Taylor Swift’s 10th album, ‘Midnights,’ which marks the singer-gradual songwriter’s return to pop, caused an online fan frenzy following its midnight release on Friday – and crashed Spotify in the process.
Swift fans from the United States to France and the United Kingdom had to wait for hours to hear Swift’s latest sound on the streaming site, which was published at midnight.
Swift revealed on Twitter that the album’s 13 songs represent “the story of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.”
They give “a full picture of the intensities of that mystifying, mad hour,” when read together.
Once all Spotify troubles were rectified (usually within an hour), fans discovered songs matched to an electro-pop beat, complete with synths, dubstep-inspired rhythms, and Swift’s vocals on a more androgynous side.
In the new album, the 32-year-old, who began her career in country before transitioning to pop and becoming a megastar, abandons her more recent indie-folk vein.
The pop sound is a contrast from her earlier albums, ‘Evermore’ and ‘Folklore,’ which were composed during the pandemic and won Album of the Year at the 2021 Grammys.
Swift captures a certain dreamy mystique in ‘Midnights,’ which contains the soft vocals of Lana Del Rey in the duet ‘Snow on the Beach,’ complete with evening ruminations — her views on getting older and the complications of love.
The nocturnal record has mostly enchanted critics.
The Guardian praised it, calling it a “cool, collected, and mature” collection “packed with fantastic songs.”
One criticism has been the album’s absence of a catchy title song: “It’s hard to spot anything that sounds like a smash hit on Swift’s third muted collection in a row,” The Independent newspaper bemoaned.
Swift, true to habit, has a surprise in store for her devoted followers.
At 3:00 a.m. on the East Coast, she issued an expanded 20-song version titled ‘Midnights (3am Edition)’. She described the seven extra ballads as “songs we wrote on our journey to find that magic 13.”