Taylor Swift’s Midnights: what the critics are saying about her ‘tastefully subdued’ album

Pop legend Taylor Swift has received predominantly rave reviews for her tenth studio album, Midnights, with critics hailing the artist’s “tastefully subdued” vocals.

The 32-year-old American star, once known for her catchy, pithy love songs, now boasts “feline vocal stealth and assured lyrical control”, said Helen Brown in The Independent. Her reward is a healthy number of gushing reviews.

In 2020, Swift contributed to the pandemic content boom by releasing two stripped-back folk records within six months of each other. Two years later and Midnights has arrived amid a host of online fanfare and numerous memes suggesting that the self-confessed Swiftie Liz Truss may have resigned as prime minister to dedicate more time to absorbing the new album.

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What was originally released as a 13-track album, lasting 44 minutes, was later expanded – much to the thrill of devotees – with the arrival of a 20-track version (known as the 3am edition) running for over an hour.

‘Misty and tastefully subdued’

Midnights takes Swift “back to electronic pop”, wrote Alex Petridis in his five-star review for The Guardian. However, those looking for the singalong hits of yesteryear will be disappointed. “It’s an album that steadfastly declines to deal in the kind of neon-hued bangers” that Swift is famous for, Petridis added. “The sound is misty, atmospheric and tastefully subdued.”

Will Hodgkinson, in The Times, agreed, claiming “these variously minimal, eerie, heartfelt and intense songs do have a crepuscular quality” that is an antidote to the singer’s “usual cheery brightness”.

‘Not a smash hit in sight’

Swift’s move away from the dancefloor hits with which she first made her name has not pleased everyone. The Evening Standard’s David Smyth gave the album a two-star review, entitled: “Not a smash hit in sight.”

Smyth suggested the album’s greatest surprise was the revelation that Swift is “prepared to disappoint anyone assuming that this will be a return to stadium-ready pop”, although he did recognise that “Taylor Swift doesn’t like to do what’s expected of her”.

In a similarly subdued three-star review for the Financial Times, Ludovic Hunter-Tilney criticised the low-key vibe of the album as evoking a “feeling of tiredness” and “a sense of midnight oil burning too fiercely”. Hunter-Tilney was particularly critical of Swift’s lyrics, suggesting “overwriting is accompanied by underwriting” and the lyrics are “less vividly drawn” than her previous work.

However, “Swift’s singing is the best thing about the album”, he continued. “She is one of pop’s most distinctive vocal melodicists, able to sound conversational and highly tuneful at the same time.”

‘A collage of intensity’

Swift herself has described the album, made alongside her long-time collaborator and producer Jack Antonoff, “as a collage of intensity, highs and lows and ebbs and flows”. She defined the work as a concept piece based on almost a fortnight of troubled sleep. This seems appropriate, said The Independent’s Brown, as “playing Midnights will make you feel as though you’re sleeping over at her house while she spills secrets and settles scores into the night”.

Swift is known for keeping her fans close, putting them at the centre of her professional brand and giving them the sense that she’s their friend, rather than an untouchable megastar. Ultimately, her latest record plays to this narrative, with Midnights feeling like an album for core Swifties who want to know “her darkest areas, deepest doubts and cruellest thoughts”.

In recent weeks, rumours have swirled that Swift may have got engaged to her six-year boyfriend, the English actor Joe Alwyn, “last seen mumbling his way through a Dublin accent in an adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends”, joked Hodgkinson in The Times.

Midnights addresses these rumours, but does little to quell them. On a track entitled Lavender, Swift sings: “All they keep asking me… Is if I’m gonna be your bride… The only kinda girl they see… Is a one night or a wife.”