'Midnights': Taylor Swift dazzles in the story despite the tricks of Jack Antonoff

Taylor Swift, during a performance in Nashville on September 20, 2022. Terry Wyatt (Getty Images)

The Taylor Swift story is the story of an artist seeking to master the narrative.

The one about her musical career, the one about her personal life, the one about the time she has had to live, the one about her allies, the one about her enemies.

And the result of her has almost always been favorable to her, even when a pandemic ravaged the planet, and it seemed that Taylor Swift's career could also be counted among the population at risk.

That way of wandering around the world and her circumstances have made almost all of her albums reactive.

Swift almost always gives answers, almost never raises questions.

The first time she managed to do both was with

and soon after with

.

They may be his best albums —stating that confirms the broadcaster as a white male over 40 years old with at least two Springsteen albums at home—, or maybe not, but it is true that they are the ones he best managed to go with beyond herself and, therefore, her fan base.

Rarely has such a successful stylistic and metaphysical turn been seen.

He gained millions of new followers while barely losing any old ones.

The Neil Young who made techno pop and the Rolling Stones who abandoned themselves to disco observe her perplexed.

This new

which she has just released, is presented as proof of senescence for all those who hated her before

and fell exhausted before the majesty of that album.

Do you really like Taylor Swift?

Now let's find out.

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Midnights

may be the first Taylor Swift album with a story made as an action and not as a reaction.

There is little revenge, just a bit of a boyfriend, a lot of topic demolition and a huge amount of resilience, self-affirmation and even a sense of humor (in 2022 if you write a song about karma and you don't want to sound like a in-

him out, like she does, joke and back to the subject).

Presented as a collection of 13 themes around the night, insomnia and aesthetically assembled around an image that refers to the seventies, or rather, to the concept of the seventies that developed

in the nineties, this album walks and speaks for itself.

Propose and dispose.

Aaron Dessner, the member of The National who collaborated with Swift on her two pandemic albums, disappears from the equation, and she and Jack Antonoff remain in command of the ship, a ubiquitous guy, capable of the best and the worst and whom it is inevitable to blame the moments when this

stumbles and is about to fall.

Gone is the folk pop of his two previous references.

Swift returns to pop, but she does it as if those two albums had been her first reference.

sounds like the first experiment with synthesizers by someone who never thought he could make music without a guitar slung over his shoulder.

And that's great.

Because, although Swift abandoned country and entered pop for huge venues with names of banks or insurance companies giving the feeling that she already knew all the tricks,

it is more hesitant, more empathetic, much more pleasant to the touch and to the ear.

The sound is more classic electro, and when it approaches today, it does so through two ways of understanding it that we have already assimilated, but not so metabolized as not to want to repeat.

Billie Eilish from her first album and Lorde from

appear here in cuts like

or

(this one, one of the best).

The first was invited by Swift and the second by Antonoff.

Lavender Haze

, on which Zoe Kravitz collaborates on the lyrics, is one of the few times throughout the album in which Swift launches headfirst into expansive pop with the soul of success.

Actually, the song is nothing to write home about, but it is written, arranged and produced with such confidence and self-esteem that it ends up convincing you, to the point that you know that next Tuesday it will already be your favorite song on the album.

Mind you, it's highly likely that a couple of years from now, when you go back to

, you'll skip this song after 30 seconds.

The other three

contenders on the album are less tricky and far more satisfying.

is eighties

, a kind of revision of the 1989 Swift, but less bombastic.

is the song that should be put in any class analyzing Swift's songwriting style.

Perhaps it is predictable, but it was also predictable yesterday that today would be Friday, and that does not stop us from liking that today is Friday.

So that's

.

The best of the quartet is

, like a drill that hits you to the ground and, when he has you pinned, mutates into something that asks you to dance.

And then into something that asks you to sing.

And then in something that messes you up and you no longer know what you're singing.

It could last a week.

Cover of the album 'Midnights', by Taylor Swift.

(Republic Records / AP) AP

But it is the more expansive and less pop themes that truly seem to make up the story of this album.

in which Lana del Rey collaborates, is just that perfect ballad that could be expected, although Del Rey's presence is too secondary to qualify this as a duet.

is just perfect.

He vividly remembers those times in

when old Swift would come into the cabin in the woods, she'd turn on all the lights and go looking for her high-heeled shoes.

is a delight.

Little more to say.

It's Taylor in Taylor mode.

The album ends with

, which is that song that Chromatics never managed to finish writing to become the best band of the 21st century.

At 3am New York time, Swift added seven tracks to this

The 3 am version, which does include three songs written with Aaron Dessner, and which, as in the case of

now sound a bit discarded, but it is very likely that some, like the promising

, will become into little classics sooner rather than later.

Midnights

is an album and it's a project.

It is a perfectly put together story that at moments like

or

runs up against Antonoff's inability to propose coherent solutions.

Because Swift's songwriting talents have reached such a point of excellence that if something sounds anemic, repetitive, boring, too desperate to be liked, it must be someone else's fault, not hers.

Impossible.

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