A Midnight Review of “Midnights”
With the newest album release from Taylor Swift, the Earth is slowly healing. An exaggeration to most, but a truth to her fans. Midnights has captured the world’s attention and refuses to let it go. Join me as I review Ms. Swift’s most recent release.
Starting off strong with Lavender Haze, this song perfectly captures what it’s like to love with no bounds. She speaks on peoples expectations of women and how hard it is to find someone to love in a world where everyone hates you. The person she speaks of in this song has proven to her that they love her even with the rumors and hatred targeted at her. A beautiful show of true love.
Following Lavender Haze, we have Maroon. Maroon‘s lyrics talk about the pain of loving someone but no longer being in love with them. Desperately wanting to keep them and being too blinded to see the toxicity of the relationship. Missing them, missing the fighting, missing having them. The slow realization that the relationship isn’t working and cautiously stopping communication.
Third on the track list (and most popular) is Anti-Hero. Anti-Hero touches on the topic of knowing you’re the issue in your life but having people encourage you anyways. Swift talks about laying awake at night and remembering everything and everyone she’s done wrong while heavily blaming herself for it. She mentions how tiring it must be to support someone who she thinks isn’t worthy of it. Letting people who hate her get to her and wallowing in self-hatred.
Snow On The Beach is about falling in love but not wanting to name it out of fear that it would disappear. She finds it strange that someone could love her so much and not have ulterior motives. It’s weird and new just like finding snow on a beach would be. She loves this person too much and she’s afraid to finally be happy.
Unlike the previous tracks, You’re On Your Own, Kid is more about growing up. The love she feels when in her old town is young and carefree. She talks about what that love felt like and the pain of losing it after putting so much effort and time into it. She loved this person but they grew up and know now that it was a childlike love.
Now we have Midnight Rain. Midnight Rain is about ruining love for yourself. She mentions how he wanted a nice love and she wanted to feel the hurt that came with it. She wasn’t ready to be happy yet and ended up hurting him. He was willing to do anything for her and she couldn’t accept that for herself yet. She felt like she deserved more pain.
Question…? is for the people who have been in a situation and complicated relationship. She wants to ask her person if they’ve felt the love that she has given them. She wants to have a clear conversation about them but the person refuses to give it. She’s upset at this person for not clarifying anything and wants them to tell her what thought process they had during their time together. This person cheated and she wants an explanation.Why didn’t he fight more? Does he regret it? Did he ever truly love her?
Next up we have Vigilante. I can’t put the full name of this song for obvious reasons, but this song was one of my personal favorites. This song is powerful, telling a story of Swift helping a woman get back at her ex-husband (and Swift’s previous boyfriend). She describes wanting to get back at this man for messing with her. She’s helping his ex-wife look better, feel better, and be better than her ex as a sign of dominance.
Swift’s ninth track Bejeweled shows that no matter what happens, she’s still that girl. Nothing can hold her back from shining. It’s a reference to every news article, celebrity, and overall hater who has prayed for her downfall. She talks about knowing what she’s worth and not letting people take advantage of her any more.
Another one of my favorites, Labyrinth is about falling in love quickly and not being sure you can trust it. She hints about just getting out of a relationship and realizing she’s already falling for another person. She attempts to get rid of this feeling, trying to revel in the hurt of her breakup, but not being able to. Swift is in denial in the beginning of the song and towards the end she is slowly accepting the fact that she loves this new person.
Karma bring up the topic of…karma. She sings about how she deserves good things because she has done good things to earn them. The person this song is dedicated to is assumed to be a bad person as she mentions him not getting what it’s like to be a good citizen. She stays out of drama as much as she can while this person is presumably the opposite. This song is also a way to show her thanks to everything good that has come to her.
A good song for people with a soft love addiction, Sweet Nothing is a song about a lasting love. Being with someone so long that you’re completely comfortable with their presence. She writes her heart out to her partner and thanks him for being with her through everything. She finds him a safe place and she loves him fully with no bounds. He’s her everything.
For Swift’s final song, Mastermind is a confession. She admits that she set her partner up to fall in love with her. She did a million small things for him to see her in a romantic light. She talks about her feeling a little guilty but overall happy because she got him to love her. In the end, he reveals that he knew all along. He was already smitten with her before she tried. He knew and went with her plan willingly.
Being a fan before this album was released skews my opinion, but I personally find this album to be a beautifully written case of some perfect songs. I highly recommend it to anyone with a yearning heart or a broken one. Midnights is an album for everyone.
Elliot is a junior at Mohawk High School. He participates in marching/concert band where he plays clarinet. He also does lights for the musicals when able...