In my first passion blog, I wrote about how Taylor Swift announced her newest album at the Video Music Awards back in August. Now, almost exactly 2 months later, I get the opportunity to write about this topic again. If it wasn’t abundantly clear already, I am a huge Taylor Swift fan, so I was very excited to get to write about her for the 3rd time

Midnights was released at 12:00 am on October 21st. It was obviously a huge hit as people everywhere were anticipating this album. This release was record breaking. For example, Taylor now holds the record for the biggest pop album of all time on Apple Music by first-day streams, and also had the biggest streaming week of the year. I was also someone who was anxiously awaiting the album. So, me and my friends had a listening party the night of the release and we were able to dissect and give our thoughts about the album. I wrote them all down, and I am going to share my thoughts on some of the tracks.

Track 4: Snow On the Beach Ft. Lana Del Rey: 7.7/10. This one I expect to grow on me. I was expecting Lana to have a big part in this song and was disappointed to find out she was merely singing backup vocals. This could have been an iconic collaboration because this song is very much the vibe of Lana’s music.

Track 5: You’re on Your Own Kid: 10/10. This song is my favorite on the album, although at first I gave it a 9/10, after more listens I fell in love with it. It had such a good beginning, really good instrumentals, and a great bridge. Track 5 on Taylor Swift albums tend to be known to be on the sad side. I think this fits that stereotype perfectly. I relate to it a lot because it signifies growing up which is how I feel as a freshman in college.

Track 9: Bejeweled: 8.6. To me this song was almost like a part two to her song “Mirrorball” (I wrote about this song in another passion blog”). It represents how she is now shining and embracing herself after feeling like she was lonely and only shined so people would like her. It shows a lot of character development. It was a great pop song, and had cool back up vocals which kept me intrigued, as well as a good build up to the chorus.

Track 11: Karma: 9.2/10. The word karma means a lot to Taylor especially during her Reputation era, where the whole vibe was making a comeback after the Kanye West scandals. So I expected this song to be shocking, and it definitely lived up to my expectations. It has such a good intro, good beat, and a very unique sound. It represented how she has overcome her challenges and is looking forward to moving on and continuing to be successful.

Track 13: Mastermind: 9.3. This one had a very very unique and upbeat background track. I also loved the lyrics and the overall progression of the song. This was a lot like Melodrama and even sampled the song “Supercut”. I think this song was by far the most unique one on the album and I was excited to hear another one of my favorite songs sampled at the end of the track.

This song marks the end of the original album that was released at midnight. However, at 3 am Taylor released 7 surprise tracks that were eventually added to Midnights: 3am Edition. The general consensus was that these tracks were better than the whole original album, which I do not know if I agree with, but I do think there are some great songs.

Track 15: Bigger Than the Whole Sky: 9.4/10. Again, this was the kind of sad song I was looking for on this album. I loved the production and it sounds beautiful. Her vocals sounded very mature in this and again, it reminded me of songs from Folklore. I loved this song.
Track 16: Paris: 6.7/10. Honestly, this was by far my least favorite song on the album. It was very repetitive and honestly kind of cheesy. It reminded me a lot of her songs on Lover which might make me biased because that is my least favorite album. It had a decent bridge but other than that it just sounded annoying to me and I do not think I will listen to it a lot at all.

Track 18: Glitch: 7.6/10. This song was really catchy but the song lyrics sounded kind of cheap to me. I feel like the message and idea behind the song was really good but it wasn’t executed properly. It was about an unexpected relationship forming, but the lyrics sounded very basic and not like the breathtaking songwriting she has done in the past. I feel like this one could have been a lot better so I was a little disappointed, but nonetheless it was not bad.

Track 19: Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve: 9/10. This song had a lot of meaning behind it. It speaks to Taylor’s relationship with famous singer John Mayer. The relationship caused a lot of problems, many of them due to their huge age gap (19 and 32). This song is also like a second part to her song “Dear John” on her album Speak Now. Her vocals were amazing, and you could tell how passionate she felt about this song. This topic is clearly very close to her heart, and one lyric that sticks out is “Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first” which refers to how John basically took advantage of her, and her young age. And yet again, the bridge was amazing.

Overall I would say this album is an 8/10. It was definitely not my favorite, but it falls somewhere in the middle of my album rankings. It was a great listen and there were no horrible songs. It was mainly a very pop style album. Although I was expecting/hoping for gut wrenchingly sad songs I am still so happy for this album. Afterall, she is a pop artist, it was my fault for expecting something different than that. Pretty much every song sounds better as you listen to it more because you are able to understand the lyrics and message. Taylor continues to shock me as she always manages to produce good music even after being in the industry for years.