“Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift featuring Bleachers

"Anti-Hero" led Taylor Swift into Midnights, her tenth studio album, arriving on October 21, 2022, through Republic. She wrote and produced it with Jack Antonoff, who also plays drums, bass, synths, Mellotron, Wurlitzer and acoustic guitar and sings backup, with Bobby Hawk on violin. The engine is a LinnDrum loop with an '80s tilt and retro synths, and over it Swift turns the knife on herself, picking at her insecurities and what fame has done to her, until the bridge spins out into a nightmare where her daughter-in-law bumps her off for the inheritance.

Critics mostly cheered the hooks and the candor, hearing Swift at her most self-critical. It spent eight weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100, and her self-directed video, which casts three versions of her and restages that nightmare, took six VMAs including Video of the Year.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.