On October 21st, even Spotify couldn’t handle the millions of listeners waiting to be the first to hear Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated 10th studio album: Midnights. The music platform ended up crashing due to the album’s release, and although the issue was quickly resolved, thousands of fans reported outages. However, not even these outages could prevent Midnights from becoming the most-streamed album in a single day in Spotify history.

In February 2021 Swift announced that she would be re-recording her previous albums. This was due to the fact that she no longer owned the rights to the masters of the songs on six of her albums. Following this announcement, Swift released both Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) in 2021. Many fans had therefore anticipated the release of the remaining re-recorded albums over the next few years. However, by August 2022 she still had yet to announce anything. This was until she received an award at the VMAs in late August. When accepting the award Swift announced her 10th studio album- Midnights. Fans were shocked by this announcement because they had expected another re-recording. 

Since the announcement of the album, Swift has been promoting Midnights in many interesting ways, such as creating a small series on TikTok called: “Midnights Mayhem With Me”. During each episode, a track title from the album would be revealed. It is evident that Swift had planned many ways to excite her fans for the release. 

Throughout my first listen of  Midnights, I was shocked by the sound. Due to her most recent studio albums: folklore and evermore I was expecting a slow folk-like style album. This album is NOT that. When the first track- “Lavender Haze” started playing I immediately thought of her 2017 album reputation and her 2019 album Lover. The album has a clear pop sound but also includes many interesting electronic features. 

Even with it being more similar to some of her older albums, the poetic-sounding lyrics that are evident in folklore are shown in a few of the tracks from Midnights. Track five titled: “You’re On Your Own, Kid” for example, includes lyrics like: “’Cause there were pages turned with the bridges burned,” and “From sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes,”.

There were a few tracks I didn’t specifically enjoy. Namely track 6 titled: “Midnight Rain” and track 9 titled “Bejeweled”. The lyrics on these songs aren’t particularly weak but they included a lot of warped vocals which I don’t personally enjoy.  For me, the biggest letdown on the album was track 4 titled: “Snow On The Beach (feat. Lana Del Ray) ”. Being a big fan of Lana’s work I was very excited about it, however quickly into the song I realized it wasn’t what I thought it would be. Not only was the song not specifically exciting, but Lana also didn’t even have a verse. Swift has had features like this in the past, for example, a collaboration with the band HAIM on her album evermore is similar in the way that the feature is only the artist(s) singing in the background. All things considered though, I really did enjoy the album as a whole. 

But wait, Midnights was yet to be over after the initial tracks on the album. Swift had been promoting a: “Special very chaotic surprise” to be announced at 3 am (2 am CT). Many fans were speculating what this surprise could possibly be, some thought she would be announcing another re-recording, and others thought it could be a tour announcement. But no, at 3 am Swift posted a statement on Instagram announcing what she called “3 am tracks”; these were 7 bonus songs for the Midnights album! Fans were shocked by this announcement and immediately got to listening. I was so pleasantly surprised by these tracks, they were definitely more of the folk-like style I expected. Overall I really enjoyed all of the seven bonus tracks, specifically: “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” and “High Infidelity”. 

Altogether, “Midnights” by Taylor Swift greatly highlights not only her incredible songwriting but also her notoriously catchy melodies. It is definitely worth a listen.