But self-hatred is relentless on this record. Elsewhere on Midnights, on “Bigger Than the Whole Sky”, one of the tracks on the 3 am edition, she sings that “Everything I touch gets sick of sadness / ‘Cause it’s all over now, all at sea.” On “High Infidelity,” she extorts herself for cheating: “You know there’s many ways to kill the one you love / The slowest way is to never love them enough.”
“Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve”, easily one of the best songs she’s ever written, should have earned a place on the proper disc instead of its addendum. Here, Swift is hot for an older ex-lover (we all have our guesses) but equally scathing for herself: “If I had only played it safe / I would have stayed on my knees / and I’m sure I wouldn’t. would never have danced with the devil at 19. I suspect that placing “Would have, could have, should have” in the 3 am Edition collection is partly to keep it from taking all the oxygen in the whole of Midnights. If he had done the original 13, that would be the only song being talked about.
That doesn’t mean it’s the only note on the album. “Vigilante Shit” is the peak mischievous Swift in a song that throbs and vamps to a sparse beat in the style of much of Reputation. “Draw the cat’s eye hard enough to kill a man,” Swift smiles in the first line, giving herself license to kill/cringe. On “Karma,” the vigilante has done her job, and now she’s basking in schadenfreude. Swift is also developing her fun skills on “Glitch” and “Paris.” Meanwhile, “Sweet Nothing,” co-written by Swift and “William Bowery,” the alias of her longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn, shines with overwhelming beauty.
Everywhere Midnights, Swift flexes the lyrical prowess that established her as a top-tier songwriter. On “Anti-Hero,” she delivers a satisfying set of internal rhymes (“I shouldn’t be left to my own devices / they come with prizes and vices / I end up in crisis”). On “Mastermind”, she slips into “Machiavellian” without her presence on a pop song seeming forced.
Although Swift has made a career out of working with a suite of producers in the past, Midnights is mainly managed by Jack Antonoff, a reliable collaborator of the singer. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage: on the one hand, Antonoff has grown as a producer and is able to restrain himself from letting go of the big backing vocals that defined his initial sound; on the other hand, Antonoff’s extended credits mean he struggles to keep musical ideas from mixing with each other – the bridge of “Vigilante Shit”, for example, is closer to a sound by Lana Del Rey than the one adapted for Swift.
Midnights is, implausibly, Swift’s fourth album of new material in as many years, not including two reissues of his old work which arrived in 2021. While 2020’s “sister albums” Folklore and Still expanded Swift’s fanbase, Midnights seems to confirm that the more folksy pop pair of records was a standalone chapter rather than a permanent new path.
But the album’s closest, “Mastermind,” finds Swift at her most telling. The artist has taken to dismissing the accusation that she “calculates”, but on “Mastermind”, she clearly says: “What if I told you that I am a mastermind”, she sings as if she knew that the situation was tense. Swift shares her motivations: “Nobody wanted to play with me when I was little / So I’ve been plotting like a criminal ever since / To make them love me and make it seem effortless.”
This isn’t the first time she’s toyed with this idea – on FolkloreIn “Mirrorball,” Swift admits “I’ve never been natural / All I do is try, try, try.” Is she calculating or anxious? Is she a manipulator or is she a planner in order to avoid the worst outcomes? On “Mastermind”, she delivers the thesis of her career: “This is the first time that I feel the need to confess / and I swear / I’m only enigmatic and Machiavellian because I care.” The twist, however, is that the confession has a failsafe: the song is about a lover who knows about his plans and wants to be a part of them anyway. That’s what it’s like to be loved despite your worst tendencies, or maybe because of them.
If Swift has spent nearly two decades turning her life into some kind of text, Midnights is her attempt to play with what she has already written. Some of these songs are scanned as precise edits that reinforce or challenge stories we already know. Others register as attempts to undo established narratives about Swift and replace them altogether. This album isn’t the first time she’s toyed with her own mythology – Swift attempted a similar feat with Reputation, an album unfairly criticized upon its release. But this time around, she’s skilful and precise in the places where Reputation was sprawling and unwieldy. For the uninitiated, Midnights could be read as vague and lacking in precision. But for those of us who have been reading, Midnights is a consistent and sometimes stunning development for a songwriter who has made evolution his signature. ●
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