Taylor Swift: Midnights (Lavender Marble Vinyl) [REPUBLIC]

Why you'll love it

Midnights is Taylor Swift at her most subdued and synth-soaked, and it still became the best-selling album of 2022.

This edition

• Lavender marble vinyl
• Republic pressing

About the album

For a massive "superstar" album, Taylor Swift's Midnights is a remarkably sombre, restrained and rather chilly affair. And this is why it's also kind of awesome. TaylorMania can get a bit exhausting, yes, but the gal hasn't exactly navigated her ascent to Total World Pop Domination via a straight A-to-B path. From her bright-eyed country(-esque) beginnings to the gleaming electro-pop of 1989 and Reputation to the surprisingly deep and varied songwriting on display on Lover and its unadorned, folk-leaning sequels Folklore and Evermore, Swift has made a habit of changing things up at just the right time. And on 2022's Midnights, as she did with Lover in 2019, she changed things up at just the right time, again, to turn TayTay doubters into believers.

Fraught with late-night worries, regrets and self-doubt, and some spectacularly artful and theatrical self-loathing on the magnificent single "Anti-Hero," Midnights would not outwardly seem the most obvious candidate for a blockbuster. And yet it sold a million copies in five days, despite the fact that it arrived in late October of that year. True, selling four differently coloured versions of the record with alternate covers simultaneously didn't hurt, but one must also give the legions of Swifties out there credit for tagging along on a musical ride that consistently refrains from doing the obvious thing. Swift didn't get where she is by accident. She's the real deal. Midnights is proof of that.

Best heard well after bedtime, which seems to be the point.

Also at Kops: more Taylor Swift on vinyl · browse Pop

Tracklist

Listen

On Republic, the 2022 album on lavender marble vinyl.