Taylor Swift

In a sunny Berkeley debut, Headon and Templeman thawed the icy night air.

How did Taylor Swift, a teenage country singer and songwriter from Nashville who has received so much hate and criticism throughout her career, become the global music and feminist icon that she now is?

While we love it, we also love to hate it. There exists, for some nebulous reason, a sense of disdain when it comes to depictions of love in the art we consume.

Perhaps part of the beauty of Midnights is its ability to obscure the line between reality and fantasy. As dusk settles and eyes hang heavy, senses become available to invention.

For a long time, any enjoyment of trashy vampire novels or silly pop songs had to be cloaked in a thick layer of irony in order to be viewed as acceptable by society.

With the new release of “Midnights,” Taylor Swift has done it again. She’s what everyone’s talking about, her songs are trending on almost every social media platform, and she continues to be the Princess of Pop.

With Midnights, rather than reinvent herself through a new tale, Swift strives to rediscover her identity through strikingly vulnerable reflections.

Whether you spend these moments of respite texting your friends or scrolling through Instagram, add an extra boost of pleasure and relaxation by incorporating music. Here’s a playlist aimed towards helping you de-stress or even just get up and dance!

Brimming with irrepressible passion, Rina Sawayama is stage-ready on Hold the Girl.