Labyrinth (Taylor Swift song)

Last updated

"Labyrinth"
Song by Taylor Swift
from the album Midnights
ReleasedOctober 21, 2022 (2022-10-21)
Studio
Genre
Length4:07
Label Republic
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)
  • Taylor Swift
  • Jack Antonoff
Lyric video
"Labyrinth" on YouTube

"Labyrinth" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift from her tenth studio album, Midnights (2022). Written and produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, it has a prominent electronic production. The track begins with dense, pulsating synthesizers, subtle guitars, muffled trap and house beats, and Swift's vocals in their upper register; its outro consists of repeated refrains sung with Swift's low-pitched voice. Music critics categorize the genre as synth-pop, dance-pop, and bedroom pop. In the lyrics, the narrator expresses her anxiety from falling in love again after going through heartbreak.

Contents

In reviews of Midnights, several music critics found the production of "Labyrinth" interesting, ethereal, and pretty. Some were also fond of the lyrical sentiments, but some others found the vocal production insubstantial. "Labyrinth" peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Global 200 and reached the top 20 of singles charts in Australia, Canada, the Philippines, Singapore, and the United States. The track received certifications in Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Swift performed "Labyrinth" live twice on her sixth concert tour, the Eras Tour (2023–2024).

Background and release

Taylor Swift announced her tenth original studio album, Midnights , at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards on August 28; [1] its title and cover artwork were released shortly after via social media. [2] She conceived Midnights as a collection of songs about her nocturnal ruminations, detailing a wide range of emotions such as regret, lust, nostalgia, contentment, and self-loathing. [3] The standard album was produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, as a result of the two experimenting with music while their partners were both shooting for a film in Panama. [3] The album's track listing was revealed via a thirteen-episode video series called Midnights Mayhem with Me on the platform TikTok, where each video contained the title of one track at a time. [4] The title of "Labyrinth" was revealed in an episode posted on October 7, 2022. [5]

Republic Records released Midnights on October 21, 2022; [6] "Labyrinth" is track 10 out of 13 tracks on the standard edition. [7] Upon the release of the album, "Labyrinth" peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Global 200. [8] The track peaked at number 14 on both the US Billboard Hot 100 [9] and the Canadian Hot 100, [10] number 13 on both the ARIA Singles Chart in Australia [11] and the RIAS chart in Singapore, [12] and number 10 on the Philippines Songs chart. [13] The song additionally reached the top 40 on the charts in Malaysia, [14] Portugal, [15] and Vietnam; [16] top 60 in Sweden [17] and the Czech Republic; [18] and top 100 in Lithuania, [19] Slovakia, [20] and Spain. [21] "Labyrinth" received a platinum certification in Australia, [22] gold certifications in Brazil [23] and Canada, [24] and a silver certification in the United Kingdom. [25]

Swift performed "Labyrinth" live twice on her sixth concert tour, the Eras Tour. On November 9, 2023, she sang a piano rendition at a concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina. [26] She again performed the song on piano, this time as part of a mashup with her song "This Is Me Trying" (2020), at a concert in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, on July 18, 2024. [27]

Composition and lyrics

Swift wrote and produced "Labyrinth" with Antonoff, who programmed the track, provided background vocals, and played instruments including percussion, electric guitars, and multiple synthesizersMoog, Juno 6, Realistic Synth, and OB8. Antonoff and the audio engineer Laura Sisk recorded the song at Rough Customer Studio, Brooklyn, and Electric Lady Studios, New York. "Labyrinth" was mixed by Serban Ghenea, assisted by Bryce Bordone, at MixStar Studios, Virginia Beach, Virginia. The track was mastered by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound, Edgewater, New Jersey. [28]

"Labyrinth" is four minutes and seven seconds long. [7] It has a prominent electronic production [29] consisting of dense, pulsating synthesizers [30] that accompany Swift's vocals in their upper register, [31] [32] sung with a soft timbre. [33] According to Annie Zaleski, the sound is "sparse and diaphanous": it comprises thick and atmospheric synthesizers, muffled beats, and "wriggling keyboard flourishes", as Swift sings the verses in her "breathy" falsetto range. [34] Rob Sheffield, writing for Rolling Stone, described how the synths "flicker and splutter like the circuits are melting down", [35] and Quinn Moreland of Pitchfork compared each "synth quiver" to "a pump of new blood". [36]

Music critics categorize the overall sound as synth-pop, [29] [37] "muted" dance-pop, [38] and bedroom pop. [37] The bass displays influences of dubstep, while the beats incorporate trap and house elements. [39] There are also subtle shades of guitar and sounds of a church organ. [40] In the Associated Press, Elise Ryan found "Labyrinth" to be an amalgamation of styles on Swift's past albums, namely the synth sounds of 1989 (2014) and the "softer" alternative of Folklore (2020). [41] The outro, starting from the 2:55 mark, [42] is made up of repeated refrains, delivered by Swift's vocals that are manipulated to a lower pitch, [43] until they slowly fade out. [29] It is accompanied by what Elle's Lauren Puckett-Pove described as a "funkier, dance-like beat". [42] Commenting on the vocal effects, Alexis Petridis of The Guardian said that they "warp [Swift's] voice to a point of androgyny", [39] and Ann Powers of NPR wrote that her vocals turn into "myriad light streams" that resemble a Bon Iver song. [44]

The lyrics are about anxiety caused by a new romantic beginning. [36] [42] The first verse sees the narrator pondering on a recent breakup; [34] "I'll be gettin' over you my whole life." [45] In the refrain, the narrator wonders if she is falling in love again too fast, but decides to open up again; "Uh-oh, I'm falling in love/ Oh no, I'm falling in love again/ Oh, I'm falling in love." [45] [46] She likens the sensations evoked from this infatuation to violent imagery of a plane that is about to fall and an elevator that rises too fast; [34] [47] "I thought the plane was going down/ How'd you turn it right around?" [45] She tries to control her anxiety; "Breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out"—this lyric references Swift's 2022 commencement speech at New York University. [48] [49] In the second verse, the narrator wonders if this newfound love will break her heart again, but she could not resist being drawn to it; "Break up, break free, break through, break down/ You would break your back to make me break a smile." [45]

Several critics analyzed how the production accompanies the lyrical sentiments. Moreland wrote that the pulsating synthesizers "[mirror] the ice melting around [Swift's] heart" as she sings about finding love again. [36] According to Zaleski, the refrain has a "more equanimous groove" compared to the initial parts, with Swift's vocals being smoothed out and sounding "less panicked", suggesting an acceptance of this newfound romance. [34] Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone thought otherwise that the romance in question is "potentially lost". [50] Likening the plane imagery in "Labyrinth" to that in Swift's other songs, [lower-alpha 1] Rebecca Jennings of Vox said that it symbolizes uncertainty and uneasiness caused by both romantic beginnings and romantic fallouts. [48] In the view of Alan Light from Esquire, the lyrics additionally allude to Swift's fear and pressure from her fame and the resulting expectations; "You know how much I hate that everybody just expects me to bounce back/ Just like that." [51]

Critical reception

"Labyrinth" received generally positive reviews. Jason Lipshutz from Billboard ranked it sixth out of the 13 songs on Midnights, deeming it the album's "prettiest" and "most intimate" song. [29] Critics who found the production simple, minimalist, and tasteful include Sheffield, [35] Konstantinos Pappis from Our Culture Mag , who described it as a midpoint between "grandiosity and resonance" and "moody restraint", [52] Alaina Conaway from The Sentinel, [37] John Wohlmacher from Beats Per Minute. [40] Others, including Lipshutz, [29] USA Today's Melissa Ruggieri, [31] and Les Echos' Cecilia Delporte found the production ethereal. [53] Light selected "Labyrinth" as one of the album's "nuanced sleepers [that] reveal themselves". [51] Mary Kate Carr from The A.V. Club picked it as one of the most underrated Midnights tracks, calling it "deceptively simple yet hauntingly beautiful". [54]

Many critics consider "Labyrinth" a successful musical experimentation. According to Ryan, it shows "the best of her previous pop experiments". [41] In The Wall Street Journal , Mark Richardson complimented the way "Labyrinth" succeeds using minimal textures by "amply using space and leaving out the curlicue melodic shapes". [55] Conaway found it a "risk" that the song favors an "airy" instrumental and "minimalistic" lyrics—a diversion from the "extravagant, poetic" lyricism of Swift's previous songs, and one that showcased her "versatility as a writer, musician and individual". [37] In a similar vein, Sheffield thought that the song's lyrics were minimal but believed its melody was the album's "loveliest", [56] which highlights the different shades of Swift's vocals. [35] Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times also lauded how the song emphasized "the grain of [Swift']s voice" and found it a pleasure to "get lost" in the tune. [57] Pappis [52] and Clash's Matthew Neale further highlighted the song's lyrical sentiments; the latter characterized the track as a balance between "starry-eyed lyricism" and "electropop vulnerability" and lauded the refrain ("I'm falling in love again") as "triumphant", adding that it could have "easily [sounded] mawkish in the wrong hands". [58]

Opinions were mixed on the vocal effects. Bobby Olivier of Spin wrote that it was "well executed" and evoked a "somber" atmosphere, [43] while Al Shipley felt that it sounded "like an embarrassing relic of 2010s Soundcloud production trends". [59] The Times ' Will Hodgkinson described the vocal effects as "modish" and "off-putting", [60] and Powers wrote that they somewhat diminished the impact of Swift's "meticulous songwriting". [44] Callie Ahlgrim and Courteney Larocca of Business Insider found the song pleasant to listen to but added that it becomes uninteresting as it progresses, finding it a somewhat boring but "understandable inclusion" on Midnights. [61]

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Midnights. [28]

Charts

Chart performance for "Labyrinth"
Chart (2022)Peak
position
Australia (ARIA) [11] 13
Canada (Canadian Hot 100) [10] 14
Czech Republic (Singles Digitál Top 100) [18] 60
Global 200 ( Billboard ) [8] 12
Greece International (IFPI) [62] 25
Ireland ( Billboard ) [63] 17
Lithuania (AGATA) [19] 64
Malaysia International (RIM) [14] 22
Philippines ( Billboard ) [13] 10
Portugal (AFP) [15] 32
Singapore (RIAS) [12] 13
Slovakia (Singles Digitál Top 100) [20] 65
Spain (PROMUSICAE) [21] 81
Sweden (Sverigetopplistan) [17] 52
Swiss Streaming (Schweizer Hitparade) [64] 58
UK ( Billboard ) [65] 16
UK Audio Streaming (OCC) [66] 17
US Billboard Hot 100 [9] 14
Vietnam (Vietnam Hot 100) [16] 28

Certifications

Certifications for "Labyrinth"
RegionCertification Certified units/sales
Australia (ARIA) [22] Platinum70,000
Brazil (Pro-Música Brasil) [23] Gold20,000
Canada (Music Canada) [24] Gold40,000
United Kingdom (BPI) [25] Silver200,000

Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

Notes

  1. Namely "Last Kiss" from Speak Now (2010), "Come Back... Be Here" from Red (2012), "Out of the Woods" from 1989 (2014), and "Getaway Car" and "Call It What You Want" from Reputation (2017)

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