Don’t Blame a Man for <em>Midnights</em>

It’s her; she’s the problem, Taylor Swift confesses on her new hit “Anti-Hero.” Yet listeners who have issues with her tenth original studio album, Midnights, are blaming someone else: Jack Antonoff, who co-wrote 12 of its 13 songs and co-produced all of them. Ever since the alternative rocker got his big break into pop production with Swift’s 2014 song “Out of the Woods,” he has become a go-to collaborator for titans including Lorde, Lana Del Rey, and Diana Ross. But Midnights is Antonoff and Swift’s first album-length team-up. His guileless, bespectacled face features in her latest music video. And he is the center of the main controversy surrounding her new album: Is it any good?

Selling better in its first week than any album in the past seven years, and receiving its share is plainly a success for Swift. Yet both fans and haters have had to reckon with the fact that although the best Swift albums have evolved her sound, this one . ’ moody synth pop recalls the soundtrack that defined the zeitgeist of 2015. Its melodies and rhythms resemble earlier moments in Swift’s catalog—and Antonoff’s—to a distracting degree, making the project feel a bit redundant. The most fawning, fannish reviews address this issue by politely nicking the producer (“Antonoff’s extensive credits mean he has a hard time preventing musical ideas from bleeding into each other,” ). Other takes simply call for Antonoff to .