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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

Image
I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
Read more