Taylor Swift Muses on Love, Revenge and Image on Moody Indie-Pop Masterpiece 'Midnights'

Mar. 15, 2025

Taylor Swift’sMidnightsis here — and it’s a vibe.

As the clock struck 12 on Friday morning, the 32-year-old pop star dropped her tenth studio album, entering her latest era.

Sonically, the new record — with its woozy synths, trap beats and drum machines — is most similar to the industrial pop deep cuts of her underrated 2017 LPreputation, with some of the more exciting, experimental moments fromLoverandevermore.

And this collection of songs is versatile enough — it could soundtrack a party, a rendezvous with a lover or just a solo night in with a bottle of Malbec.

Thematically,Midnightsexplores some familiar topics for Swift: love, revenge and public image. On the fantastic album opener “Lavender Haze,” the star sings of hersix-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwynand the endless engagement rumors and scrutiny they’ve weathered (“All they keep asking me / Is if I’m gonna be your bride / The only kind of girl they see / Is a one night or a wife”).

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With the contemplative love song “Sweet Nothing,” Alwyn (under his pen name William Bowery) receiveshis sixth songwriting credit on a Swift project.

Taylor Swift.Beth Garrabrant

He’s not the only collaborator on the album, either: Longtime creative partner Jack Antonoff returns as a cowriter and producer. And Lana Del Rey, who has long inspired Swift (see: “Wildest Dreams,” “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince”), joined her to cowrite and deliver vocals on “Snow on the Beach,” a poetic, sweeping rumination on romance with an incredible Janet Jackson shoutout: “It’s like snow at the beach / Weird but f—ing beautiful … Now I’m all for you like Janet.”

Afterbouncing back from myriad public spats, Swift has grown more self-aware than ever in recent years. Her musings on vulnerabilities and public image make “Anti-Hero” one of the most relatable tracks on the album, with lyrics like: “I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser … It’s me, hi / I’m the problem, it’s me … I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror / It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.”

Some of Swift’s strongest songwriting has come from flipping the narrative of how detractors have painted her, like when she stuck it to misogynistic trolls with2014’s “Blank Space,” a hilarious satirical, self-referential song about her “man-eater” reputation.

Swift has also been called “calculated” and “manipulative.” Here, those descriptors inspirealbum closer “Mastermind,” presumably about her happy, healthy relationship with Alwyn.

It’s songs like “Mastermind” that makeMidnightsa masterpiece.

source: people.com