Midnights (3am Edition)

Taylor Swift's cottage-core era is over. For the singer's 10th album, she's revived the best bits of her 1989 album—the chill of "Blank Space," "Style"—and re-thought them for the moment. It's synth pop that's not trying to be perfect (which isn't to say every move Swift makes isn't calculated): Sometimes the sounds are warped, even grotesque. The vocals on"Midnight Rain" are slowed and warped to a David Lynch-ian place. It's ironic that Maggie Rogers borrowed a touch of Swift's folksy side for her latest record, because Midnights often sounds like Rogers' electro-pop. You can hear it on bubbling "Karma" and  "Lavender Haze," which finds Swift feeling constrained by society's prudish expectations on celebrities—the constant questions about engagements, marriage, children. "All they keep asking me/ Is if I'm gonna be your bride," she seems to be saying to longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn. "The only kinda girl they see/ Is a one-night or a wife." There are also shades of Lorde—another collaborator of Swift's producer Jack Antonoff—on  "Vigilante Shit," with its ice-cold beats. The song is supposedly a stiletto to the heart of Swift's  former manager—the one who sold the singer's master recordings out from under her. "I don't start shit, but I can tell you how it ends," she sings, seemingly having revealed that she gave a wife the evidence needed for a pricey divorce settlement. Twee "Snow on the Beach" features (barely, thanks to Antonoff's lasagna-thick vocal layers) Lana Del Rey  and a quick nod to a Jackson —"I'm all for you like Janet," name-checking the singer's 2001 hit—who sent Swift flowers in 2009 after Kanye West stole her moment at the VMAs. And while Swift keeps her loyalties close and her enmities closer, the one big surprise of Midnights is that she exposes a new villain: herself. "Did you hear my covert narcissism/ I disguise as altruism/ Like some kind of congressman?" she sings on the the album's best track "Anti-Hero," addressing years of public skepticism. "Hi/ I'm the problem/ It's me." ("This song really is a guided tour throughout all of the things I tend to hate about myself," Swift has said.) And then there's the charming closer "Mastermind," on which she confesses both to making a romantic meeting look accidental and reveals the origin story of her calculating ways: "No one wanted to play with me as a little kid/ So I've been scheming like a criminal ever since/ To make them love me and make it seem effortless." Musically, "You're on Your Own, Kid" feels as light and innocent as an early Swift country song. Lyrically, it's as revealing as anything she's ever committed to tape: "I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this/ I hosted parties and starved my body … My friends from home don't know what to say/ I looked around in a blood-soaked gown/ And I saw something they can't take away/ 'Cause there were pages turned with the bridges burned." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz