Within a few minutes of the worldwide premiere of Taylor Swift’s tenth studio album Midnights, the Internet already picked one of its stand-out songs: “Anti-Hero.”
Swift’s exploration into folk with folklore and evermore slowly pulled her into the group of female musicians that have come to define “sad girl music.” The themes and level of storytelling of the two records tapped into a side of the singer that few have appreciated before, touching on concepts like self-image, depressing, and of course, heartbreak. Since Swift has mainly focused on re-recording her Taylor’s Version albums since the release of the two records, many were curious to see what genre she would explore for Midnights, especially without singles that would give a peek into what the album would sound like.
What awaited fans was a return to the signature-pop sound that defined some of her most prominent albums: Red, Reputation, Lover, and especially 1989. What Midnights does differently is Swift’s unapologetic detailing of her own demons–and “Anti-Hero” is an example of what she does best: masking pain with an upbeat pop instrumental.
“Anti-Hero” is arguably a sister to folklore’s “mirrorball” and “this is me trying” but zeroes in on self-loathing. The track opens with a nod to Swift’s age and maturity, something that she’s grown to welcome in her writing. In contrast to “Nothing New” off her Red (Taylor’s Version) cut where she grapples with the fear of growing older, Swift is more retrospective in “Anti-Hero,” assessing herself after all these years. She proceeds with one of the most satisfying alliterations I’ve heard in a while: “I should not be left to my own devices / They come with prices and vices / I end up in crisis / Tale as old as time.”
The track isn’t a pity party, in fact, I argue that it oozes with the frustration, anger, and self-loathing that the singer herself described the album as. Don’t let the pop beat fool you–even with the hook that audiences latched onto “It’s me / Hi / I’m the problem / It’s me”–the track is a self-portrait of someone who sees herself as a manipulator, calling herself the villain in the grander scheme of things. This is the departure from what “mirrorball” and “this is me trying” have at its core: Swift is still the protagonist in their stories. In “Anti-Hero,” she makes a 180 turn of her persona.
However, the track is not quite Reputation, a record often referred to as her “villain era.” Reputation had Swift owning and taking delight into “being the bad guy.” In contrast, “Anti-Hero” situates itself in the middle: not the hopeful protagonist, but not the full-blown villain. She is exactly what the track’s title refers to: an imperfect hero.
There’s nothing novel about “Anti-Hero,” and Swift makes it a point to emphasize that. The point is exactly that this isn’t new. Even within the song’s narrative, she writes herself coming to a quiet acceptance with who she is and how she views herself. “Anti-Hero” is an illustration of the singer’s prison that serves as the cost of her career, that even with almost two decades in the music industry under her belt and a hardworking fanbase, “It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.”
In a description for the track, Swift shared, “I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized, and not to sound too dark, I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.” She is both victim and mastermind. “Anti-Hero” features a Taylor Swift conceding to the ghosts in her head, someone who refused to confront herself and focused on her career only to be forced to look at herself in the end.
Swift sits with her faults, not necessarily welcoming them but not shooing them away either. She has a drink with them, opens her door to them, in an unlikely ode to an acceptance of things being just the way they are–and to hell with it if she faces the consequences later.
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