Taylor Swift - Midnights

agree

yeah which is why i'm baffled by people saying it's her worst

It's simple: I skip more tracks than any of hers in years, therefore it's her worst.

yeah i just don't know what on here is more skippable than large chunks of lover & reputation

I wasn't mad about them either, but Lover has tracks I adore to death.

Much like her last two albums, I like this one & see her mainly as just a really strong singer songwriter, into the more stripped back approach on these last few albums, was never really a fan until these three projects. Don’t really like when she tries to wrestle w the production and structures of Pop qua Pop/ making Anthems on Lover/reputation

Agree too. But also I like this Vigilante song.

I wish you could actually hear Lana in Snow in the Beach.

I keep hearing "I don't dress for women/ I don't dress for men" in the voice of current-era Bob Dylan.

like the good songs on lover, this album is just fairly normal swift songs with synth-pop arrangements rather than trying to awkwardly force herself to be some weird idea of a popstar

antonoff has been the best of her pop collaborators but i hope she finds someone interesting to work with in the future because he's not the most inspired as a pop producer & i don't think swift brings a whole lot to the table in terms of real vision for the arrangements either. i did like his work on folklore though, i think that played to his strengths more, so a whole album of singer-songwriter swift produced by antonoff would be very welcome.

Given the similarities between this and the moodier tracks on Lover, I revisited that album, and feel like Midnights generally is at least as good as the best of those tracks? I suspect at the time stuff like “Cornelia Street” and “False God” (both great tracks mind) was boosted by being surrounded by tunes like “London Boy”.

Agreed though that Midnights probably exhausts the possibilities of working with Antonoff (though “August” had suggested they could produce a really nice burnished pop-rock album if they wanted), and it’s funny how the Dessner arrangement on “Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve” (nb. Is this a naming mistake? Feels like this song and “The Great War” should swap titles”) feels like it pops just due to its novelty - in much the same way that “Gold Rush” did on Evermore (interesting thought experiment: would “Gold Rush” stand out if it was on this album? Perhaps not?).

idk i think "cornelia street" and "false god" would still be highlights on this but there'd be far less of a gap

Breihan alludes to "Cornelia Street (a song I like) in his review too:

https://www.stereogum.com/2203504/taylor-swift-midnights-review/reviews/premature-evaluation/

this album doesn’t really sound like chvrches to me lol, maybe “anti-hero” does?

It doesn't sound like Chvrches at all. For one, Chvrches have more forward momentum than this album (and I'm no Chvrches fan).

Funny, I mentioned to my daughter the other day that some people were comparing it to Chvrches (who she didn't know). She didn't seem interested, but told me this morning she actually gave Chvrches a listen and didn't hear the comparison at all, other than in a general (and I paraphrase) "pop songs doing pop things" sense.

Surprised to find I'm much less interested in this than I was in evermore/folklore. It just sounds kind of .... tasteful. Contra many on this board I do like "Vigilante Shit," it has a little more snap to it.

the breihan review made interesting points but it was hard to get into it after that very clearly, flat out wrong assertion that begins and frames it

xps

Bejeweled and Karma sound a bit like chvrches

Karma is a cat purring in my lap 'cause it loves me

kvrma

If you drew a vector from taylor swifts last 2 albums to some of these songs in glenn's n-dimensional genre space, it would point toward chvrches but also pass through some of Swift's previous poppier stuff.

Karma was funnier then I thought she sang "karma is my boyfriend. karma is a guy."

this album does have her returning to that annoying 'talk singing' thing she does that she mostly dropped on the last two (the "it's me, hi" bits at the end of anti-hero, for instance). I don't know why she does this, it sounds dumb, has always sounded dumb.

Taylor Swift made a Bill Callahan album.

"Out of the Woods" from 1989 is Taylor Swift sounding like Chvrches.

This is more subdued than that and closer in sound to "Blank Space". As I said earlier, the overall album feels very 2014-2017 Rolling Shambala thread, of which you have a lot of artists having at least a little bit of Chvrches in their DNA.

Contra many on this board I do like "Vigilante Shit," it has a little more snap to it.

This song is eye-rolling on one level, but also has lodged in my head more than anything else so far. She's the zillionth lyricist to say something like "I don't start shit but I can tell you how it ends," but she makes a good hook out of it.

Subsequent listens haven't much changed my feeling about the album, which is that it's fine and far from her best. That's also how I felt about Lover and Reputation, but of those three I like Lover's range. The one-producer/one-sound approach here is an idea that I support in theory, but in this case I think she'd have been better off with more/different collaborators.

The obvious producer to make the next great Taylor Swift album is Mutt Lange, but he seems retired. (Also I just recently found out his name is pronounced "Lahnj" or something, is that true? I've been saying "Lang" for years.)

Mutt produced/co-wrote half of the Bryan Adams album that came out this year, so you can still probably keep your dream alive for a bit.

C'mon Mutt!

all day long on the Tay's Lange

The obvious producer to make the next great Taylor Swift album is Mutt Lange

From your lips to god's ears, as they say.

lol at Tay's Lange

I think the Pitchfork review is fairly on target, and its matter-of-fact faint praise captures the sense (for me) of the album just not being much fun to listen to.

She's the zillionth lyricist to say something like "I don't start shit but I can tell you how it ends," but she makes a good hook out of it.

Heh, both that sentiment and also the drums-first sound of the first few songs remind of me of this summer's Drake album.

I have found “Sweet Nothings” running through my head a lot today… guess that’s a standout

lot of these songs remind me of St. Vincent (Cheerleader/Prince Johnny).

this is the first taylor swift album to leave me feeling nothing. aside from boredom i guess. it’s not only the production here that feels stale, but the songs just feel mapped along the contours of older, better songs. there’s several songs out of the first handful where i keep expecting her to break into the chorus melody of “i think he knows.” several songs have the same twinkle and swoop of “dress.” i should prob dig more into the lyrics but it doesn’t feel like there’s a big pot of gold at the end of this rainbow

ultimately i just think she doesn’t have a real aesthetic vision for pop production that is divorced from the guitar as the driving instrument. probably her one glaring weakness as a musician & pop star at this point. like, “i knew you were trouble” and “22” are amazing songs but even those were catching the very tail end of what was contemporary at the time. i love reputation & think it’s the most underrated album in her catalog (something this thread confirms) but the production on that album is generally fossilized. 1989 has some amazing songs that sound like haim. lover is actually the album where she kinda charts her own vision for pop production… it also contains her flat out most embarrassing songs ever.

she has just never really offered much of an idea of what pop music should sound like. her vision stops at “i can recreate pop music i like.” maybe that’s an unfair way to judge her, but she’s in very rarified air as a musician, up there with artists who had revolutionary ideas about pop. comparing what beyonce did on renaissance — not just how thrilling the production is on its face, but the way in which it converses with and rearranges the past and present — to this album is just laughable. i get that they’re very different musicians whose music has always had different aims, but it also feels fair to stack taylor up to the greats of her time, let alone the past. her range has a hard ceiling.

“would’ve could’ve should’ve” is dope tho

As far as conventional "songwriting" goes, Beyonce and Swift have nothing in common: she claims (and has established) a lineage while Beyonce is a product and an auteurist part of star-driven machinery behind the popular song. But I agree this album is the first one, after several listens, that leaves me with nothing. I just don't wanna listen to it again.

I'm not, I hope, setting up a hierarchy.

what do you mean by lineage in that context

Like, "I am a product of several generations of songwriters." She sold herself as a songwriter from the start.

My son, who is not a Taylor Swift fan but respects her and liked "Folklore," dismissed this album as dull and also said, "I mean, she's no Beyoncé."

Those are good points about the limits of her pop conception and capabilities. I had the thought that next time she and CRJ should just do an album together, because they have somewhat complementary strengths and weaknesses. Carly is a lot more comfortable with a Madonna groove than Taylor ever could be. But also I think Taylor should just lean into guitar music, she's good at it and "All Too Well" showed what she could do with a Midwestern rock beat.

j0rd's post does get at what i said about antonoff as a creative partner - neither of them have that much vision for pop so their arrangements are fairly unexciting (but i'm not anywhere near as frustrated by it idk, i'm just happy to have to have an album that's so solid even if she's had higher highs elsewhere). i'd love her to find someone who really pushes her in regard to vision for pop without like, awkwardly forcing it or exposing her sometimes terrible judgment like martin & little both did (pretty much always for little, only sometimes for martin).

or really just make a focused singer-songwriter thing continuing on from folklore/evermore - just take swift & her guitar as the starting point (even the good songs on lover sounded generally so much better in the solo acoustic versions) and go from there, even antonoff would be a good choice for something like that

j0rdan otm

Ann Powers was on Sam Sanders' Into It podcast the other day, and they talked about how Taylor and Beyonce are both interested in legacies but Taylor is preoccupied with her individual legacy as a Great Artist (who taps into cultural moods but is fundamentally a self-portraitist), while Beyonce is more concerned with familial and cultural legacies. I have to think more about what that might say about their aesthetic tendencies.

i think there’s prob broad truth there. i haven’t listened to the podcast so i won’t quibble too much but taylor is (or has at points in her career been) concerned with cultural legacy — it’s just white middle class culture. she cares deeply about the lineage of white singer-songwriters i.e. james taylor (bragged in song about how many albums of his that she owns) and carole king (did her rock & roll hall of fame induction speech). even when she’s making electronic pop records i think you can see her carrying that legacy in the rate with which she produces… by the standards of the modern pop star she’s in her own class in that regard. the act of churning out music bcuz the songs are just pouring out of you is pretty foreign nowadays but i think taylor pointedly views herself in the lineage of 60s and 70s singer-songwriters who would put out an album per year w/o fail... i think this comes out whenever she talks about her songwriting process. and then from an aesthetic POV obv it’s a useful & even necessary framing for lots of her music… just not as interesting a text for contemporary pop as the cultural history beyonce is pulling from

She should do a track with Sleaford Mods.

Beyonce is more concerned with familial and cultural legacies.

I have to think about what this means.

taylor is (or has at points in her career been) concerned with cultural legacy — it’s just white middle class culture. she cares deeply about the lineage of white singer-songwriters i.e. james taylor (bragged in song about how many albums of his that she owns) and carole king (did her rock & roll hall of fame induction speech).

This is true (and the podcast did invoke Carole King, along with Joni Mitchell) but one of the hallmarks of this '70s singer-songwriter tradition, besides a certain formalized approach to songwriting, is a sustained focus on the Self. She clearly valorizes this lineage but is less interested in upholding "white middle-class culture" per se than that culture's individualistic notions of artistry and success.

Carole King and Joni Mitchell are conveniently two very different singer-songwriter extremes. King and Mitchell did release nearly annual albums in the '70s, but the latter displayed a restless creativity, changing and evolving, whereas the former ... I don't know, I assume Carole King played it safe, though honestly I barely know anything from the dozens of solo albums she's released. Swift seems much more interested in chasing commercial success or validation, which I suspect sands off the rough edges of risk and is maybe why she comes off more an imitator or replicator than trend setter or innovator. It's like the hypothesis made in the KLF's "Manual" (however generalized) that many great artists don't necessarily fall off so much as grow bored of the formulas. I'm no Beyonce expert, but she's seemed more the creatively restless sort herself, aware of the charts but not necessarily beholden to them. She sets her own standards.

I disagree about Swift not taking risks – it’s just that her risks have largely been so successful, it has seemed she could pull off anything. I also disagree she hasn’t set trends; she’s been a huge influence on younger artists. Obviously, she’s not Beyoncé… or Joni Mitchell, for that matter.