Taylor Swift - Midnights

new album out october 21

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch1Ed_Su6Qw/

lol at her listing "Track One" "Track Two" etc. like it's the actual tracklist in the graphic

Ha ha, just came here to post this (ya beat me)

I'm here for it...

oh it's the album cover & she just doesn't want to reveal the track titles yet that's such a goofy move lol

She was at the (awful) VMAs tonight, and I figured it was just b/c they gave her an award – but I also wondered if something was up, cuz it kind of seemed beneath her to show up in person

that Taylor, never without an agenda

anyway glad she's been so prolific through this pandemic, jeez

if this is a return to pop taylor i hope it doesn't mean she's abandoning the quality control too

She's entering her Helvetica Era

I get a Blue meets How I'm Feeling Now vibe from the cover (assuming it is the cover) - so I'm imagining this will be somewhat more pop (and perhaps more straightforward) than the last two but also kinda dark-confessional? The title and the "stories of sleepless nights" description are quite equivocal in this regard.

damn, she'll have four albums worth of material that she hasn't toured on

but yeah, based on her not touring in years, I bet this will def be poppier since folklore/evermore aren't exactly filled with stadium bops

it's confirmed to be the cover yeah, it's on the pre-order page. though obviously it'll be updated with the real titles eventually

i think you're otm re: the expected vibe tim

but idk if that's something she'll be able to pull off well

y'all thought reputation was bad? wait until her album with AG Cook

if she announced the whole album was produced by cook my confidence would go significantly up!

lol pls

I'd be here for hyperpop Swift tbh

in that vein if she happened to be working with bj burton (who co-produced one track on evermore) that'd be about as exciting as possible

you guys it's an aesthetic fakeout and she's going full country again

Two months is a long wait. Maybe we'll get new albums from Sky Ferreira and MBV before then.

poor CRJ, gotta share a release date with the pop juggernaut

Are Taylor semioticians catching any clues from the promo photo? (e.g., the odds and ends on the desk)

This longer description makes it sound VERY dark / confessional:

Midnights, the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life, will be out October 21. Meet me at midnight.

Pre-order now: https://t.co/jjqUNkphuG pic.twitter.com/Fh96zK8vro

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) August 29, 2022

The longer description is in one of the pics in the tweet

Like I said on twitter, I absolutely LOVE the concept she's developed for this album. What a rich place to take inspiration from. However, I expect I still won't like it very much because of the way she writes lyrics and melodies. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Oh, she actually announced the album at the end of her VMA speech! I totally missed that, lol

During her acceptance speech for video of the year at the #VMAs, Taylor Swift announces a new album out October 21. https://t.co/K3f4GrgiuJ pic.twitter.com/9q2jGVDoPl

— Variety (@Variety) August 29, 2022

poor CRJ, gotta share a release date with the pop juggernaut

― Murgatroid

Midnights, The Loneliest Time. Some kind of zeitgeist perhaps?

Exciting news

glad she's putting out new music - when she announced she was re-recording her old albums, I was a bit worried that it would occupy all her time and we wouldn't get any new material from her for awhile but clearly my worries were unfounded

I guess she just lives in recording studios now

i'm not really sure what's happening with the remakes because she already put out a few tracks from 1989, i would have thought she'd want to get them out quicker idk

Carly Rae Jepsen, Arctic Monkeys and this all on the same day, going to be a good day to be alive

Huh, didn't even know Arctic Monkeys were still around.

I'll check out Taylor and CRJ but will def skip AM.

I looked it up. Tegan and Sara and Dry Cleaning too

Huh, didn't even know Arctic Monkeys were still around

They're better than ever

I’m trying to imagine what this will sound like based off the destruction/album cover and the first band that comes to mind is Chromatics. Like I can’t picture this being a full blown pop return but I can’t imagine it being very guitar based?

Is it confirmed those track titles will be renamed? Because that would be cool if they were all just named “Track One,” Track Two” etc

Is it confirmed those track titles will be renamed? Because that would be cool if they were all just named “Track One,” Track Two” etc

Yeah my probably way-off-base prediction is that this could be a good opportunity to be explore a more moody noir version of the synth pop ballad vibes Taylor explored on stuff like “You Are In Love” and “Delicate” and the live version of “Love Story” she was performing on the 1989 tour.

I also thought “Renegade” was excellent and that that and “Long Story Short” suggested a pathway for merging the directions taken on the last two albums with a more propulsion pop sound - almost both tunes are very upbeat in presentation, which may not be the vibe she goes for here.

*albeit both tunes…

reading tea leaves here but getting “false god”: the
album from the cover

no complaints if we get an album of sophisti-taylor

i just hope she hasn't like, been listening to the weeknd too much or something lol

"all too well (10 minute version)" did have a bunch of tasteful sax in the background, if we get a vibe anything like that i'll be quite happy

any word on whether Dessner is involved again?

No word on collaborators so far.

I get late 90s indie vibes from the album cover. Not that I necessarily think this is going to be Taylor's Modest Mouse album or whatever.

Analyzing the cover art reminds me of the (traumatic) whiplash that was "Lover" cover reveal -> "ME!" released as lead single

Ha ha. Yeah, ouch, important warning. Anyway, I think what I was thinking was that it might fit in The Great Millennial Colour Drought

"... and when I'm up all night, I call Max and say, 'Let's make a banger about how boys are poopyheads!'"

"me!" came before the album cover, iirc the whiplash was just from the teasers for it?

I don’t predict anything like synthpop, but we’ll see…

Check out the Springsteen thread for his own belated response, which is basically a big shrug.

I'm starting to think the only solution to this stuff is to seriously curtail secondary market sales, but I'm not sure how you legally go about doing that. Ed Sheeran supposedly limits how much his tickets can be resold for, I don't know how that works.

Definitely love the trend towards big artists saying, "sorry you are too poor to see me, sucks 2 b u, buy my new album!".

2.4 million people(?!)

A guy I work with (who was lukewarm about the new album, so I was surprised he went for tickets) says he managed to get great seats in the Capital One presale.

To me, the Capital One thing is like an extra little twist of the knife... I've taken advantage of such things in the past where I could (e.g., an "Amex Presale"), but the idea of needing to have a particular credit card feels extra moded.

Also throw in the fact that football season ticket holders in these venues also get a special pre-sale. I heard it was six tickets each at Soldier Field, so of course there's no tickets left.

^^Wow. In some cases that might be the only benefit of having season tickets (Cough Cough Houston Texans).

Saw a post on reddit where a Texans (I believe) season ticket holder said that their special pre-sale was sold out in under a minute.

Antitrust investigation opened up? Good luck with that, DOJ.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkyEa6UWAAIu6Pv.jpg

“Like Capital One, Citi offers cardholders early access to concert presales through its Citi Entertainment program, which has no fee to access and is available to all Citi credit card and debit card holders. American Express offers some cardholders preferential access to tickets for Broadway shows and concerts, in addition to exclusive entrances at some venues.”

Keep journalism alive

Rather delayed but finally giving this a full listen. Low key electronic Taylor really is remarkably good.

I gave it a spin a few weeks ago after loving "Glitch" on Four Tet's Spotify playlist. Pretty solid album!

I re-listened today… every track after the first three still ended up being a skip for me, except for “Karma” & “Sweet Nothing” (“Hits Different” is also OK).

Curious: what’s the consensus about the meaning of the lyric “at tea time” in Anti-Hero? Does Taylor mean to imply that her critics are upper crust snobs drinking tea at a country club, or is it a draggy reference about serving tea?

totally thought it was about serving tea

Thought it was about gossip — tea — so “at tea time” = when ppl are gossiping (everybody agrees)

yeah seems pretty clearly like the latter to me?

I’ve always maintained that Taylor’s narrator may be winning out on the links but, rhetorically, she’s straight up getting wrecked by the other players

I always thought it was a “my critics are snobs” line (and the only weak line in an otherwise fairly brilliant lyric)

My bf thinks she’s referencing drag

Either way it’s not my favourite line in an otherwise delightful lyric? Idk there’s a lot of good stuff there

LL's gloss seems definitive to me

Thought it was about gossip — tea — so “at tea time” = when ppl are gossiping (everybody agrees)

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Thursday, March 2, 2023 5:24 PM

this is how i hear it.

Yeah, clearly about gossiping. That's when everybody agrees she's the problem!

It’s HER

I thought she was just using "tea time" in the British sense? She's spent a lot of time there the past few years so it wouldn't be odd for some British phrases to sneak into her writing.

i'd read it as both the british sense and about gossip

Yeah I'm not suggesting it doesn't draw on that double meaning, more that I don't think it is intended to imply anything about the people agreeing - it's everybody! The song is pretty focused on directing the criticism and loathing inward - the only exception (the daughter in law who kills her) is imaginary, and is more a metaphor for what she fears her value may be reduced to.

yeah i agree there

“Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby
And I'm a monster on the hill
Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city”

This is not pop lyric writing imo, this is something else and something very good and very funny.

Did you hear my covert narcissism
I disguise as altruism
Like some kind of congressman?

This part gets me every time, but the entire song is full of memorable lyrics.

The part that shocked me into caring about this song was that line — the narcissism/altruism/congressman line. It seems to come out of nowhere?

In the video where the crowd was singing along she absolutely spits the word congressman — that took me by surprise too.

What I love about the congressman line is that it’s not clear whether she’s speaking in general or specifically critiquing even her own confessionalism on this song, like, “look, even now I am crying out for attention and to be loved, and trying to make myself look like a more self-reflective person than I really am.”

lol she sure seems to be going ridiculously all out for this tour

It cost them so much babysitting and other jobs, but my kids are going to lose their shit.

LOL same here. We are going to Nashville. They are approaching Losing Their Shit stage currently and should be at full-on Interstellar Overdrive (or something like that) stage by the time we get there.

she played “enchanted” ;_;

i don’t love the setlist personally. shoutout to her for doing 45 songs tho

Here’s the chunk I’d be all over (could leave the rest):

“Tis the Damn Season”
“Willow”
“Marjorie”
“Champagne Problems”
“Tolerate It”
“…Ready for It?”
“Delicate”

When your fans have no taste

The Evermore segment included live debuts of “’Tis the Damn Season,” “Marjorie,” and “Tolerate It,” as well as a self-aware gag from Swift, who said the album is one that “I absolutely love—despite what some of you say on TikTok… I’ve seen it. I’ve seen all of it!”

otm

Looks like she's actually dividing it up into eras, which makes sense given the name of the tour, but seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to put songs from different eras together in interesting ways.

xp I think she's adressing weird persistent rumours that SHE didn't like evermore and has 'buried' it since release. Although yeah, the fans also underrated it.

Oh thanks, interesting. (I won’t pretend to understand the logic of that rumor, considering that she did the thing of breaking the songs up into a bunch of digital EPs, giving “Willow” a ton of remixes, etc.)

My daughter gave me the lowdown this morning. Apparently she barely tweeted or posted anything about Evermore, compared to Folklore (which got its own special?), and then didn't mention the album on its "birthday" (anniversary) either.

Ok, definitely a different level of tea-leaf reading happening there.

Just did some Twitter searching (yes, I'm bored) – she only tweeted twice about Folklore, post–2020: (a) in Feb. 2021, announcing she put FL & Evermore together in a playlist; (b) in July 2021, the "Happy Anniversary" tweet (debuting a new version of "The Lakes"). As for Evermore – she tweeted about it seven (7) times in 2021 (and that's not counting the aforementioned playlist tweet, or an announcement of a deluxe version of the LP).

I think if an artist was tweeting a lot about their albums’ birthdays I’d probably block them

I would like to celebrate the anniversary of every post I made on ILX.

both the opening and closing tracks are very confusing choices

I was there last night. My daughter’s Christmas present. Great stage/set and performance.