Taylor Swift is known for her outstanding lyricism and influential tunes. On October 21st, Swift released a brand new pop album amidst the re-recording of her first 6 albums and received mixed reviews from music critics from publishing sites such as The Guardian and The New York Times.

The first 24 hours of her album release was a huge success for Swift. She broke Spotify’s record for biggest album debut and biggest streaming day for any artist, Apple Music’s biggest pop album of all time, and biggest vinyl sales week for any album in Nielsen history. Swift also made history by becoming the first artist to have the entire top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, led by Anti-Hero at number one. 

Although deemed as an experimental album, the production on Midnights is not as different as the works we have seen on Swift’s past albums such as Reputation, 1989, and Lover. This is, however, a turn from the sound that she has released the past 2 years from albums such as Folklore and Evermore. The sudden change has brought in some negative reviews criticizing Swift’s lyricism ability as she has lyrics including: 

• “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me” – Anti-Hero 
• “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby and I’m a monster on the hill…” -Anti-Hero 
• “Draw a cat eye sharp enough to kill a man” -Vigilante Sh*t 

Some of these might not need an explanation and are straightforward but the inability to analyze each song as a whole has ruined the listening experience for most. Midnights has shown how versatile Swift can be and reminds us of the importance of having different processes for exploring one’s emotions. Petridis (The Guardian music critic) said it best, Swift has an appealing confidence to her approach as she no longer feels the need to compete with her peers. 

Midnights is a user-friendly album that contains both songs to blast in the car and songs to cry to. If you are new to Taylor Swift’s sound, I ranked the songs from the album to aid one’s listening experience. 

Pia’s Rankings of the 13 songs off of Midnights: 

1. Bejeweled 
2. Karma 
3. Lavender Haze 
4. You’re on Your Own, Kid 
5. Maroon 
6. Anti-Hero 
7. Question…? 
8. Midnight Rain 
9. Vigilante Sh*t 
10. Snow on the Beach (feat. Lana Del Rey) 
11. Labyrinth 
12. Mastermind 
13. Sweet Nothing