Review: "Midnights" is a Haunting Electropop Haze

Midnights by Taylor Swift is streaming everywhere October 21.

Cottagecore can’t come to the phone right now. She’s dead, and abandoned in favor of 1970s synthpop sounds. The vintage aesthetic of Midnights is fitting for an autumn season unexpectedly flush with bell bottoms, the grand return of velour, and the encroaching dark — Midnights is a haunting, electropop haze, perfect for looping during your late night drives through the cityscape.

Perhaps the most anticipated album of her career, Taylor Swift’s tenth studio album Midnights is Taylor Swift’s story of thirteen sleepless nights scattered through her life. Internet chatter says it’s a concept album — the nocturnal theme bridges each swirling track onward towards a soaring pop-anthem coda. Lush soundscapes of soft percussion, steady driving synth beats, and airy vocals create a darkly dreamy atmosphere in this record.

Midnights is sad girl synth pop at its finest, joining the milieu of other Jack Antonoff darlings like Melodrama and Norman F*cking Rockwell! This is the perfect album to mix into a playlist with the likes of Carly Rae Jepson, Haim, Foxes, Lorde, Florence and the Machine. Antonoff — executive producer of the Sad White Girl Brand TM and weirdly the soundtrack for Minions: The Rise of Gru (lol) — seems to be the prevailing sound of 21st century electro pop. I’m fine with it.

Lyrics take the back seat in this album, providing more of a texture than compelling narrative. This feels like a cue from collaborator Lana del Rey, who’s most recent studio album Blue Bannisters was perhaps the most lyrically incoherent (and stunningly bizarre) record yet. Perhaps my only complaint about this record is how underutilized Lana is on their shared track “Snow on the Beach,” — she first appears around the 2:30 mark in the song, lending her airy melancholy to create an atmosphere of winter in Southern California. Her presence is cryptic, perhaps cocaine-related, and leaves me wondering why they sang the track together. Whatever! Go off, my sad queens.

If folklore and evermore (folkmore?) are thematically twinned albums — with sentimental narratives and Americana melancholy (americholy? I’m coining that) — Midnights is a departure from her acoustic daydream of the 2020s. Midnights is a revival of Taylor’s best nostalgic electro pop ballads (think 1989 with a smoke machine) drenched in dark blue tones. 

Some half remembered lyric from this record lives in my mind rent-free: “do I have a man? I don’t remember” — this reminds that while I’m begrudgingly required to admit that this is an aggressively heterosexual album, Midnights is a serious contender for album of the year. These aren’t songs to play when he won’t call you back — these are anthems for when you’ve blocked his number.

Read more of E’s music reviews here.