For many, October 21, 2022 was practically a national holiday. Pop and former-country icon, Taylor Swift, released her tenth studio album, Midnights, making this her fifth album release in the past three years, two being re-recordings. Fans speculated what the sound of this album would be, since her last two albums both resembled folk music rather than pop. 

The album dropped at 12am ET, with thirteen songs, a number she has been famously known to incorporate throughout her career. Swift then surprised fans at 3am with seven bonus tracks, making it a twenty song album.

Midnights opens up with “Lavender Haze”, a catchy pop tune that starts with the line, “Meet me at midnight.” Swift says that a lavender haze is a phrase that was used in the 1950s to describe being in love. She says that it is “an all encompassing love glow.” In recent years, Swift has written more and more songs about being in love, moving away from the notion that she only writes break-up songs. She includes lines like, “And you don’t really read into my melancholia,” or, “I’ve been under scrutiny, you handle it beautifully,” proving her lyricism and word-choice is that of an experienced poet rather than the average singer-songwriter. 

Immediately after “Lavender Haze” is “Maroon”, another well-written song about her long-term relationship with actor Joe Alwyn. After “Maroon,” there is a change in theme with the song “Anti-Hero.” Swift has referred to this track as her most vulnerable song to date. In the song she refers to herself as “the problem.” The song includes powerful lines like, “I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser,” and “When my depression works the graveyard shift, all of the people I’ve ghosted stand there in the room.” Swift also includes lyrics that have left fans puzzled as to their meaning. These lines include, “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby,” and “I have this dream my daughter-in-law kills me for the money.” Despite these seemingly out of place lines, the song has received great praise. 

Her fourth track on the album is “Snow On The Beach,” which features Lana Del Rey. This song, while still pop, has a little more resemblance to the sound of her past two albums, folklore and evermore. Immediately after that, you are hit with the emotional, “You’re On Your Own, Kid”, which almost forces listeners to sit and reminisce about a more nostalgic time of their life. The song cultivates feelings of loneliness, independence, and bravery. 

With songs like “Karma” and “Bejeweled,” Swift proves once again that she reigns supreme when it comes to creating music that can only be described as quintessential pop. With these two songs she shows off her ability to create a catchy tune, without ever becoming too repetitive. She once again flaunts her great songwriting capabilities with, “Familiarity breeds contempt, don’t put me in the basement, when I want the penthouse of your heart,” and, “You’re terrified to look down, ‘cause if you dare, you’ll see the glare of everyone you burned down just to get there.”

She closes the album with “Mastermind.” Each track on the album has lyrics that deserve praise, but Swift outdoes herself with this one, creating the best song on the album, lyrically. 

While Midnights is not quite the pop perfection that is 1989, it did show that despite ten albums and multiple controversies (which inspired her 2017 album, Reputation), Taylor Swift is still here to stay. She proves, as she has done for the last 16 years, that she is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to poetry and lyrics. I think I speak for many when I gladly say that Taylor Swift will go down as one of the most influential artists of our generation.