Welcome to Episode 3 of The Taylor Swift Archives! Today, we dive into Midnights, Taylor Swift's most recent non-rerecording album.
I briefly hinted at this with Episode 2, but folklore and evermore fundamentally changed the way Taylor Swift writes and releases music, and Midnights is simply proof of this: we see her return to her diaristic songwriting, but only once she has safely assured everyone that these songs are written from perspectives from years past. She's not writing about her active relationships, or her current thoughts, but rather the thoughts she had soooooo long ago, when she was far more insecure and far less happy. This means that when fans brought out their detective hats and magnifying glasses to dissect the true inspiration of each song, they were hunting for clues on a case gone cold. They were looking to relationships that no longer mattered to Taylor, dissecting her life retroactively and thus leaving her current life completely untouched. She was able to reap the benefits of having hyper-fixated fans -- ie. better streaming numbers and more public attention given to the record -- without the consequences of lending her personal life to the public for their gossip fodder.
Furthermore, Midnights, with its 22 tracks and generally messy track list, displayed just how reluctant this post-folklore Taylor now was to leave songs unreleased. After all, why should she? Her worst records were still practically guaranteed to become chart toppers and fan favorites. And so, sonic cohesion flew out the window; Midnights sounds like a mosaic of songs that could really belong on other albums, not defined by any one song or aesthetic the way her previous albums were. In fact, most fans have their own personal division of which of her other pop/indie albums each Midnights song could fit -- mine is below:
Lover Era:
Lavender Haze
Bejeweled
Dear Reader
Glitch
reputation Era:
Karma
Mastermind
Midnight Rain
Maroon
Vigilante Shit
1989 Era:
Anti-Hero
Paris
Question...?
Labyrinth
Hits Different
folklore/evermore Era:
The Great War
Would've, Could've, Should've
High Infidelity
Snow on the Beach
Sweet Nothing
Bigger Than The Whole Sky
You're On Your Own, Kid
In fact, the only track on Midnights that I view as truly distinct from all previous albums is the one she added last -- "You're Losing Me", a strategic "Vault" edition to the record after news of her breakup with Joe Alwyn first made headlines. When Taylor announced that she was releasing a song from the Midnights Vault, I was, frankly, a little annoyed. The whole point of the Vault was to revisit songs from decades ago, not to push for more sales in an album she released three months ago!¹
And then I heard the song. For me (and many others), this song convinced me that Midnights isn't a composite sketch of a myriad of important events throughout her life, but rather one of her best breakup albums to date. Love songs, namely Sweet Nothing and Lavender Haze, suddenly took on a whole new meaning -- is "you don't ever say too much" a compliment or complaint? Is being "in the kitchen humming" a source of comfort or evidence of indifference? With one song and one headline, suddenly everything was different.
Which brings me to perhaps the most interesting quality of Midnights: it's an album that continues to morph in meaning as the story continues to unfold. When she was first seen with Matty Healy, eagle-eyed fans searched through the writing credits and realized that he was present at several writing sessions for the record. Today, when Jack Antonoff revealed that "You're Losing Me" was written in 2021, two years before the Joe-Taylor break-up, fans were sent on a wild goose chase trying to pinpoint the exact moment everything fell apart.
And I could theorize forever on the Joe Alwyn-Taylor Swift relationship, but it's really hardly the point. What interests me far more is how the it's still going feeling of Midnights taught Taylor how much control over the narrative she truly had. Rather than let the public whisper behind closed doors about what really happened towards the end of the relationship, she could just...tell them. Whenever she wanted, as soon as she was ready, she began to edit each story as needed. You thought I wrote this while madly in love? Think again. It didn't even have to be particularly true -- we will never know how much of Midnights can be attributed to her relationship with Joe, and how much is truly a reflection of her life's sleepless nights. Later, on tour, she would use this power even more, swapping out "invisible string" for "the 1" and singing pointed, specific lyrics during the surprise song segment of each show. It's a timeline she actively updates every weekend with a smirk and the choice to sing "Death By A Thousand Cuts" instead of "Paper Rings". It was perhaps this learned fearlessness that empowered her to drop the overtly specific "Is It Over Now?" from the 1989 Vault. Or maybe it was the bone-deep confidence that it truly didn't matter anymore; the public was finally beginning to see her love life for exactly what it was: decoration and distraction.
But that's a story for another day.
¹ Also, it's worth noting that perhaps "the Vault" for Midnights means something different than it does for her re-recordings. Taylor spoke often about how Joe was the "first person to hear every song" she wrote. Thus, it's not too much to believe that she was hesitant to release this particular track until she was confident her relationship with Joe Alwyn was completely over, and the public was completely aware of it. It's not a Vault of songs she didn't have room to include on the original album, perse, but rather a Vault of songs she wasn't emotionally capable of releasing...yet. This actually supports my initial point that Taylor has learned how to balance being diaristic in her songwriting with maintaining personal privacy -- all she has to do is convince her audience that everything she writes about is long-over. Write in the past tense.
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