“I have this thing where I get older, but just never wiser / Midnights become my afternoons,” confides Taylor Swift. With her new LP, Swift engages with the witching hours, those slivers of time when all is dark and quiet in the world. Nothing can be heard but the hum of a melody and the etching of lyrics. She continues, unthreading a sore emotional headspace, “When my depression works the graveyard shift, all of the people / I’ve ghosted stand there in the room.” Over a rhythmic pulse, the melody slips and slides into soul with subtle ease. Then comes the razor-edged chorus, in which she sings, “I’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror.” Sometimes, it takes sunspots cutting into one’s irises to get the point across.
Listen to “Anti-Hero” below.