Background: Taylor Swift & Me
Taylor Swift’s debut single, “Tim McGraw,” came out in June, 2006, and I’d just finished the sixth grade. I can’t tell you how many times I listened to her debut album, Taylor Swift, when it came out a few months later. I binge-listened to Fearless (2008), Speak Now (2010), and Red (2012), too. I’d never experienced a romantic relationship yet, but somehow I deeply connected with a lot of the emotions in her songs, and I loved her detailed lyrics and storytelling style. Years later, I’d bond with people in karaoke bars in Osaka, singing “Our Song” and “You Belong with Me” like they really were our songs that belonged with us. While I’ve never embraced the term “Swiftie” for myself, I’ve considered myself a fan from the start.
To be honest, though I listened to 1989 (2014) all the way through as well, and I really loved some of those tracks (I added “Blank Space” to the regular karaoke repertoire, and “Style” has spent a long time stuck in my head), her music somehow became too much for me to keep up with (like it was Marvel, but for music). When “Look What You Made Me Do” came out ahead of the Reputation (2017) album, I remember feeling a disconnect and setting her music down for a while. I still heard and could sing along with the hits as she kept releasing one after the other, but I wouldn’t sit down and listen to the albums start-to-finish like I used to.
The 66th Grammy’s: February 4, 2024
That changed this week. I happened to be home on Sunday evening and in a music mood, so I tuned in to watch the Grammy’s. I came in just in time to hear Billie Eilish perform the Song of the Year, “What Was I Made For?”, written for last year’s blockbuster hit, Barbie. Shortly after, I listened to Miley Cyrus perform her hit “Flowers,” for which she won both Best Pop Solo Performance and Record of the Year. As I listened, I found myself focusing in on the lyrics. I wondered, what are the stories behind these songs that resonated with people enough to win the industry’s top awards?
Then came Album of the Year. Celine Dion listed eight nominees, among them Taylor Swift for Midnights (2022). Considering the smashing success of her Eras tour, it seemed inevitable she’d win. When she did, she came up and used her acceptance speech time to announce her next album, The Tortured Poets Department, coming April 19, 2024. I found myself glad to be part of the moment and excited for the album, in a way I hadn’t been since Reputation.
So the next day, I sat down and gave Midnights a full, start-to-finish listen. First, I listened to the original release: a concept album that tells, in Taylor’s own words, “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” In the album’s announcement, she explained, “This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face. For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching–hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve…we’ll meet ourselves.” The album has been called “confessional but cryptic,” exploring a range of raw emotions that, admittedly, takes guts to voice to the masses.
After listening all the way through the album’s original release, I went back and listened to The 3am Edition, which includes seven extra tracks. Then, for good measure, I listened to the Til Dawn Edition, which added “Hits Different” as well as new versions of “Karma” and “Snow on the Beach.” Oh, and you can’t forget about “You’re Losing Me,” a song “from the vault.” In other words, I listened to Midnights start-to-finish three times, back-to-back. I also watched every music video that’s out, and all the official lyric videos, too. I poured through the comment sections for each song, getting a feel for the different ways the songs have resonated with listeners. I’ve been immersed in this album for a couple days now, and I’m here to share my first impressions.
Specifically, I’ve chosen three songs that got me thinking a lot about the messages they send: “Anti-Hero,” “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” and “Karma.” As with any culture I consume, I read these songs through my Reformed, biblical worldview.
Without further ado, here’s some of the theology of Midnights, as I hear it.
- “Anti-Hero” and the Fallen Human Heart
I start here because this song has achieved by far the most mainstream success of the three. With 1.38 billion streams on Spotify as of this writing, only “Cruel Summer” (1.69 billion) has more streams in Taylor’s discography. Something about this song has really struck a chord.
The song feels like a knowing reference and shoutout to all those who spent years hearing Taylor’s songs about her “long list of ex-lovers” and chiding, “What if she wrote a song where she admits she’s the common thread in all these failed relationships, and maybe she’s the problem?”
In the first pre-chorus, she sings, “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.)” In the second, she sings of another “tale as old as time”: “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism like some kind of congressman?” Both tales are followed by the now-iconic chorus, “It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem; it’s me.”
It didn’t take long for the Reformed community to embrace this song, especially that first chorus line. It acknowledges what Jeremiah 17:9 tells us: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Even “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment,” Isaiah 64:6 says. Having willfully chosen self-rule and open rebellion against God, the human race has become “dead in [our] trespasses and sins…, following the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:1-2). Psalm 53:3 confirms this as a universal human problem: “They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” In this sense, apart from God, we’re all anti-heros. We’re the problem; it’s us. The heart problem described in “Anti-Hero” is dead-on.
To me, the line “I should not be left to my own devices…I end up in crisis” reads like it should inspire prayer. It reminded me of Romans 1:24, when Paul writes, “Therefore God gave them over to their sinful desires.” It also reminded me of a lesson RC Sproul taught about Pharaoh’s heart being hardened toward Israel (Exodus 9). Sproul explained that things in the world aren’t as bad as they could be, because God keeps His protective arm down, holding evil back. Further, the only reason good things remain in this fallen world at all is because they come down to us from God, the Father of lights (James 1:17). At times, with perfect purpose, God lifts that protective arm up a bit, allowing the human heart to have its own dark way. He did this with Pharaoh. He did this with the people described in Romans. And He sometimes does this with us. When this happens, we experience one of the greatest dangers to our spiritual well-being: We’re “left to [our] own devices,” which come with prices and vices and land us in crisis.
This is why we’re commanded to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” I’ve prayed on many occasions, “God, please don’t hand me over to this.” Sometimes, “when my depression works the graveyard shift” (as Taylor sings), it feels like maybe He has. In those moments, I remember that all who “believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord” will have it “counted to [them] as righteousness” (Romans 4:3, 24-25). I remember, “I have been crucified with Christ,” so that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20), and I join with Paul in saying, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me…For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). It is exhausting rooting for the anti-hero in myself, but “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in [me] will bring it to completion” (Philippians 1:6). May it be so.
In short, “Anti-Hero” is a confession, and I’m encouraged by its popularity. May more people come to realize their hearts are in need of daily restoration.
2. “You’re On Your Own, Kid” and the Omnipresent, Omniscient God
In this one, a young Taylor starts by looking back on unrequited love in a small town she dreamt of leaving. “I waited ages to see you there,” she sings. “I search the party of better bodies just to learn that you never cared.” She’s “picked the petals” of a flower one at a time, saying “He loves me; he loves me not” with each one, disappointed to end on “he loves me not.” She laments, “You’re on your own, kid. You always have been.”
In the next verse, she admits she’s done a lot in the name of people-pleasing and trying to get people to love her: “I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this. I hosted parties and starved my body like I’d be saved by a perfect kiss.” This line suggests she’s put both romantic relationships and the opinions of others up on a pedestal, craving human validation, idolizing people as pieces that might make us feel more whole. I think we’ve all been there. It’s why the very first of the Ten Commandments is for us to have no other gods before God (Exodus 20:3). Our hearts, as John Calvin famously put it, are “idol factories,” always looking for things to lift up as worthy of our attention, love, and devotion. The thing is, nothing but God was meant to have the top spot in our hearts. As Augustine wrote at the start of his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.”
This truth is why I feel for the rest of “You’re on Your Own Kid,” but its take-home point falls a bit short for me. The second half of the song turns from a lament to an anthem: “I looked around in a blood-soaked gown, and I saw something they can’t take away, ’cause there were pages turned with the bridges burned. Everything you lose is a step you take.” Learning to look at every dark memory as a lesson learned, she sings, “You’re on your own, kid, yeah you can face this. You’re on your own kid. You always have been.” The lesson is clear: No one will be able to fully satisfy your every need. No one will ever perfectly understand you. No one will always be there, perfectly loyal to you, so only pledge your loyalty to yourself.
While I really feel for the person expressing these sentiments, and while I sincerely hope it’s been an encouragement to listeners who’ve experienced profound loneliness (with myself included in that number), I think it’s also important to note that all that’s happened here is that the self has taken the top spot reserved for God. It erases God from the entire scene. This drew me to Psalm 139, where King David sings of the LORD’s complete, perfect understanding of each person:
O LORD, you have searched me and known me! / You know when I sit down and when I rise up; / you discern my thoughts from afar. / You search out my path and my lying down / and are acquainted with all my ways. / Even before a word is on my tongue, / behold, O LORD, you know it altogether…
Psalm 139:1-4
David asks, rhetorically, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?” He knows, “If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” (139:7-8) David knows that the LORD’s presence is everywhere. He also knows that the LORD has known each of us for all eternity: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb…In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (139:13-16).
Jesus teaches that God knows us better than we know ourselves–so much that “even the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30). God cares about every little detail. He knows us completely, even the darkest spots, and “while we were yet sinners,” He loved us enough to step in to our darkness to restore us to light. Now, when we’re so desperate that we don’t know what to pray, “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). Jesus, who came to live a human life, “to be made in every respect like us,” promised us before leaving this world, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). He is Immanuel, our God with us. He is with all of us, whether we confirm belief in Him or not, “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
That means you’re not on your own, kid. You never have been.
3. “Karma” and the Problem of Evil
Karma is something Taylor Swift has spoken about often. In a 2016 interview with Vogue, when asked what she believed to be the most important lesson in life, she answered, “Karma is real.” In the song “Look What You Made Me Do,” she sang, “The world moves on, another day another drama, but not for me; all I think about is karma.” Now, on Midnights, she devotes an entire song to the concept (a song she decided to close the Eras tour set with, too).
In the opening verse, she sings of someone who’s “addicted to betrayal” and “terrified to look down.” Why? “‘Cause if you dare, you’ll see the glare of everyone you burned just to get there. It’s coming back around.” In the chorus, she sings, “Karma is my boyfriend. Karma is a god. Karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend. Karma’s a relaxing thought. Aren’t you envious that for you it’s not?” In her view, she’s able to sing with this confidence toward her enemies because she “keep[s] [her] side of the street clean.” To reward her, karma has put “a cat purring in [her] lap,” and it ” takes all [her] friends to the summit” along with her.
This whole concept struck me as interesting, coming on the same album as songs like “Anti-Hero,” “Mastermind,” “Vigilante Sh*t,” and “High Infidelity.” In those songs, she speaks of “dressing for revenge,” of “ben[ding] the truth too far,” of “scheming” proudly. In her vigilante song, she sings, “They say looks can kill, and I might try.” There are transparent confessions of actions and attitudes that you’d think one would be wary of “coming back around.” Perhaps the public confession through the songs is meant to be understood as street-cleaning, where her enemies refuse to take public responsibility for their wrongs. This territory seems open to erroneous human judgment.
There’s an element of truth in all of this, to be sure. Galatians 6:7 confirms, “A man reaps what he sows.” But in verses like Jeremiah 17:10, we read a key distinction: “I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” The first thing to note, then, is that it’s not an impersonal force like karma (nor is it a human playing vigilante) but a personal, all-powerful God who is able to judge perfectly.
There’s another issue here, too, and it comes out in songs like “Bigger Than the Whole Sky.” This song is written from the perspective of a grieving parent who has lost a child in a miscarriage. The parent searches for answers and reasons: “Did some bird flap its wings over in Asia? Did some force take you because I didn’t pray?” In a world where karma reigns, what’s the answer here? What comfort could there possibly ever be?
This song is gut-wrenching, especially to those who’ve lived through such deep loss. And this line, “Did some force take you because I didn’t pray?”, surely hits at the many people who’ve desperately wondered at some point, “Did this happen because I did something wrong? Have I not been a good enough person? Is God mad at me? Did I pray wrong? Should I have asked differently?”
This line of thought takes me to Luke 11:11-13, in which Jesus asks a crowd, “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” God is a good Father. A perfectly good Father, who has promised “that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). He has perfect plans for us, “plans to prosper [us] and not to harm [us], plans to give [us] hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). God does not withhold good things from us simply because we didn’t ask right. How petty would that be? That’s how people act, not God.
Now, the hopeful promises we have don’t erase the real pain that we experience while still living in this fallen world. In fact, these real pains are to be expected. Peter writes to Christians, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12). We can actually count on life being hard, sometimes almost unbearably hard.
What we can’t count on is that there will always a one-to-one correspondence between something good we do and a good thing that happens to us in this world, nor between something bad we do and a bad thing that happens. Plenty of good things are experienced by all people, regardless of their actions. Matthew 5:45 observes, “[God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Sometimes, beyond things just being equal, things actually seem better for exceptionally bad people. Plenty of psalmists look at the world around and see “the prosperity of the wicked,” who “have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind” (Psalm 73:3-5). We sometimes feel a sense of deep satisfaction when bad things happen to bad people, but how much more often does it seem like bad people aren’t punished?
Numbers 14:18 helpfully explains, “The LORD is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty.” The guilty will not get away with anything, we’re assured. But again, it’s not because some impersonal cosmic force is able to maintain perfect balance between good and evil actions. (How could such a force define good and evil, anyway?) It’s because there is a God who is perfectly just.
When we don’t see that justice coming into play immediately, we can get really frustrated and start launching accusations at God. When Job, a righteous man who experienced incredible pain and loss, demanded an explanation from God about why bad things happen to good people, God essentially says, “Wrong question.” Rather than answering Job’s question, God returns with a much bigger question: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you know and have understanding” (Job 38:4).
The lesson is clear: God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are His ways our ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways higher than our ways and God’s thoughts than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). We have a limited perspective and idea of how things ought to be. We don’t have the entire picture that the Creator God of the universe has. None of us will get to the end of time and look back to say, “God, you didn’t do that right. You should have done this part differently.” It will all have worked out perfectly, because God knows all the pieces and how to fit them together.
The same psalmist who looked on in confusion as the wicked prospered ends his psalm by refocusing his perspective. He prays to the LORD,
You guide me with your counsel / and afterward you will take me into glory. / Whom have I in heaven but you? / And earth has nothing I desire besides you. / My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart / and my portion forever.
Psalm 73:24-26
The psalmist knows that whatever his circumstances are, God is his hope, his refuge, his guide, his savior. He is a God who has promised to step in and act, and He is both capable and faithful to fulfill every promise.
This is something that can’t be said of karma. With karma (as with most, if not all, man-made religious concepts), “you’re on your own, kid,” and your actions are what’s going to determine every detail of your fate. Personally, I’m glad that’s not the case for me, as I seek refuge in the righteousness and work of Christ.
Karma is made out to be a god, and “Karma” plays like a worship song. Catchy though it may be, it’s the only one on the album I can’t bring myself to sing along with.
Closing Thoughts
Turns out, I have a whole of thoughts about theology in Taylor Swift songs! I’m grateful for the storytelling and the detailed lyrics that have drawn so many to Taylor’s music for so long. And regardless of my opinions on the worldview portrayed in these lyrics, I’m appreciative of the courage it takes to write so vulnerably from such a large platform. One of the 3am tracks, “Dear Reader,” even seems to address this: She sings to her audience, “You should find another guiding light. But I shine so bright.”
In a culture that birthed shows like American Idol, it’s no surprise so many idolize musicians and search for meaning to follow in their lyrics. It would be wise to take Taylor’s advice here. While loving her music and thrilled for her to be shining brightly, it would be wise to search for a guiding Light elsewhere (John 8:12).
Up Next: I do pretty much exactly what I did in this post, but with Super Bowl commercials
Detroit, Reformed. 
Leave a comment