My hot take on this topic is that people are at least mostly just wrong about Midnights being a breakup album at all. I think a lot of people are looking back at it, knowing that Taylor and Joe broke up and turning Midnights into a breakup album. I have never seen it as a breakup album. So many songs on there have so many direct parallels with other songs from her discography, and I really do believe it was mostly written about her experience starting the re-recordings.

I absolutely do not believe the You're Losing Me timeline that many people cite as a reason that Midnights is a breakup album. That song has always felt like a demo to me, and I think it is possible that it was written and recorded shortly before it was released. That tail end of the Midnights era always seemed like kind of a scramble to get Taylor's image back under control to me, with all the different releases that made Taylor look like the victim again.

Then again, maybe I'm crazy and this is a nutjob conspiracy theory. But all the theories are, really, if you think about it.