Taylor Swift - Midnights


You're all gonna hate me, but i have to. I heard Anti-Hero today, and it's a really intriguing song.  It makes me want to hear the rest of Midnights, which for good or bad is exactly what a single is supposed to do. 

People love to hate Taylor Swift, but i don't understand why. You know me, i don't like football, i have no problem with her crossover from Country to Synth Pop, and... no, that intro/chorus voice manipulation on Midnight Rain is too terrible not to mention... i'm all about the concept, which in this case is obviously the thoughts that keep Taylor Swift up past midnight with self-doubt and insecurity (and i don't even need to check wikipedia or random interviews to verify).

A couple things, this album is dark, she says "shit" and "fuck" and "dickhead" to keep a lot of these songs off commercial radio, and there it is again on Labyrinth. Artificially lowering her vocals by an octave sounds terrible. I don't like Ice Spice, and i shouldn't even need to qualify the lyric "karma is my boyfriend." We'll stop at 13, the official album without any extras, and while Mastermind is a completely good and logical album ender, i'm not entirely convinced it's supposed to end this particular album. I suppose you could run it around the intellectual Escherian staircase a few times so it looks like her mirror self singing it to her own herself who finally loves and accepts that inverse reflection of her reflected herself, but that's a hell of a lot of work for a Taylor Swift album. Maybe the multiple additional extended versions help remedy that conundrum, but i'm not going to find out.

It has a few glaring personality glitches, but overall Midnights is a completely serviceable and believable album. These songs sound exactly like the kinds of things that might give Taylor Swift the occasional bout of insomnia, albeit through fairy-tale tinted sunglasses. It has Madonna moments, it has several Billie Eilish moments, it has absolutely no Brittany Aguilera moments (thankfully), and except for the terrible vocal twerking and sub-standard Rap interlude it's actually quite an enjoyable listen.

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