My Dangerous Opinions on “Midnights”

A critical take on Taylor Swift’s latest album

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My Dangerous Opinions On “Midnights”
Written by Mica

From her debut in 2006 to her latest release of “Midnights,” just last night, Taylor Swift has amassed quite the following. Her devoted “Swifties”, however, in my personal opinion have been brainwashed. Anything that woman says, goes. While I will admit that earlier albums of hers including Red (2012) and 1998 (2014), have my whole heart, her new music is not up to par.

Starting with the successes of her career it would be naive to portray her as a mediocre no less untalented artist. I mean, according to Rolling Stone she made it to the top 100 songwriters of all time. But her new album “Midnights” challenges this quite a bit.

In contrast to her previous albums, “Evermore” and “Folklore” which portray a folk Americana style (which I personally loved), this new album is arguably overproduced, pop, and repetitive. Due solely to the repetitive nature of the album The Daily Beast argues that the songs “lack poignancy and resonance.” Each song has a simple bass line that feels like it gets added to every piece. For example, the first song on the album “Lavender Haze” feels almost like Demi Lavato in a sort of basic rhythm and high dance music tones. The album as a whole is quite similar to that in that it is quite reliant on the disco-esque, overproduced, sounds of the 2000s and 90s club era. Which in very few ways represents the artist that Taylor has presented herself to be. Due to abusive, unhealthy, creative directing earlier in her career she recreated many of her albums of that time period to fit into a more “Taylor’s Version” artistic view. Ironically this new album sounds more like the original albums that she herself deemed very much not, “Taylor’s Version”. In this case, that sound is pop, tweaked, unoriginal-sounding music not even close to matching Taylor’s talent and credit.

Even her lyricism which in the past has stunned and impressed me seems very base-level within the album. “If the lyrics on Midnights prove anything, it’s that Taylor Swift has no editors.” says (Stereogum.com) Using simple rhyme schemes and cliche images it feels more fabricated than it should. For example, the lyrics, “talk your talk and go viral – I just need this love spiral,” feels like she used rhyme.com a tad bit too much. Similarly, her lyrics at times throughout the album make very little to no sense. Take “Anti-Hero” for example, “I’m the problem, it’s me – At teatime, everybody agrees” and even worse, “sometimes, I feel like everyone’s a sexy baby – and I’m the monster on the hill”. This to me feels a familial resemblance to the ways in which one picks apart the words of a 1st grader into pure poetry and philosophical brilliance, utterly impossible.

I also am happy to admit that I am not the only person soon to be under extreme danger amongst the Swiftie cult. Another sophomore at Centaurus says, “I feel like it half delivered.”. Even going as far as to rate the album an average of 6.07/10.