Taylor Swift has said "Midnights" was inspired by certain key sleepless nights. "All of me changed like midnight," she confesses halfway through the album – a moment on the electric "Midnight Rain" that finds lyricist Swift at her best, reminding you of her unparalleled ability to make any emotion feel universal.

The song's chorus begins: "He was sunshine, I was midnight rain." And continues: "He wanted it comfortable, I wanted that pain. He wanted a bride, I was making my own name. Chasing that fame. He stayed the same." Then, that lyric: "All of me changed like midnight." The sound feels experimental for Swift, opening with her own vocals artificially pitched down to an almost-unrecognizable tone. It's among the album's most sonically interesting, an indie-pop beat that feels reminiscent of her producer Jack Antonoff's work on Lorde's "Melodrama," but also fresh and captivating.

The song's words, by Swift and Antonoff, are steady and detailed, but not distracting – allowing you to sink into the rhythm, flowing and feeling it with her.

For her 10th original album, the 32-year-old pop star approaches the themes she's grown up writing about – love, loss, childhood, fame – with a maturity that comes through in sharpened vocals and lyrics focused more on her inner-life than external persona.

"Midnight Rain" could be a thesis statement for the project she's described as songs written during "13 sleepless nights," an appropriate approach to the concept album for someone who has long had a lyrical appreciation for late nights. Of course, she's centered her work around themes before – on "Red," an ode to the color and the emotions it stands for, "reputation," a vindictive reconfiguring of her own, and most recently on "folklore" and "evermore," quarantine albums that expressed vulnerability in ways only isolation could.

But Swift presents "Midnights" as something different: a collection of songs that don't necessarily have to go together, but fit together because she has declared them products of late night inspiration. Positioning listeners situationally – in the quiet but thoughtful darkness of night – instead of thematically, feels like a natural creative experiment for a songwriter so prolific that her albums have become synonymous with the pop culture zeitgeist.

And with that, comes a tone that is just a little darker, a little more experimental, and always electric.

Track one, "Lavender Haze," pairs a muffled club beat and high-pitched backing vocals from Antonoff with a stand-out, beckoning melody from Swift.

"Labyrinth" makes clear she's carried the best of her previous pop experiments with her – the synth of "1989" and the softer alternative sounds of "folklore" – as she admits as only a songwriter can that a heartbreak "only feels this raw right now, lost in the labyrinth of my mind," on top of a track featuring Bon Iver-esque electronic trills.

Swift shines when she is able to marry her signature lyrical musings with this new arena of electronic beats. And while this isn't another album of acoustic indie sounds like "folklore," it is clear that Swift has taken a step forward in the indie-pop genre – even if it's a step in a different direction.

The album's weaker moments are the ones where that balance feels off. "Bejeweled" is a bit too candy sweet, with lyrics that feel like an updated, glittery take on "ME!" The much anticipated "Snow On The Beach," featuring Lana Del Rey, is poetic, pretty, and at times cheeky, but not as emotionally deep as the lyricists' combined power suggests it could be.

Even in those moments, "Midnights" finds Swift comfortable in her musical skin, revealing the strengths of a sharp and ever-evolving artist who can wink through always-cryptic allusions to her very public life or subtle self-owns dispersed amidst lyrical confessions and hook even the casual listener with an alluring, and maybe surprising, beat.

But like the love-soaked "Lover," and intimate "folklore" and "evermore," "Midnights" feels like both a confessional and a playground, crafted by all the versions of Taylor Swift we've gotten to know so far for a new Taylor Swift to shine. And like always, we're just along for the thrilling late-night ride.

And after all of that, the singer-songwriter treated fans to even more of a feast as she dropped seven bonus tracks and a music video just hours after the album's release.

"Midnights" was released at, well, midnight Eastern time and had become Spotify's most-streamed album in a single day by 6:15 p.m. With a runtime of around 44 minutes, listeners would have had the opportunity to play the album four times before Swift unleashed "Midnights (3am Edition)."

"Surprise! I think of Midnights as a complete concept album, with those 13 songs forming a full picture of the intensities of that mystifying, mad hour," she wrote on Instagram. "However! There were other songs we wrote on our journey to find that magic 13."

The bonus tracks fit tonally with the rest of the darkly electric and moody album, beginning with "The Great War," sweeping across "Paris" and exploring "High Infidelity" before ending with "Dear Reader." In all, the seven additional songs – added to the end of the original "Midnights" track listing, encompass about 25 additional minutes.

And five hours after "Midnights (3am Edition)," Swift treated fans to a visual feast with a muted but lush music video for "Anti-Hero."

Written and directed by Swift herself, reunited with "All Too Well" cinematographer Rina Yang, the video sees the singer be chased by chintzy sheet ghosts and do shots with a glammed-up double who instructs her: "Everyone will betray you." Dark glitter oozes from the yolks she cuts into at the breakfast table, her wound from an arrow and her mouth after one too many shots.

"Watch my nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts play out in real time," Swift posted on Instagram.

The video includes references to Swift's eating disorder, which she revealed in a documentary, and pokes fun at herself with a cutscene that breaks in midway. It features Mike Birbiglia, John Early and Mary Elizabeth Ellis playing her heirs (Preston, Chad and Kimber) who discover she's left them only 13 cents in her will – Swift's favorite number is famously 13.

"There's probably a secret encoded message that means something else!" Early exclaims in character, referencing the field of cryptology Swift has created over the years.

"P.S. There is no secret encoded message that means something else. Love, Taylor," Birbiglia reads seconds later.

The "Anti-Hero" video racked up more than 9,700,000 views in the first 13 hours (apt) of its release and spawned the #TSAntiHeroChallenge. Swift is encouraging people to upload to YouTube Shorts a video of themselves sharing the traits that would make them an antihero. According to a blog post on YouTube, the challenge is "all about acknowledging and celebrating the traits that make each of us truly unique and showcasing one's true self in a FUN way."

"An anti-heroic trait could be as simple as always grabbing the last slice of pizza, clapping at the end of movies, always putting your feet on the car dashboard, using the same word to start your daily Wordle, leaving your clean laundry in the basket until the next time you do it, pretending you didn't already watch the next episode of the series you watch with your pals, or even treating your cat like a human," the post said. Swift chose that last one for her own submission.

While the challenge adds levity to the release cycle, Swift is clear on the tone she's going for with the album and its associated projects.

"Midnights is a collage of intensity, highs and lows and ebbs and flows," Swift posted on Instagram when the original album dropped. "Life can be dark, starry, cloudy, terrifying, electrifying, hot, cold, romantic or lonely. Just like Midnights."