After less than two months of endless fan theories and speculation, swifties all around the world finally gathered for the midnight release of Taylor Swift’s tenth album on Oct. 21.

“Midnights” is Taylor Swift’s trek through insomnia. Described by Swift as “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life,” her newest album, “Midnights,” is a trip through her previous eras, journeying through both her life experiences and the range of genres that she has explored throughout her career. 

I’ve been describing it as the combination of her “1989” and “reputation” albums with hints of her album, “Lover,” and a sprinkle of Swift’s newest venture into techno-synth elements. 

It’s quintessential Taylor Swift pop, slightly refined from her previous pop albums with frequent instances of extended metaphors and the vocabulary she seemed to have suddenly acquired while writing her two indie folk albums, “folklore” and “evermore.” 

The album features 13 original tracks, one featuring Lana del Rey, and seven extra tracks that Swift calls “3 a.m. tracks”. 

As of right now, “Lavender Haze,” “Karma,” and “Bejeweled” are all my favorite of the original tracks. They are upbeat, poppy, and excellent examples of sing-along-in-the-car music. I do like the more pensive tracks like “You’re On Your Own, Kid” and “Anti-Hero,” but I prefer the slow, serious songs from her previous albums. When I’m in a sad Taylor Swift mood, I can’t see myself going to “Midnights when “folklore” exists. 

The album itself has plenty of cheesy lyrics. From “draw the cat eye, sharp enough to kill a man” to “life is emotionally abusive” to, in my opinion, every single lyric in the track “Mastermind.” Swift manages to juxtapose some of the most profound examples of complex human emotion with the stupidest one-liner Tweets only a millennial could come up with. That’s been a trend since “reputation” though, and I’ve grown to love it. 

The 3 a.m. tracks are coherent with the rest of the album, but it does add a layer of depth that a lot of fans lamented in the first 13 tracks. “Bigger Than The Whole Sky” and “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” struck a chord with me, chronicling the highs and lows of love that didn’t work out, for better or for worse. “High Infidelity” reminded me of something off of “folklore” or “evermore” with that “Midnights” techno-synth in the background. You could tell me “Paris” was in “1989,” and I would just think I had skipped it every time, and rightfully so because it is not that good. 

My criticisms were relatively tame, but many fans stayed up until midnight to listen to the album, woke up at 9 a.m. the following day and took to every possible social media platform to proclaim that this was Taylor’s worst album yet. 

After 10 albums and two re-recordings, you would think people would learn how to consume an album by Taylor Swift. 

Her album “reputation” got major backlash in 2017 for deviating from her “country” roots into pure pop music. “Lover” got bashed in 2019 for being too cheesy and millennial. Albums “folklore” and “evermore,” while they added a new indie listener base to the group of Swifties, took older fans by surprise and did not receive immediate praise and attention during the 2020 pandemic. 

All four of those albums are now widely adored and causing fans to speculate the drastic measure they will go to hear them performed live on her next tour. 

“Midnights” seems to be falling into the same trend of being called disappointing because people were expecting her to do what she just finished doing before. They want “folklore” and “evermore,” and this album is certainly not that. It is pop-y, synth-y, sometimes cheesy, and sometimes knocks the wind out of you. 

“Midnights” is its own Taylor Swift era while paying homage to all the eras that have come before. It’s an album for long-time fans, and, if it takes a while to get used to, that’s because (in true, cheesy Taylor Swift fashion) good things take time.