October 23, 2022 — Taylor Swift released her new album, Midnights on Thursday night at Midnight. Midnight is figurative because in Los Angeles, Midnight is 9 p.m. The Internet was full of stories of Swifties (Taylor Swift fans) being very sleepy the next day. In fact, the 3:00 a.m. edition came later, giving fans six more bonus songs in addition to the 13 on the record. Honestly, though, isn’t 20 the norm now? I think it’s 13 for the vinyl though.

I usually listen on YouTube. To everything. But YouTube was not cooperative in playing the album in track order, so I bought it. The only option to buy was the 3:00 a.m. edition. I’ve listened to it through, once. But that’s saying something for me.

The last album I listened to through was Billie Eilish’s record from 2021. And Taylor Swift’s 2020 releases, Folklore and Evermore. I just can’t seem to have music on now, at least not much, outside of the car, and that’s crazy for someone who loves music as much as I do.

Stress. Fear of losing my job. Fear of losing everything from that. It’s been debilitating to my ability to listen to music. But I made myself listen to this record. Maybe it’s therapy. But I do want to start liking things again. Music especially.

Given this mood I am in, and various other things I’m going through, doing a real review is too hard for me right now. At some point, I hope I can, but right now I can’t. What I can do is talk about the much touted Taylor Swift song featuring Lana Del Rey. That’s a minefield for me though because I love Lana. Taylor too, but Lana is on her own plane with me.

I wanted the song to be a collaboration, meaning, Lana being featured in a verse. Instead, Lana only sings with Taylor on the chorus and the outro. And even there, Lana is very behind the mix. Mind you, Lana always uses a lot of reverb on her vocals. Taylor’s vocals are usually much drier. In this song, they have much more than normal reverb on Taylor, probably to blend better with Lana, but the problem is the reverb on Lana’s vocals is so much more than even Lana’s normal level that it’s fuzzing out her vocals. Then there’s Jack Antonoff, the producer and maker of the music portion of not only this song, but the entire album. He’s the dude in the cover photo with Taylor and Lana.

I’m not a fan. I try to be, mostly because he made Taylor’s pop sound what it is. He’s on Lana’s last two albums too, but I don’t think that makes them better than normal Lana. He’s elementary in his musicality; to me, anyways.

On about the fourth listen to the Taylor-Lana song, I don’t hate it. Honestly, though, I didn’t like it when I first heard it. It has an annoying music line at the beginning that sounds like a child’s piano, like the song is going to be faster than it is too. And Taylor has adopted a singing technique where she elevates the last note a lyric-phrase one octave up. She started that on the Folklore/Evermore releases. I find it annoying. She does it here on the verses. Between that odd high-note phrase-end and the childlike musicality, the song loses me for those distractions. That said, at about minute mark 2:00, the song stops with that silliness and becomes quite good. I think it’s because Lana is more audible there, even if her voice is overly warm from the reverb (which is me being nice and not calling it fuzzy).

Outside of that production craziness though, I do like the song. It’s definitely a Lana song. I can tell she wrote it. And it’s very Lana of her to essentially give something like this to Taylor. Some people give gifts expecting praise, or something overt. Lana’s gift, her whispering over Taylor’s words, then gradually being more audible at the end, is very Lana, giving the song, participating on the song, but not outshining on the song, which she would have if she sang alone. It’s simple humility. A good example. And a true gift.

I’m going to listen to the whole record more and see what I think. In fact, I’m going to listen more, and I’m going to live more, if I can. I mean, generally. It’s been a sad two weeks for me, but there are good things I’ve done and am doing, and I want to focus on those. Hopefully listening to music will help. Taylor is a good start. Maybe then, after a week or so of actually listening to music, I can tell you what I think of the rest of the songs. Or not. But either way, it’s a good start for me just to listen to music again. Let’s hope I can keep that up.