Taylor Swift - Midnights REVIEW

4.0/10

Taylor Swift just seems to be pumping out work lately: multiple singles this year, two new albums in 2020, and remastered versions of her classics; she seems to be an absolute workaholic. However, with the release of her newest album 'Midnights', I question if she's a workaholic that'll continue to pump out quality work.

Midnights reminds me of an artist that is confused. Multiple tracks on this album sound like Taylor simply stopped caring and wrote whatever came to mind first without going back to revise it later. For example, "Karma", one of the nicer tracks on the album in terms of production, lacks cohesive songwriting. "Karma is my boyfriend" and "Karma is a cat" are weird and oddly specific ways to describe her connection and belief in karma. Despite the cringy songwriting, the track comes through with wonderfully airy, light, cute, and catchy production.

A track that stood out to me, in all the wrong ways possible, was "Snow on the Beach". Personally, I absolutely hated the line "And it's like snow at the beach, weird but it was beautiful" as it sounded odd and a forced attempt to be quirky for Taylor. It sounded like Taylor had that idea suddenly pop into her head, wrote it down, and went for it without any more questions. On top of that, Lana Del Ray's so-called "feature" is nonexistent on this track as her vocals are buried behind Taylor's. This is not a feature for Lana. Lana acts as Taylor's backing vocals throughout the entirety of the track.

The opener for the album, "Lavender Haze" is one of the more forgettable tracks as it's simply hazy and bland. This track has some potential, but Taylor ignored to act on it.

"Anti-hero" is one of my least favorites as it's almost too poppy and radio sounding. It's obvious Taylor wanted this to be the stand-out and most listened-to single from the album, but it's simply soulless and boring, however, contains decent songwriting.

"Midnight Rain" comes off as another attempt for Taylor to show her quirkiness. Taylor tries to use the wavy, auto-tuney-sounding vocal effect as an art form here, but it comes off as goofy and out of pocket.

"Question...?" is a questionable track. The vocals sound like they were mixed by a person who's never mixed vocals before as they are messily mixed and seem rushed. However, there is a moment of hope in the bridge with Taylor's great flow and pacing there. The songwriting is also decent and straightforward.

Moving away from the forgettable tracks, a few of my favorites were "Vigilante Shit" with its bass and self-confident lyrics, "Labyrinth" with its slightly EDM-inspired production and great synths, "Sweet Nothing" with its intimacy and improved vocal mix, and finally, the closer "Mastermind", which is my personal favorite, with its delightful storytelling of reflection and realization and lovely synths.

'Midnights' had potential that Taylor failed to grab. The production is all over the place, sounding messy at times and somehow too clean at other times. Through the mess, however, Taylor still holds onto her incredible talent and ability to tell a story and paint a picture through her writing, which shined through a few tracks on this project.

give it a listen