Midnights is for the Neurodivergent Fans
My favorite thing about Taylor Swift’s music is that it is universally applicable. There’s something for all of us; no one is excluded. Even if a lyric is technically referencing her personal life, you don’t have to dig very deep to find an alternative meaning that not only fits your own experiences but poetically captures them in a way you hadn’t previously thought about, a way that makes you feel “seen.” So that’s why, at 12:22 am on October 21, halfway through my first listen to her newest album Midnights, I thought to myself, “Does Taylor Swift have ADHD like me?”
Listen, Taylor’s fan base is massive, to the extent that it’s borderline terrifying to put any theories about her music’s meanings out there into the world, lest you incur the encyclopedic knowledge base and subsequent wrath of a diehard Swiftie ready to prove you wrong. So I will clarify before I go any further that as an ADHDer with autistic traits, I never take off my neurodivergent lens. I can’t (and I don’t want to). It is permanently glued to my face; it colors everything I consume, including pop music. So while my take on the album may not be “accurate” so-to-speak, it is an offering to give you a glimpse of the world through my lens, which may not look so different from your own, in the hopes that you may feel seen, too.
Remember that the term “neurodivergent” refers to all types of differences in thinking, processing, experiencing, and responding to the world, and is not limited to any specific diagnoses. I do reference those I have lived experience with specifically, though, because I like to avoid speaking for others. While I always do my best not to speak in broad catch-all terms, there will definitely be some analysis that don’t feel applicable to you, and I think that’s a wonderful testament to the diversity of our minds. So without further ado…
“Anti-Hero”
We open on a concept familiar to many whose expertise on themselves has been called into question by those who don’t understand how we think: “I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser.” It reminds me of the question many parents I work with ask me about their teens: “Why do they never learn from their mistakes?” In fact, because of object impermanence (the “out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon), ADHDers may have a harder time incorporating new experiences or information into our narratives about the way the world works without support from others, including affirmations, reminders, and invitations to recall what happened last time. We may not catch on to constantly shifting social rules and norms as quickly or easily as our neurotypical peers do, especially if they don’t make sense. While I personally don’t think that makes us unwise, it’s tough to avoid internalizing that feedback.
Taylor then says something else many of us have come to believe about ourselves: that we can’t be trusted. “I should not be left to my own devices; they come with prices and vices; I end up in crisis.” Well, to be fair, as Dr. Devon Price writes in their book “Unmasking Autism,” “masked autistic people fall back on a variety of flawed strategies in order to relax, mute our most disruptive behaviors, or conform with neurotypical standards...when we compensate in those ways, we often believe it’s because we’re just toxic, weak-willed people.” But instead of blaming our culture for creating the need for this coping and appreciating our survival instincts, we tend to place blame on ourselves for apparent self-sabotage, because hey - who doesn’t prefer to maintain a sense of control? Our belief that we’re “the problem” (and that “everybody agrees”) can actually end up a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, if everyone already dislikes me, what have I got to lose? This song has been such a hit since the Midnights release that it spurred the popular “Anti-Hero challenge” in which videos of people naming a need they have or difficulty they struggle with to the lyrics “I’m the problem, it’s me” popped up all over social media. That’s when one of my favorite neurodivergent advocates, Sonny Jane Wise graced us with some food for thought in an Instagram post: “Wanna know what pathologizing your differences, needs, and inability to meet capitalist expectations looks like? Look no further than the lyrics: ‘it’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.’ Maybe you aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s capitalism. Maybe it’s the lack of accommodations. Maybe it’s the fact that society pathologizes differences. Maybe it’s the fact that society views our needs as a burden.” Mic drop.
Even the lyric, “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism” hits on a common mischaracterization. Autistic traits in particular are commonly mistaken for narcissism because of misinterpretation of intentions. For example, if you ask how someone is doing and they give a very detailed account of their day but don’t ask how you’re doing, in our culture that may be taken as rude or offensive. Or, if you ask a question about an autistic person’s special interest and they go on for several minutes without pausing, giving you much more information than you needed or wanted, that’s passion, but it’s common that it is perceived as monopolizing the conversation. At the tip of the iceberg, the observer sees someone who loves talking about themselves and doesn’t care about others, but when given that feedback, whether it’s via a compassionate boundary or harsh criticism, the individual may feel as though “I’m the problem, it’s me” if they don’t have an understanding of how their neurotype’s communication style clashes with others’.
One TikToker, maybeitsmemaybeitsaudhd, actually captured the intersection between different types of co-occurring neurodivergences beautifully by editing the end of the Anti-Hero music video, where Taylor’s more “good girl,” tamer self and her wild, self-destructive self are labeled “autism” and “ADHD,” respectively, when in barges a giant “monster on the hill” version of Taylor labeled “complex PTSD” to “show them who’s actually pulling the strings.” Each acts judgmental toward the other, but they all must co-exist, despite conflicting trains of thought, preferences, and needs. This is the kind of intersectional framework we wish our providers would universally consider rather than putting us in a single closed-up, tidy box.
“You’re on Your Own Kid”
At the end of this song all about the sacrifices made in order to achieve something you think you want or that you’re supposed to want, we get the pep talk from Taylor Swift we didn’t know we needed: “You’re on your own kid; yeah, you can face this; you’re on your own kid; you always have been.” Even if that’s not where you are in your process of self-understanding, and you’re not so sure that you can in fact face the loneliness of being different in this world, let it make you curious about what awaits you when you do take that leap of faith. I found comfort in seeing so many TikTok videos about how much others related. There’s a certain positive irony in knowing that a lot of people feel different. It gave me “island of misfit toys” vibes - okay, maybe if enough of us feel this way, we just need to find each other.
TikTok creator just_kathing noticed another parallel to a common neurodivergent experience, too: “It’s all about playing it cool with the best of them and trying to fit in with the people around you and playing along with the rules of their game; that line ‘It’s okay, we’re the best of friends,’ but then later saying ‘found out they never cared.’” They talk about the pain of thinking you’re closer with people than they consider themselves to be to you. “The whole song is just about this constant search for approval and just consistently failing at that and ending up alone…even at the end…she’s saying ‘Yeah, you don’t fit in with the world, and you’re never going to, so you have to figure out a way to make the world work for you because that’s what you’ve always done.”
“Midnight Rain”
This one made me think about the experience of being told we’re “dark” or “negative” when we express emotions that come from holding a marginalized identity. Taylor sings, “He was sunshine, I was midnight rain; he wanted it comfortable, I wanted that pain.” There are a lot of people who view disability and neurodivergence as something we can “overcome” with a good attitude because it’s more comfortable to think like that than to try to accept ourselves as we are, including the hard stuff. If we can, instead of conforming to these expectations, find others who appreciate our realistic takes and consider them a balance of their optimism, then we can truly be authentic in a relationship.
“Labyrinth”
Because of cognitive needs that are inherently scarce for some neurotypes, like focus, motivation, and energy, we may experience more “foreboding joy” than others; that is, a sense that the good feeling or experience we’re having right now is about to end. Taylor captures this beautifully when she says, “You know how scared I am of elevators. Never trust it if it rises fast; it can’t last.” Luckily, she equips us with a somatic coping strategy in the very same song, though: “Breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out.” Thanks, queen.
And shortly after, she describes the feeling of rawness while “lost in the labyrinth of my mind.” This reminds me of the mental gymnastics we do trying to anticipate how others might perceive us, to get ahead of the game. In the process, we may get “lost” and struggle to differentiate what’s authentically us from what’s a show and thus, struggle to know where to go next in conversations and relationships to ensure we please everyone.
Alternatively, we might interpret this lyric more literally. A labyrinth is defined as a complicated maze of passages it’s hard to find your way out of, and for various reasons - from working memory differences to special interests - neurodivergent people often go on tangents that seem unrelated to the conversation on the surface, though there’s always some kind of long-winded explanation of how we got there that only we can understand. But we’re rarely certain about how to get ourselves back out to where we started without an extensive search and sometimes will give up altogether and say “never mind.”
Lastly, Taylor sings, “You know how much I hate that everybody just expects me to bounce back, just like that.” And wow, did I feel this! The pressure to be resilient reminds me of so many of my clients’ experiences of neurodivergent burnout: “Okay, you’ve rested, now get back to work, what’s taking you so long?”
“Mastermind”
I can’t believe Taylor Swift just outed me like this. Yes, many of us neurodivergent people are fantastic at both spotting patterns and using our understanding of them to get to a desired outcome. That’s why we may be mischaracterized as “manipulative” (in a bad way), though I argue that being “manipulative” is actually a huge advantage evolutionarily-speaking - if I can design a pattern that will lead to both my wants and needs being fulfilled, to some degree, the power I lose as a target for ableism is returned to me. Taylor poses this question (presumably to a love interest, but I think we can generalize to any relationship): “What if I told you none of it was accidental, and the first night that you saw me, nothing was gonna stop me?” I’d love a track on her next album featuring another artist to response to that inquiry - what if? If you knew that I knew what I was doing when I curated this moment in my mind, or “laid the groundwork, and then, just like clockwork, the dominoes cascaded in a line,” would that be a dealbreaker? Would you still like me, or would you be intimidated by me? This uncertainty or even fear causes many of us to feel we are hiding something even if we aren’t. Luckily, at the end of the song, we get a plot twist: the person she was scheming to get to like her actually already knew about her scheming. On my first listen, I thought, “How embarrassing to be caught in the act,” but I soon realized this was actually a lovely thing: to be seen trying to hard to put on a show, only to find out that our ability to put the show on is the very thing the other person loves about us. Idealistic, maybe, but possible.
But the part of this song I’ve seen the most neurodivergent commentary on is Taylor’s explanation of how she got to be this way: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid, so I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since to make them love me and make it seem effortless. This is the first time I’ve ever felt the need to confess, and I swear I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian ‘cause I care.” Wow. I recognize that desperation to be perceived correctly as surviving, not conniving. Fans have shared their responses ranging from “Is Taylor Swift autistic?” to a hilarious realization from creator ndcounselorcallie that “It’s pretty wild being on the autistic side of TikTok and seeing people use the song Mastermind to describe masking, and then you click on the sound and see all the neurotypicals using it to confess to crimes.”
I told you our girl’s relatable. Even if she herself doesn’t “get it” (Taylor hasn’t explicitly shared her neurotype with us, but giftedness alone is under the neurodivergent umbrella, just sayin’), she has given us the gift of these lyrics to prompt our own inner exploration and to pass around to people in our own lives who genuinely want to understand how our brains work. So my therapist and I will be unwrapping her gift for many months to come, and I encourage you to bring what you resonate with to your sessions, too. If you get chosen to meet Taylor at the Eras Tour, you’ll have something great to talk about.
If you’re interested in a neurodivergent lens on several more songs on Midnights, including “Lavender Haze,” “Snow on the Beach,” “Maroon,” “Vigilante Sh*t,” “Karma,” “Sweet Nothing,” “Bigger Than the Whole Sky,” and “Dear Reader,” I invite you to check out my Patreon. There I also post monthly webinars and other resources as well as hosting a monthly support group, all related to the intersection of eating disorders and neurodivergence.
