In the haze of 'Midnights,' Taylor Swift softens into an expanded sound

Can Taylor Swift soften up? Like many high-achieving workaholics, I imagine she's lost the instinct and, practical girl, uses enhancements. In the evening, with her lover nearby, does she vape a little Lavender Haze CBD Rosin and focus on the quietude creeping into her body beneath the relentless chatter of her thoughts? Does she grasp his hand and put it on her cheek? On a therapist's couch, does she release her hard-earned dignity and confront the petty little antihero within? Alone with her memories, does she sometimes let them fragment, refusing to untangle them into elegant morality tales and instead staying within their thickets of grief and frustration and desire? And then, in the studio, can she bring a lyric built on questions, turn to her trusted collaborator and say, "I don't care if this song is a hit, I want it to be weird"?

All of these open-ended, Swift's 10th and most challenging album. When Swift announced it two months ago, she promised new levels of self-exposure, invoking the classic trope of the , music made in the spirit of "the floors we pace and the demons we face," as she said in a statement. And she's delivered, but not by offering many concrete admissions. She's more focused on what such revelations might sound like before they settle into a story to be shared. Accessing the vibes projected by the TikTok confessionalists who are her spiritual children and the genre-agnostic singer-songwriters reconfiguring indie pop and R&B as she once did in country, Swift uses as a way to rethink the sonic rhetoric of first-person storytelling and shake off habits that have served her artistically and commercially for more than a decade. Sometimes she succeeds; sometimes she hangs on to her old habits. But the attempt intrigues throughout.