Why Was ‘Midnights’ So Successful?

Lane Albrecht, Staff Writer

The first person to ever get all top 10 billboard songs being their very own, Taylor Swift not too long ago released one of the most successful albums of all time, Midnights. Previously Drake held the record of 9/10 of the top 10 songs as his own, and before him it was actually the Beatles. The album is called midnights and has absolutely exploded in popularity. But why exactly? 

This album had some huge songs off of it such as, Anti-Hero, Midnight Rain and Lavender Haze. Taylor has said it was more of a passion and personal project than trying to chase trends or follow music industry standards. After recent controversies in that industry side of the scene she is seemingly trying to distance herself and work on something that she is proud of. 

The album also made her tickets to her upcoming tour go viral everywhere known to be nearly impossible to obtain due to the amount of demand to see her perform live. The tickets became quite a big controversy for Swift’s fans and she has even came out apologizing over the difficulties. 3.5 million fans pre-ordered the tickets to the Era Tour and Ticketmaster simply couldn’t handle the amount of users waiting for tickets. The bots took over and bought a ton of the tickets from the website and began selling them for highly marked up prices on other websites. Swift and her team sorted it out with Ticketmaster though, to enable true fans to be able to buy a ticket, not at a 500% marked up rate. Now this is crazy to see demand like this, but how did she actually take the top 10 billboard spots with one project release? 

12 of the 13 album songs were co-written and co-produced by a man named Jack Antonoff. Antonoff is a masterful producer and writer who has over the years worked with many big names in the scene but actually got his name out there in 2014 with Swift working on the song “Out of the Woods”. A huge success for Swift, being the most sold album in the first week in 7 years, however some credit for the success is actually going to Antonoff. It’s completely fair to give him some credit because he obviously did a lot of work on it but that doesn’t leave room to discredit Swift. She took this album with her vision and executed it just how she wanted it. Her goal with the album was to set trends by doing what she wanted, not to follow what everyone else was doing. That was definitely a huge reason for the album’s success and popularity across the world.

Taylor Swift discussing Midnights’ successes and her experience writing and recording it. (AMY SUSSMAN/GETTY IMAGES)

Midnights took a more melodic approach than some of Swift’s past music. This was partially due to the aspect she just wanted it that way, but Antonoff is particularly skilled in that style. The reason it was named Midnights is because according to Swift, “These 13 songs are a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams.” The fact that the album was this personal and emotional and performed so well is really impressive. Swift wasn’t following anyone else’s footsteps and she emerged with one of the most successful projects of the last decade. 

Whether you love or hate or just don’t mind Swift’s music, everyone needs to give her credit for Midnights.