Taylor Swift doesn’t sleep much. Yes, it’s safe to assume that becoming the songbird of a generation would take some long days, but her nocturnal tendencies had become apparent long before she decided to write a concept album about the sleepless nights of her life. Only the pouring rain rivals the early hours as the ideal backdrop for a Taylor Swift song. Her catalog of late stay tracks will soon double as she turns out to be exactly 13 – could it be a different number? – Wrote songs related to midnight or the middle of the night. So, before we have to deal with another Taylor’s dozen, let’s rank them. The following is a definitive and entirely accurate list of all of Swift’s songs that take place, at least in part, in the middle of the night. Note: Only songs related to “Midnight” or “Middle of the Night” were included 3 a.m, 2 a.m, 2:30 p.m., and 1:58 all offered more than their fair share of lingering questions to keep them in the loop. Seriously, she could be a vampire. Alright, to the list!
1. “All Too Good”
Because here we are again in the middle of the night
We dance through the kitchen in the fridge light
It may be all too obvious, but the most iconic song in Swift’s catalog couldn’t go anywhere other than #1. Choose between the original version or the 10-minute version, but “All Too Well” is Swift at the peak of her powers when it comes to turning vivid scenes into heartbreaking songs. The 10-minute version’s triumph is that it matches the original in lines that transport a listener to the precise moment of Swift’s heartbreak — the car keys, the bathroom, the birthday party. But the OG version of “All Too Well” has everything you need to know, and Swift doesn’t need a short film or more than a few words to get you high in the kitchen of a Brooklyn brownstone home before the fall .
2. “Better Man”
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I can feel you again
But I just miss you and I just wish you were a better man
It was quite flexible for Swift to give away one of her very best songs, which she did to Little Big Town in 2017 with “Better Man,” before releasing her own version as a vault track Red (Taylor’s version) in 2021. There’s another nocturnal vignette that comes through in this song as clear as day:
I wish it wasn’t 4am when I look in the mirror
I told myself you know you had to do it
But the best thing about “Better Man” comes from its directness, the quiet power it gets from telling you rather than showing you exactly how she feels. The teenage girl who growled, “It’s raining in your bedroom, everything’s wrong,” has grown up, and now it sounds like, “We could still be in love if you were a better man.” Chills.
3. “You belong to me”
Oh, I remember you driving over to my house
Middle of the night
At the time Swift released this hit Fearless, she was already a regular at singing about late nights. Come to think of it, she danced “all night” on her very first single, “Tim McGraw.” But it is true that if we consider only the nods to the middle of the night, “You Belong With Me” contains their first, which is sort of the aural equivalent of early Homo sapiens’ discovery of fire. The top two tracks here thrive on the superpower we’re most associated with Swift — her lyrical writing — but “You Belong With Me” showcases her other best tool, her talent for melody. You can’t not scream-sing this.
4. “22”
It feels like a perfect night
For breakfast at midnight
You could pretty easily convince me to flip this song and the next one in this ranking, but “22” is kind of underrated — it peaked at No. 20 on the billboard Hot 100 – in a way that makes less than zero sense to me. That was the song that first got us “not much going on right now” and canonical recovery the 21st Birthday Party. Swift’s “Squad” era was, um, complicated, but “22” is the best she’s brought us, one of the rare songs in her discography that’s not about a one-on-one relationship, it’s about the joy of being with a loved group (the other two songs that fit this mold for me are “New Romantics” and “Long Live”, which makes me wonder if she should do that more often). It seems like “22” is being treated as either the little sister of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble,” the other poppy slams Red, or like a warmup for “Shake It Off,” but it should stand on its own. Happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time and one of their funniest songs ever.
5. “Style”
midnight
You come and pick me up, no headlights
The fact that this song comes in fifth Here’s some good news for the topic of midnight album because it takes some category heavyweights to push one of the best sounding songs in Swift’s entire catalog down the list, although I could certainly hear arguments that it at least deserves it. 4 slot. The soundtrack to 1989 the famous (infamous?) catwalk moments of the tour, is there another song in music history that we can say with certainty that Serena Williams, Julia Roberts, Matt LeBlanc and Russell Wilson got everyone dancing? “Style” was the proof of concept for the retro synth pop of 1989, all groove and vibes and attitude. I wonder who this is about?!
6. “Last Great American Dynasty”
They say she has been seen occasionally
Walking up and down the rocks, looking out at the midnight sea
“There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen” — this song is a masterclass in self-mythologizing while technically writing about someone else. Swift’s biography of Rebekah Harkness, the widowed socialite who made waves in Westerly, Rhode Island, where she lived in an oceanfront mansion called the “Holiday House,” includes a twist at the end in which Swift reveals herself as the current resident of the Haus turns out to be the owner and positions herself as a modern Harkness – scandals included. It’s an accomplishment in and of itself to make a song about his massive beach house so sassy and charming, though we may have all just been lulled into submission by Aaron Dessner’s dreamy slide guitar. In true Rhode Island fashion, the best part comes at the bridge, where the lines leading up to the narrative twist, including the midnight reference, are set against chords that shift from major to minor and back again, building up to the grand revelation.
7. “Nothing New” with Phoebe Bridgers
And I wake up in the middle of the night
It’s like I can feel time moving
Sad Girl Pop’s National Anthem is the first Swift song to have a female lead get a full verse, with Bridgers taking the credit. Her voices blend beautifully, and the harmonies and swapped lines between a contemporary pop star and another four years older than her in a song about the fear of pursuing a career when you’re not the next big thing just makes me into it ready give you both a big hug.
8. “…ready for this?”
In the middle of the night in my dreams
You should see the things we do baby (mmm)
The throat clearing cough at the start of this song was the perfect way to get in tune with the opening track Call– Swift made sure she had everyone’s attention. This song is embarrassingly rich in texture, from the throaty intro to the breezy tropical-house synths in the chorus to the dubstep drops and programmed drums peppered through the verses to the way Swift uses words as repeated “I-I see”, that are somehow intertwined.
9. “New Year’s Day”
I want your midnight
But on New Year’s Day, I’ll clean up bottles with you
While this is a beautiful song that closes Call Satisfied, and it serves as further proof that songs mentioning midnight are a strong category for Swift, I tone down “New Year’s Day” a bit because the verses don’t deliver much musically. But as the song ends, Swift sings two iconic lines — “Please never become a stranger whose laugh I could spot anywhere” and “Hold on to the memories, they’ll hold you tight” — in a round with myself, I’m next to the glitter a puddle on the floor.
10. “Daylight”
Not the things that haunt me in the middle of the night
Another album closer, this one by Lover needs some patience to get the payout. That reward comes before the spoken word coda on a bridge, where Swift begins, echoing her own voice, to sing lyrics echoing her old songs: “I once thought love would burn red, but it’s golden, like daylight .” (In 2019, Swift told Ryan Seacrest that she almost gave the album a name daylightfound it to be a sequel to Auf der Nase CallDarkness.)
11. “Untouchable”
Middle of the night
When I’m in this dream
It’s like a million little stars
spell your name
A Luna Halo cover by Fearless, it’s probably unfair that a song Swift didn’t write herself has to be on this list, but it serves as proof that this song was well chosen for her because it contains one of her favorite references. I just love the way she sings “come on, come on” in this song.
12. “Happiness”
There is a glorious sunrise
Dappled with the flickering of light
From the dress I wore at midnight, leave it all behind
This song has some stunning visuals, and she gets some technical points for how well the lyrics fit Dessner’s composition, but this is the rare Swift song where I just can’t get into the melody.
13. “You’re in love”
Small talk, he’s driving
Midnight coffee
It’s better live, and to be honest I’d rather listen to this song than “Happiness”, although I think the latter deserves the top spot on this list due to some difficulty levels. But I would also appreciate the build of “This Love,” the storytelling of “Clean,” or the energy of “All You Had To Do Was Stay,” “I Wish You Would,” or “How You Get the Girl,” via this track , when we talk 1989 deep(-ish) cuts.
#definitive #ranking #Taylor #Swifts #Midnights
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