Taylor Swift 'Midnights' review: a darker, electric sound with pop familiarity

The release is the pop artist's 10th studio album

The cover album of 'Midnights'. Taylor Swift's 10th album crashed Spotify moments after its release. Photo: Republic Records

While unremarkable, Taylor Swift's self-titled 2006 album put her on the list of ones to watch. Photo: Big Machine Records

'Fearless' (2008) was an assured collection of songs by the increasingly confident Swift. Photo: Big Machine Records

'Speak Now' (2010) had Swift lyrically detailing her growth from adolescence to adulthood. Photo: Big Machine Records

With 'Red' (2012), Swift made her bid for mainstream success. Photo: Big Machine Records

The spectacular '1989' (2014) remains Swift's best album. Photo: Big Machine Records

'Reputation' (2017) was overwrought and too dark to be fully embraced by her fans. Photo: Big Machine Records

'Lover' (2019) was a welcome course correction, yet sounded messy and unwieldy. Photo: Republic Records

'Folklore' (2020) was a stunning effort that had Swift write more narrative-driven songs. Photo: Republic Records

'Evermore' (2020) was atmospheric and cinematic. Photo: Republic Records

“All of me changed like midnight,” Taylor Swift confesses halfway through her latest album, the aptly named and moody Midnights.

It’s a moment on the electric Midnight Rain that finds lyricist Swift at her best, reminding you of her unparalleled ability to make any emotion feel universal.

Click through the gallery above to see Taylor Swift's album art to date

The song’s chorus begins: “He was sunshine, I was midnight rain.” And continues: “He wanted it comfortable, I wanted that pain. He wanted a bride, I was making my own name. Chasing that fame. He stayed the same.” Then, that lyric: “All of me changed like midnight.” The sound feels experimental for Swift, opening with her own vocals artificially pitched down to an almost-unrecognisable tone. It’s among the album’s most sonically interesting, an indie-pop beat that feels reminiscent of her producer Jack Antonoff's work on Lorde’s Melodrama, but also fresh and captivating.

The song’s words, by Swift and Antonoff, are steady and detailed, but not distracting — allowing you to sink into the rhythm, flowing and feeling it with her.

This image released by Republic Records shows "Midnights" by Taylor Swift. (Republic Records via AP)

On the 13 tracks of Midnights, a self-aware Swift shows off her ability to evolve again. For her 10th original album, the pop star, 32, approaches the themes she’s grown up writing about — love, loss, childhood, fame — with a maturity that comes through in sharpened vocals and lyrics focused more on her inner-life than external persona.

Midnight Rain could be a thesis statement for the project she’s described as “songs written during 13 sleepless nights,” an appropriate approach to the concept album for someone who has long had a lyrical appreciation for late nights (think Style: “midnight, you come and pick me up, no headlights…”).

Of course, she’s centred her work around themes before — on Red, an ode to the colour and the emotions it stands for, “reputation,” a vindictive reconfiguring of her own, and most recently on folklore and evermore, quarantine albums that expressed vulnerability in ways only isolation could.

But Swift presents Midnights as something different: a collection of songs that don’t necessarily have to go together, but fit together because she has declared them products of late night inspiration. Positioning listeners situationally — in the quiet but thoughtful darkness of night — instead of thematically, feels like a natural creative experiment for a songwriter so prolific that her albums have become synonymous with the pop culture zeitgeist.

Jack Antonoff, the producer of Taylor Swift's 'Midnights'. AFP

And with that, comes a tone that is just a little darker, a little more experimental, and always electric.

Track one, Lavender Haze, pairs a muffled club beat and high-pitched backing vocals from Antonoff with stand-out, beckoning melody from Swift. Maroon is a grown-up and weathered version of Red, a dive into lost love with rich descriptions of rust, red lipstick — images Swift is reconjuring with more bite.

Labyrinth makes clear she’s carried the best of her previous pop experiments with her — the synth of 1989 and the softer alternative sounds of folklore — as she admits as only a songwriter can that a heartbreak “only feels this raw right now, lost in the labyrinth of my mind," on top of a track featuring Bon Iver-esque electronic trills.

Swift shines when she is able to marry her signature lyrical musings with this new arena of electronic beats. And while this isn't another album of acoustic indie sounds like folklore, it is clear that Swift has taken a step forward in the indie-pop genre — even if it's a step in a different direction.

The album’s weaker moments are the ones where that balance feels off. Bejeweled is a bit too candy sweet, with lyrics that feel like an updated, glittery take on Me! The much anticipated Snow On The Beach, featuring Lana Del Rey, is poetic, pretty and at times cheeky, but not as emotionally deep as the lyricists' combined power suggests it could be.

Even in those moments, Midnights finds Swift comfortable in her musical skin, revealing the strengths of a sharp and ever-evolving artist who can wink through always-cryptic allusions to her very public life or subtle self-owns dispersed amid lyrical confessions (see: Anti-Hero and Mastermind) and hook even the casual listener with an alluring, and maybe surprising, beat.

But like the love-soaked Lover, and intimate folklore and evermore, Midnights feels like both a confessional and a playground, crafted by all the versions of Swift we’ve gotten to know so far, ready for a new Taylor Swift to shine.