The day that Fancy Boys Club went live, Taylor Swift released Lover. Since then, I have reviewed every album she has released since then. Unlike Jordan Holmes. whose series known as “The Swiftening” was an aggressive evisceration of her entire catalog, I have been able to find positive highlights in all of the music from pop’s reigning queen. However, today, when thinking about the song “Cruel Summer”, finally released as a single, I slowly realized something: I had forgotten to review Midnights, Swift’s tenth studio album which came out nine months ago.
Whoopsidoodles.
I could have easily just not reviewed the album. No one is clamoring for my opinion of the hit album, be it critics or Swift Boats, my name for the star’s fans. However, this might provide an interesting experiment. I have lived with this album for nearly a year now. How does that period of time change how I felt from my original (and favorable) thoughts on Midnights?
Let’s dive in and find out…
The two albums which have preceded this one, folklore and evermore, feature Taylor Swift trying a lot of new things. It is her first time working with producer Aaron Dessner (multi-instrumentalist for indie rock darlings The National). Also, this is the first time Swift is writing fully in character. And these albums feel different. Where I sometimes feel like the lone person who will criticize Reputation for sounding like a sledgehammer trying to usher in a new era of “Pop Taylor”, her COVID-era albums are wispy and soft and ethereal.
Midnights is none of those things.
Returning to Jack Antonoff, who co-produces all the songs on this album (and is listed as a co-writer for 11 of the 13 tracks), all of the woodsy folk charm of the last two albums seems to have dissolved into the ether from whence they came. And while I miss the style of the songs from folklore and evermore, I also understand one of the big reasons why Swift probably chose to return to her previous style: she has to tour this record.
Taylor is current in the middle of her Eras tour, and it is hard for me to believe she was not recording Midnights without imaging how those songs would both sound and look onstage. Think of the stories and reels you have seen from this tour: they are all songs where Swift can confidently stride across the stage, stepping to the beat and getting the chance to belt out the notes. You cannot do that with Dessner-led strings and vibes. You need some pop music power, and no one has changed the pop music landscape in the past decade more than Antonoff. In fact, perhaps the biggest problem with Midnights is that because Antonoff is such a dominant force in music that he and Swift have made an album which sounds very much like what you would hear on pop radio these days. Even songs like “Midnight Rain”, which could have easily been a ballad, are propelled by beats which feel commonplace but I’m sure have gotten the crowds moving.
I would have loved more songs that sounded like the two prior albums. However, like their style, they seem to have faded away like a spectre.
Swift has claimed that this album is a concept album about the things we feel and fear while the rest of the world is sleeping. From the online marketing:
We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears. We stare at walls and drink until they speak back. We twist in our self-made cages and pray that we aren’t—right this minute—about to make some fateful life-altering mistake. This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face. 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.
Do we get this in the lyrics of Midnights? I’m not sure.
I mean, the album does have this feeling, but all of Taylor’s albums do. It’s kind of what we love about her; the willingness to allow herself to be an open wound. This album has the lyrical feel of a mixture between Lover and Reputation, with a willingness to be soft and sweet while also including songs like “Vigilante Shit”, which are not afraid to show that Swift is not pulling punches. The difference between Midnights and Reputation, however, is that the vitriol on this new album feels more natural and authentic. This is where Antonoff truly knows how to get Swift to feel herself, and stupid idiot Swede Max Martin was kind of just pushing levers without really caring about the results.
So, where does Midnights rank amongst Taylor Swift’s works? Let’s check the charts:
- Red
- 1989
- folklore
- Midnights
- Speak Now
- evermore
- Lover
- Fearless
- Self-Tited
- Reputation
Fancy Boys Club 