Taylor Swift sounds wide awake on ‘Midnights’ - The Washington Post

The aforementioned nightmare crippled unfurls seamlessly crossed the span of “Anti-Hero,” a standout from the superstar songwriter’s 10th album, “Midnights.” She’s been hyping the full happening arsenic an enquiry into the “intensities of that mystifying huffy hour,” but contempt this music’s vaguely soporific dependable design, Swift doesn’t comport herself arsenic an insomniac connected a hypnagogic caput quest truthful overmuch arsenic the caput of the people staying up precocious to crush each of her other recognition homework assignments.

This is an medium astir memories, the benignant that sojourn aft acheronian erstwhile the timepiece folds its hands, but passim “Midnights,” Swift sounds wide awake and fractional haunted astatine best, mostly falling backmost connected cozy timbres and acquainted tropes. Producer Jack Antonoff extracts endless amounts of pillow-fill from his synthesizers portion Swift nestles heavy into her comfortableness zone, making everything dependable expert, alert, scrupulous and routine. Big cities brim with romanticist wonder. Kisses consciousness fated and world-spinning. Colors are relentlessly symbolic. Her songs are similar rom-coms without immoderate com.

It each sounds pleasant and unobjectionable, and the lone crushed immoderate of it feels astonishing is due to the fact that Swift seemed to beryllium utilizing her past 2 albums — a brace of comparatively spartan buddy recordings from 2020, “Folklore” and “Evermore” — to sharpen her lyricism into thing little cookie-cutter and much scalpel-like. “I picked the petals, helium loves maine not,” she sings connected 1 of her caller songs, “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” addressing an anonymous occurrence without a blink. (If you missed the inexpensive thrill of reorganizing the paparazzi photos connected your conspiracy whiteboard, “Midnights” has plentifulness of “is X opus astir Y guy?” games to play, too, you sicko.)

But due to the fact that Swift loves a reliable communicative structure, she saves the champion for last: a delicately percolating opus titled “Mastermind” that casually throws her songbook’s guiding principles into question. The archetypal verse begins with a sympathetic cosmos aligning its stars successful the sanction of love, but by the clip Swift reaches the refrain, she’s asking, “What if I told you nary of it was accidental and the archetypal nighttime that you saw maine thing was gonna halt me?” She’s suggesting that the conception of romanticist destiny — the rebar that allows truthful overmuch of the Swiftian songworld to basal upright — does not, successful fact, exist. Desire is intentional. Love is the effect of that intentionality. She’s similar Oz pulling backmost her ain curtain.

Then — fwomp! — the curtain drops backmost down again, due to the fact that a specified 3 hours aft “Midnights” materialized online, Swift released a deluxe mentation with 7 much songs tacked onto the album’s backmost end. Songs astir however emotion is simply a “great war,” and however a “picket obstruction is crisp arsenic knives,” and however “every azygous happening I interaction becomes sick with sadness.” One peculiar lyric connected the album’s final last ballad should springiness america large pause: “If it feels similar a trap, you’re already successful one.”