Sophia Week 7: Talking Taylor

 

    As an avid Taylor Swift fan, I was beyond thrilled when her new album, Midnights, containing 13 songs, was released a couple of weeks ago. My excitement level exceeded its original high, though, when she released an additional 7 tracks at 3 AM, only a few hours after the initial album release. Since then, I have heard many varying opinions, whether in real life or on social media, about her new album. While some people love it and others aren’t the biggest fan, I’ve come to notice that, no matter who you ask, everyone has a different opinion, including me. Therefore, I decided to go to the source of music ranking itself, Billboard, and look at their rankings of the original 13 tracks to see whether or not I agreed with them. The ranking is …

1. Anti-Hero

2. Vigilante Sh*t 

3. Mastermind

4. Lavender Haze

5. Midnight Rain

6. Labyrinth

7. Maroon

8. Sweet Nothing

9. Bejeweled

10. Snow On the Beach (featuring Lana Del Ray)

11. You’re On Your Own, Kid

12. Karma

13. Question … ?

Right off the bat, I am noticing some placements that, in my opinion, are clearly wrong. I mean, I can not believe they ranked Snow On The Beach and Bejeweled ahead of You’re on Your Own, Kid and Karma. They also put Maroon at 7 which seems pretty criminal to me. Additionally, I have to call them out for putting Question … ? in last place and Mastermind at 3. I must admit that there are just so many things wrong with this list. I mean seriously, I don't even have enough fingers on both hands to count them, and there are only 13 songs. This led me to conclude that if I was writing a blog post about Midnights, I needed to find a somewhat more accurate list to display, so everyone reading who does not listen to Taylor Swift has a more knowledgeable idea of which songs are truly better. 

After some intense internet browsing, I found a list that, while not entirely accurate, is still pretty good. It’s from The Daily Tar Heel, and while I have no idea what they know about music, they clearly know more than Billboard. Plus, they had the decency to rank all 20 Midnights’ songs, offering a more accurate portrayal of where each track stands. Their list is … 

1. Karma

2. Bigger Than the Whole Sky

3. Maroon

4. Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve

5. Lavender Haze

6. Anti-Hero

7. Bejeweled

8. Midnight Rain

9. Snow On the Beach (featuring Lana Del Ray)

10. Vigilante Shit

11. Paris

12. You’re On Your Own, Kid

13. The Great War

14. Question …?

15. High Infidelity

16. Glitch

17. Mastermind

18. Labyrinth

19. Sweet Nothing

20. Dear Reader

In my personal, and very correct, opinion, this list has an extremely solid top 5. If I were to make my own list, I would probably switch the top 5 around, with about half of those songs remaining in my top 5, but I would still place the rest of them in my top 10. Besides the fact that rankings 10 - 12 should be switched with 7 - 9 and the very questionable placement of Sweet Nothing, I feel as though this list much better expresses my view on Taylor Swift’s new album. Like I said earlier, though, that’s just me, so if anyone else is also a huge Swiftie (which I know some of you very much are) and would like to comment on the list placements, by all means, go ahead.

https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swift-midnights-album-songs-ranked/question/

https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2022/10/opinion-ranking-midnights