#anyway i'll never not be a critical fan engaging with her art with my liberal arts degree pick-apart brain

[whiskeyswifty]

it's very interesting listening to Lover songs and then Midnights songs back to back because I think if Midnights had followed Lover, it would have been less of a disappointment to fans/critics alike. They're both sonically and thematically along the same line of progression and a lot of people compare lover to midnights as the day vs. night albums and that feels apt. It's almost like folkmore was a gift and a curse for her. what now seems to have been a temporary detour into a creative side project all along has unfortunately become her life's greatest artistic achievement. to the point where people who'd never been interested in her music at all were drawn in and critics/critical fans were surprised and impressed for the first time in a long time at what appeared to be the next great evolution of her talents. the flip side of that is unfortunately those new fans were never interested in her prior work and are not interested in her return to that style, and the critics/critical fans who were thrilled by this new direction and excited for the future are equally disappointed and frustrated by her return to form. with a little distance now, I'm getting the feeling that the general dismissal, bordering on dislike, of midnights as a whole might be rather a manifestation of that disappointment and less a fair reaction to midnights on it's own. it is absolutely true that it's creatively a step down from folkmore, in dexterity and complexity and originality, nobody is arguing against that. but i know for myself, if i compare my opinion of midnights to lover, they're both the same level of mid generally. the highs of lover are higher than midnights, but the lows are also lower than midnights, so they average out to the same level of appreciation in the end. following lover, midnights does take a few steps forward, that had it been the successor, i would have perhaps celebrated as much as i did the Archer and such. midnights feels like a natural progression of lover in a way that, had folkmore never shown me how green the grass was on the other side, i might not have rejected it as viscerally as I did. alas, that's not how this played out, and idk if i'll ever be able to remove the stain of disappointment upon first listen to midnights in a post-folkmore world, but it makes me wonder. i think aaron is also to folklore what jack is to midnights in that had i not heard how her sound could grow with someone as texturally rich as aaron, i might hate jack's omnipresence less. and furthermore, it gives me a little insight into how differently taylor views these past 4 albums than we do and why sometimes an artist can be her own worst enemy on her way to realizing her creative potential, whilst the artist herself carries on blissfully unaware.