Midnights has slowly become one of my favorite Taylor Swift albums, but I enjoy parts of TTPD too.

 

Which one of Taylor's most recent studio albums do you prefer?

Midnights is top 5 Taylor for me, can't say the same for TTPD

TTPD is kinda aging like wine, both are actually but TTPD more so. I gave the album a bit of a break for a few months and went back and listened in full today and there were no songs I was even tempted to skip, all the way through the Anthology as well. I can't believe I think this considering how I felt on the day it leaked.

TTPD is better for me

I like TTPD more, but Midnights has two of her best songs (Hits Different and You're Losing Me)

oh god this is hard, i think i give it to midnights because the shorter tracklist helps it be an overall stronger project. both fantastic and top 3 taylor pop albums 

TTPD of course, I hardly ever touch 3AM or The Anthology so if we talk about the standard versions, TTPD is immaculate except for a couple songs 

I honestly listen to TTPD way more. I haven't gone back to Midnights. Everything except Maroon and AH are kind of meh for me. 

i liked 3 songs from midnights compared to 0 songs from TTPD so it wins

Edited December 29, 20241 yr by hallucinate

The Anthology > Midnights > Tortured Poets

Midnights is in my top 3. I love its sonic cohesion. Really solid tracklist for both OG and expanded.

Midnights is the better body of work, TTPD is bloated. There are great songs in it but for me they wouldn't work together as an album even if we took off the fillers. 

Midnights, easily top 3 in my list of her discography.

I love Tay but both albums are very Mid

TTPD feels more confessional and raw-poetic lyric wise but the production is very dull and like there's such a dread to it. All the songs feel very similar with each other. But i guess that was the intention of the record. When relationships are over and just ending. Thats how u feel. In white. All empty and with no flavor. No color. All melancholic. Is a distant cousin of folklore-evermore. More urban like....But i honestly feel like is drowned by the production. Too subdued. Needed something more experimental.  Something like hounds of love by kate Bush

Midnights is a good album mixing the best from her artsy and pop side but is drowned by songs like Karma, The Vigilante song,And Question
I think also the visual of the covers were very promising and it ended as another synthpop jack antonoff record. Thats the situation
Taylor knows her synthpop melancholic songs with a structure are selling with the teen and young women. So, she's afraid of trying something really different and goin to really weird directions Electronic wise. She's experimental when it comes to acoustic-folky songs. I will give u that.

But definitely i like Midnights more. I love the album cover with the lightning, the nocturnal theme and i live for the 70s-80s feels of Bejeweled-Antihero
The haunting tone of wouldcouldshoulda.
Midnights also feels more diverse melodic-sound wise. 

Midnights is 4.2 and Tortured is 3.8 to me ranked in a 5 score

Edited December 29, 20241 yr by AvadaKedavra

Midnights for sure, and I'm not even sorry about it. Its a fantastic album with no skips.

Both were pretty underwhelming

 

but Midnights truly has some nice songs

I think Swifties prefer TTPD more tho?

 

But overall, Mid wins for ppl imo

TTPD is way better in my opinion, and I would bet that more Swifties agree with me than not, while it's the other way around by some margin for casual fans and perhaps the general public (the latter is hard to gauge when both albums are huge).

 

TTPD is essentially two separate albums - both sonically cohesive within themselves, but sharing certain elements like general wordiness, but also both really good.

 

The first half is full of the midtempo synthpop that she leaned into with Midnights, but I think she does it better here. Fortnight, as derided as it is on this site, is an excellent track with near-infinite replayability for me, as moody and emotional as a good synthpop track should be. Guilty As Sin? builds on that same feeling, moving from some of the colder synthetic sounds of Fortnight into a sound reminiscent of The 1975, a sound I've wanted her to explore for years - and it manages to be the catchiest thing she's done in years while doing it. While it's technically an Anthology track, I'll also throw imgonnagetyouback in there as a middle ground between those two. Those three tracks alone are compelling enough to overcome most of Midnights in my opinion, but then you add the building fury of So Long London, the heartbreak of loml, the lyrical imagery of Clara Bow, the simmering urgency of Florida!!!, the classic Swiftian melodies and attitudes of But Daddy I Love Him, and more, and TTPD just takes it for me. Midnights has excellent tracks - I still think Anti-Hero is one of the best pop singles of her career, and You're On Your Own, Kid is one of her best songs period, among others like The Great War. But TTPD stays stronger for more runtime, in the end.

 

And that's to say (almost) nothing of The Anthology, which I think is the significantly stronger half of the album. The Prophecy, I Hate It Here, I Look In People's Windows, The Albatross - these are songs that rank very strongly among the best Swift tracks ever. She uses sounds that perfectly compliment her voice and writing to help dive deeper into complex emotions than ever. The Anthology is, in terms of sound, essentially a sequel to Evermore, and it narrows the sonic focus a little tighter than that album with great results. I think it's clear that the more natural instrumentation (compared to the first half of the album) suits her even better, and it's difficult to beat the combination of Taylor Swift, Aaron Dessner, and either a guitar or a piano. It captures the magic that Evermore does, I guess is what I'm saying, and it's only the second album that's ever done that for me. You could cut the standard edition off entirely and The Anthology would still stand tall as one of my favorite albums evermore.

 

I don't think any of what I wrote above will match the perspective of most non-Swifties, to be fair. The main barriers here are the relatively dense wordiness, the length, and the consistent slow-to-midtempo pacing without too many upbeat breaks. It gives an illusion of sameness, in a negative way, that isn't really truly present, not the least because there are two very clearly different halves. I honestly think a lot of people even on here haven't actually bothered to give a serious listen to the whole album because of those factors - you see evidence of that in persistent posts claiming the whole album sounds like Fortnight or the title track, as if they've heard the rest maybe once.

everything she did on Midnights she's done better elsewhere in her discography, but there are still 5-6 major highlights on it.

 

everything she did on TTPD she did better on Midnights and there are legit like 1 or 2 highlights out of 30+ songs.

At least Midnights had some good songs.

 

TTPD is long and boring. 

both are shite but midnights had some cute tracks.

29 minutes ago, alejandreaux said:

everything she did on Midnights she's done better elsewhere in her discography, but there are still 5-6 major highlights on it.

 

everything she did on TTPD she did better on Midnights and there are legit like 1 or 2 highlights out of 30+ songs.

They are both mid tier in her discography tbh, but it's TTPD.

 

I understand why people don't like TTPD but the hate is forced and there are some standout tracks.

26 minutes ago, alejandreaux said:

 

 

everything she did on TTPD she did better on Midnights and there are legit like 1 or 2 highlights out of 30+ songs.

 

There's nothing like the majority of TTPD on Midnights though  to be specific, these:

-But Daddy I Love Him

-Fresh Out the Slammer

-Florida!!!

-Guilty as Sin?

-I Can Fix Him

-loml

-The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

-Clara Bow

-The Black Dog

-The Albatross

-Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

-How Did It End?

-So High School

-I Hate It Here

-Thank You Aimee

-I Look In People's Windows

-Cassandra

-Peter

-The Bolter

-Robin

-The Manuscript

hate both but midnights is the lesser of those two evils