Taylor Swift reaches album ten with Midnights and takes a trip into her own psychic landscape, presenting us with a great melodic, hook-laden pop package.

Meet me at midnight as she begins on opening track Lavender Haze. I’m damned if I do give a damn what people say. Midnight is when the spell is broken for Cinderella and her limo reverts to a pumpkin. New spells are cast as she brings us into the realm of the dream.

Minimalist music with synth-driven metronomic beats and there is plenty of space given for the songs to breathe. Breaths and heartbeat music. That song has six writers’ credits. All the others, bar a small few, are credited to Swift and producer Jack Antonoff.    

Maroon is almost the same background but the voice rises in inspiration. Her range is more Madonna than Lady Gaga. Lyrics and music combine to give literary impressions. Dancing/ In New York/ No shoes.

Anti-Hero is the first classic tune on the album. The sounds and arrangements billow out like a huge mainsail and this has the sleek luminescence of the best of Abba. The subject is revelatory self-awareness. I end up in crisis/ I stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror/ The problem is me… The monster is invoked.

Can’t help thinking about Michael Jackson here. The man in the mirror. The monster arose from inside and eventually he was trapped in there and looking out at the pop world he created. Only one way out.

Now on the Beach is with Lana Del Ray, who also co-wrote. This goes full Abba with two voices in unison. The dreamscape is snow on beaches and the aurora borealis green. Now I’m all for you like Janet/ Can this be the real thing references another sibling of Michael. Janet Jackson and All for You.

Taylor has cited Carole King and Joni Mitchell as songwriting inspirations. King wrote glorious pop masterpieces in partnership with husband Gerry Goffin. King had the great melody lines, whilst Goffin was chief wordsmith. Those roles would have blurred. They both got freaked out eventually by Dylan in his Highway 61 period, as things became consciously arty. Re-invention comes out of destruction. Goffin and King wrote two more masterpieces, Goin’ Back and Wasn’t Born to Follow. Then they kicked in the marriage and the partnership.

This is the sound that Taylor is going for here and elsewhere on this album. Don’t worry, Joni also appears.

Mastermind has Canadian Joni as inspiration. She sings about being cryptic and Machiavellian.

The Great War goes a few steps better. The love wars are entwined with visions of the fields of poppies and soldiers slaughtered. Then the great lyric; All that bloodshed/ Crimson clover. A master-stroke to link to Tommy James and the Shondell’s eternal shimmering classic Crimson and Clover.

This is from the 3am Edition of the album which adds seven more songs to the original thirteen.

Midnight Rain is a Murakami short story set to pop music. He wanted it comfortable/ I wanted that pain/ He wanted a bride/ I was making my own name. There is the perfect life, and there is the risky life. In risk is real living.

You’re On Your Own, Kid. With the stripped back sound, the bass comes to the fore. None more so than here and a personified bass lead like James Jamerson on a Sixties Motown classic. Its starts joyous and ecstatic but it gets darker as it enters the psyche. I looked around in a blood-soaked gown/ And I saw something they couldn’t take away. A pop sister to the Velvet’s All Tomorrow’s Parties.

Vigilante Shit is skeletal. As stark as it can get on Springsteen’s Nebraska. Invokes the malevolence of early Eminem, but with a cool sociopathic detachment. I don’t dress for women/ I don’t dress for men/ Lately I’ve been dressing for revenge/ I don’t start shit but I can tell you how it ends. Singing about white-collar criminals and it feels like she’s stalking American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman.

Labyrinth. Lost in the labyrinth of my mind. Sustains her voice in the higher register and just makes it. The story of Laurie Anderson’s From the Air channeled into a pop tune, complete with a modulated voice. I thought the plane was going down.

The expanded album is the keeper. Two great songs finish it.

Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve and she can sound a little like Gaga, whilst she uses Christian imagery to sing a tale of redemption and dancing with the devil. Similar in inspirational sound to Madonna’s Like a Prayer. Finds herself in a dream church, surrounded by huge stained-glass windows.

Taylor started as a prodigy. Not as fraught as former King of Pop Michael Jackson, but what demons may enter and squat in your psyche, as everything falls inside your spell.

Dear Reader close the extended album. Burn all your files/ Desert all your past lives/ Never take advice from someone who’s falling apart. Is she coming out of the dream of midnight? When you aim at the devil/ Make sure you don’t miss.

Taylor Swift has used a great pop sound to search through her psyche and confront the many demons and traps that lie in wait. A Faustian pact. I do not care too much for the titillation that comes through mainstream media about her boyfriends and partners, or whom she kisses in public. She will use her personal feelings for inspiration like Joni Mitchell. But it’s not her autobiography.

We go out on Sweet Nothing. A beautiful piano melody. Dylan surfaces briefly. Industry disruptors/ Soul deconstructors/ Smooth-talking hustlers. But it’s Carol King who leads her back into that old sweet nothing.

Rev Orange Peel