent romantic in all of us—and gives us permission to sink into the alluring arms of nostalgia. Why move forward when you can yearn instead? Indeed, we’re told to meet her at midnight in “Lavender Haze,” where we find her torn between societal demands of marriage and a desire to stay in the love-addled present she’s currently in. “I’m damned if I do give a damn what people say” and “the 1950s shit they want from me/ I just want to stay in that lavender haze.” She’s not alone in this sentiment—more and more Millenials and Gen-Z are envisioning different futures for themselves. For Swift, she’s astonished she doesn’t have to spend her remaining days alone with her cats, as evident in “Snow on the Beach,” a soft, moody ballad with her vocals backed by Lana Del Rey. After listening to more than a decade of music about her struggle with love, it feels like a shared, hard-won victory that she and a lover are finally on the same page. What more can she want, especially if the world has never made it easy for her relationships? What she has now seems too good to be true, a feeling further emphasized when she meditates on the winding journey her love life has taken all these years. Swift oscillates between self-critical and defensive about a past lover’s true intentions in “Question…?” to being enamored and pure head-over-heels falling in love in “Labyrinth.” Both songs satisfy the ear in different ways: You get chills when she pitches her voice high with “Do-o-o-o” in the line “Then what did you do?” and the repetitiveness of “Uh oh, I’m falling in love, oh no, I’m falling in love again” truly conveys the vulnerability that comes with submitting yourself to the mortifying ordeal of being known. That’s one thing I really admire about Swift: She keeps putting herself out there and remains open to new experiences despite having had her heart broken so many times. With music, she gifts us the ability to savor the payoff together.
The world doesn’t stop for love though, not even for Swift and her lover in “Sweet Nothing.” There’s a pandemic raging; rumors about them keep spreading; she’s the most famous singer in the world: “They say the end is coming…Outside, they’re push and shoving.” But that’s okay. Luckily she has someone who has only “ever wanted from [her] was sweet nothing.” Despite her ambitions and a single-minded chase of peak pop stardom for most of her career, Swift is now learning to slowly accept that what she craves most is a softer and slower, uncomplicated life. Likewise, her music shines most not when she’s in god-complex mode, but here, when she allows herself to be a human in search for meaningful companionship just like the rest of us.
THE COST OF AMBITION: “Maroon;” “You’re On Your Own Kid;” “Midnight Rain”
In a patriarchal society, women are often not permitted to cultivate their own legacy. They either don’t have the time to craft how they want to be remembered—or their legacy is straight up diminished. So I find it refreshing that Swift is so concerned about hers. She’s ambitious about the kind of impact she wants to leave, even at great cost to herself and the people around her. That’s no more obvious than in track five, “You’re On Your Own Kid,” the song that personally came for my neck. Swift sings: “I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this/I hosted parties and starved my body/Like I'd be saved by a perfect kiss/The jokes weren't funny, I took the money/My friends from home don't know what to say.” This is everyone’s 20s encapsulated. All that urgency, breaking your body apart, networking up instead of connecting across, with a fire under your ass propelling you forward—and for what?
Swift doesn’t stop with fame. She turns over the imprints she’s left on people she’s dated and the relationships and experiences she’s had to give up: In “Midnight Rain” she croons “He wanted a bride/I was making my own name/Chasing that fame/He stayed the same.” In “Maroon,” she laments, “How the hell did we lose sight of us again?/Sobbing with your head in your hands/Ain't that the way shit always ends…And I lost you.” That’s the flip side of late-nights: You can’t help but eviscerate yourself. Swift’s especially self-destructive here. From these songs, we learn what Swift’s learned: At the other end of all your ambitious efforts, the person you’re left with might be someone you don’t like or even respect very much. It’s also a sign that maybe you should finally go to sleep.
FINE, MAKE ME YOUR VILLAIN: “Anti-Hero;” “Vigilante Shit;” “Bejeweled;” “Karma;” “Mastermind”
There’s something delicious about self-martyrdom and Swift knows that. Half of Midnights practically relishes in it. The strange confidence that is produced from labeling yourself the “anti-hero” or even “villain” before receiving that label from someone else is borderline self-indulgent. It’s an attempt at control when you feel like you have none. Songs like “Anti-Hero,” “Vigilante Shit,” “Karma,” “Bejeweled,” and “Mastermind” dig into this and are Swift at her peak girlboss. They’re in conversation with “Blank Space” and “Bad Blood” from 1989, “Look What You Made Me Do,” “I Did Something Bad,” and “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” off Reputation, as well as “The Man” from Lover. At midnight, Swift looks into the dark and the dark looks back. If half of the album is Swift accepting she’s always been a big softie, the other half of Midnights is Swift embracing her love for revenge and cringe. Like these songs or hate them, you have to admit Swift succeeds with writing commercially appealing lyrics that speak to this darker, less palatable side of many young women, like “Draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man” and “’Cause karma is my boyfriend/karma is a God” that would have thrown 2014 Tumblr into a frenzy.
3 AM STANDOUTS: “Paris;” “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve;” “Dear Reader”
By 3 a.m., you’re not merely indulging in a little late night escapade. You’ve pulled an all-nighter, and will probably pay the price the next morning. Swift plays with this idea in the seven additional tracks from Midnights’ bonus 3 a.m. edition. My favorites: “Paris” is every illicit, addicting late-night adventure in an unfamiliar city and pairs nicely with my other all-time favorite late-night adventure track “I Know Places.” “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” is for girls who get told they’re “mature” for their age, when really it’s the trauma. And “Dear Reader” is Swift roleplaying as an advice columnist, bringing us full circle by telling us to “Desert all your past lives/and if you don't recognize yourself/that means you did it right.”
FINAL VERDICT:
In the accompanying album statement, Swift tells us Midnights is “for all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching—hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve…we’ll meet ourselves.” As far as her goal with this album is concerned, I think she succeeds. She truly does take us along her journey of self-reflection and lets us into her darkest thoughts, pushing us to ask ourselves: Do we like who we’ve become? Can anybody truly control their own legacy? Is love worth the struggle? Her storytelling prowess is not to be underestimated.
I’d even argue her music successfully transcends Swift’s brand and position as a privileged white woman, whether we like it or not. Let me be clear: I’m not excusing the ways she’s weaponized and benefited from her identity and wealth. But I think often about queer people who believe her to be part of the community based off of her lyrics. I think about young girls and women of color, Asian American women especially, who have turned to Swift, when there were few to no singer-songwriters that looked like them, to tap into the nitty-gritty of girlhood—a credit I don’t give lightly. With Midnights, Swift throws her hat into the circle as a deeply imperfect person in search of her most honest, true self, while wrestling with the person she finds in the low-lit, quiet hours of the middle of the night. And here lies the main question she has always asked throughout her career and the essence of her music captured in as little as three words: Aren’t we all?
Published on October 30, 2022
Words by Teresa Tran
Teresa Tran (she/her) is an American-born Vietnamese writer and filmmaker based in Atlanta, Georgia, with a background in theater and community organizing. She has a B.A. in English and Women’s Studies and a B.S.Ed in English Education from the University of Georgia and studied British Literature at the University of Oxford. She is currently writing and directing her own short films and working on her debut novel. You can find her on Twitter at @teresatran__.