Anti-Hero (song)

"Anti-Hero" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and the lead single from her tenth studio album, Midnights (2022). Swift wrote and produced the song with Jack Antonoff. It is a pop rock and synth-pop song driven by a 1980s-inspired drum loop generated with a LinnDrum and retro synthesizers such as the Juno 6 and the Prophet 5. Inspired by Swift's insecurities, the lyrics focus on self-loathing and the impact of fame on her wellbeing; the bridge narrates a nightmare where her daughter-in-law murders her for her last will. Republic Records released the song for download and streaming on October 21, 2022.

Music critics generally praised the catchy production and strong vocals of "Anti-Hero"; they deemed its lyricism candid and honest that showcased Swift at her most self-critical. Many publications ranked the song among the best releases of 2022. The single peaked a top the Billboard Global 200 and charted in the top 10 in many territories across the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. In the United States, it was Swift's ninth chart topper on the Billboard Hot 100, where it spent eight weeks at number one, and made her the first artist to have a number-one single on Radio Songs in the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s decades. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, it was the ninth-most-streamed song of 2023 worldwide.

Swift wrote and directed the song's music video, which depicts her fears, insecurities, and eating disorder, using three different incarnations of her. The video also reenacts the nightmare mentioned in the lyrics, starring Mike Birbiglia, John Early, and Mary Elizabeth Ellis as Swift's fictional sons and daughter-in-law. "Anti-Hero" won many awards including a People's Choice Award, two iHeartRadio Music Awards, and six MTV Video Music Awards including Video of the Year, making Swift the first artist to win the award two years in a row. It was nominated for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.

Background and release
At the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards on August 28, 2022, Taylor Swift announced a new studio album, slated for release on October 21. After the show, Swift revealed the album title Midnights on her social media. Using the video-sharing platform TikTok, from September 21 to October 7, 2022, she released a 13-episode video series called Midnights Mayhem with Me, where she announced the title of each Midnights track in a randomized order per episode. In each episode, Swift rolled a lottery cage containing 13 ping pong balls numbered from 1 to 13, each representing a track of the album, and when a ball dropped out, she disclosed the title of the corresponding track through a telephone. In the sixth episode, released on October 3, 2022, Swift announced the title of the third track: "Anti-Hero".

"Anti-Hero" is the lead single from Midnights. On October 21, 2022, it was released for download onto Swift's website, exclusively to American customers, and to Italian radio by Universal Music Group. Republic Records released the song to the US hot adult contemporary radio on October 24, and contemporary hit radio on October 25. A duet remix featuring the band Bleachers was released for limited-time download onto Swift's website on November 7, and for general streaming and download the following day. The single was supported by remixes produced by the DJs Roosevelt, Kungs, Jayda G, and Illenium. In total, 10 versions of "Anti-Hero" were released: the original mix, an acoustic version, an instrumental version, the Bleachers versions (explicit and clean), the four remixes, and an extended Kungs remix.

Production and music
Swift wrote and produced "Anti-Hero" with Jack Antonoff, who had produced songs for all of Swift's past albums starting from 1989 in 2014. Antonoff recorded the song with the engineer Laura Sisk, assisted by Megan Searl, Jon Sher, and John Rooney, at Rough Customer Studio in Brooklyn and Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Bobby Hawk played additional violin, and his performance was recorded by John Gautier at Sound Hound Studios in Lakeland, Florida. "Anti-Hero" was mixed by Serban Ghenea at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and mastered by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound in Edgewater, New Jersey. According to the liner notes of Midnights, Antonoff programmed the track and played instruments including percussions, drums, acoustic guitars, Mellotron, Wurlitzer, and analog synthesizers including the Juno 6 and the Prophet-5. Speaking with Time, Antonoff said that he built upon "Out of the Woods", which he produced for 1989. For the synth sounds, he used an OB-8, which created a sound that he compared to "an old organ in a baseball stadium". He created the drum sounds by applying a tremolo onto a LinnDrum beat. The end product is a pop rock and synth-pop song. The song is written in the key of E major in common time with a tempo of 97 beats per minute. It is driven by a 1980s rock-influenced drum loop that is coated in dense reverb. Critics described the synths as "simmering" and "buzzing". The

Lyrics and interpretations
"Anti-Hero" explores Swift's publicity, fame, and personal issues; it marks a return to the autobiographical songwriting that she deviated from on the 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore. In a self-recorded video posted onto Instagram, Swift said it was one of the most honest songs she had written. The lyrics contain cryptic allusions to Swift's public image and personal life that generated diverse interpretations.

The track starts with Swift examining her flaws: "I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser", which Carl Wilson from Slate described as a reflection on her early fame. In the first verse ("Midnights become my afternoons, when my depression works the graveyard shift/ All the people I've ghosted stand there in the room"), she looks back on her difficult past. According to The Washington Post's Emily Yahr, these lines allude to Swift's past celebrity controversies, including the events in 2016 that made Swift think her career was over.

The second verse has Swift discussing how her fame hinders her from having real, meaningful connections: "Sometimes I feel like everyone is a sexy baby/ And I'm the monster on the hill/ Too big to hang out/ Slowly lurching towards your city/ Pierced through the heart but never killed;" there were varied opinions about whether these lines conjectured an insult, a confession, or an exaggerated self-image, and some internet audiences said they potentially referred to the sitcom series 30 Rock. Lindsay Zoladz of The New York Times thought that the "sexy baby" lyric demonstrated the fetishization of female youth in the music industry. Swift then makes fun of her public display of charitable acts with the lines, "Did you hear my covert narcissism/ I disguise as altruism/ Like some kind of congressman?"

The chorus has Swift identifying herself as the source of her problems: "It's me, hi/ I'm the problem, it's me/ At teatime, everybody agrees/ I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror/ It must be exhausting, always rooting for the anti-hero"; some critics said that these lines constituted the song's hook. American Songwriter's Jacob Uitti said these lyrics reflected the song's central theme: taking responsibility, or a lack thereof. Uitti added that these lyrics cautioned the listeners to not look to pop stars like Swift as "saviors". In the bridge, Swift describes a nightmare in which her daughter-in-law murders her to inherit her fortune and sees herself having gone to hell for not being as earnest as she appeared to.

Some critics commented that the production complemented the lyrics. According to The New Yorker's Lauren Michele Jackson, the verses are "bisected": the lyrics are sung "aloft and lilting on one phrase and near monotonic the next". Jackson said that this delivery made it seem as if Swift backed up each confessional lyric with a rebuttal afterwards. As the song ends, Swift repeats the chorus multiple times as the instrumental halts. Varietys Chris Willman described her vocals in the last choruses as "out of breath", and The Ringers Rob Harvilla characterized them as "flustered, stammering". Jackson wrote that she sounded "weary" and, after she "[hisses]" the line "everybody agrees", "the song snaps back into place, its pep suddenly restored".

Critical reception
"Anti-Hero" received critical acclaim. Some picked it as a highlight on Midnights and lauded it as a great lead single for its lyricism, including Harvilla, Exclaim! 's Megan LaPierre, Rolling Stone 's Brittany Spanos, and The Independent 's Helen Brown. Olivia Horn of Pitchfork described the single as an amalgamation of Swift's past albums, including "the lacquered synth-pop of 1989, the neurotic image analysis of Reputation, the dense lyricism of Folklore and Evermore". Horn added that the lyrics were full of surprising twists that deserved attention, and Rob Sheffield said the song was "like Season Two of 'The Man' full of killer lines".

The production also received positive comments; Lindsay Zoladz of The New York Times called it "infectious", and Willman said that the track had an "earworm hook" and praised Swift's delivery of the final refrains as confident and a display of a "master of tragicomic dramaturgy". The Guardian critic Alexis Petridis stated "Anti-Hero" offers "a litany of small-hours self-loathing", but sensed "an appealing confidence" in Swift's approach—that she "no longer feels she has to compete on the same terms as her peers." Billboard journalist Jason Lipshutz ranked it as the best song on Midnights. He commended its "wondrously scathing self-examination", "sardonic masterstrokes", and Antonoff's "sleek, shiny" production.

The Observer critic Kitty Empire picked "Anti-Hero" as one of the most "fascinating" tracks of the album, because of its "darkest self-flagellation". Carl Wilson of Slate highlighted the lyrics, praising "the image of a touring superstar as an unrelatable monster" and Evermore-inspired "vignette" in the bridge about her future children. Wilson also admired Swift's "expanded" vocal tones, such as a "fantasy-European elevation reminiscent of Kate Bush" and "a very Yankee drawl". Calling "Anti-Hero" the "musical and emotional heart" of Midnights, Rick Quinn of PopMatters praised its "infectious" beat, "earworm" rhythm, Swift's enunciation, and Antonoff's production. He interpreted the "monster on a hill" lyric as Swift's "impossibility of blending in as one of America's biggest cultural figures." John Murphy of MusicOMH regarded "Anti-Hero" as "a Taylor Swift classic in the making", naming it one of the best songs she has ever written. DIY said "Anti-Hero" is arguably Swift's best lead-single. GQ named "Anti-Hero" one of the best songs of 2022. In a less enthusiastic review, Mark Richardson of The Wall Street Journal said the music was "overstuffed" and the lyrics were "awkwardly overwritten".

Music video
On October 16, Swift posted a short video on her social media accounts that depicted an itinerary of the events scheduled for the album launch, entitled Midnights Manifest. It specified a music video release for "Anti-Hero" the same day as the album. Excerpts from the video were shown in a teaser trailer for the album's visuals during Amazon Prime Video's broadcast of Thursday Night Football on October 20. Besides Swift, the names of the cast of the song's music video—Mike Birbiglia, John Early, and Mary Elizabeth Ellis—also appeared in the trailer. The music video for "Anti-Hero", written and directed by Swift, premiered via her Vevo channel on YouTube at 08:00 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on October 21, eight hours after the song's and album's release.

Synopsis
The video opens with Swift singing the first verse in a 1970s-style suburban home kitchen at night, briefly surrounded by ghosts in tablecloths. She opens the front door, revealing a second version of herself with her early-2010s appearance and a tour dance outfit, and they drink shots and sing the chorus together. The "current" version plays the koi fish acoustic guitar that she used on the Speak Now World Tour, while the "younger" version smashes a copy of it on the floor and criticizes the weight of the current version. A photograph of Swift's grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, is seen in the background during the bathroom scene. A third, giant version of Swift crawls into a neighbor's dinner party during the second verse, whereupon a guest unsuccessfully tries to subdue her by shooting her in the shoulder with a bow and arrow. The giant version of Swift gives a shocked and disbelieving look in response and glumly eats the guests' food alone.

The dialogue portion of the video plays out during the bridge, which describes Swift's dream of her own funeral, attended by her sons Preston and Chad (Mike Birbiglia and John Early) and daughter-in-law Kimber (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), the latter of whom Chad, who arrived from Ibiza, implicates in the apparent murder of Swift. The narrator Swift peeks from inside her elder self's coffin and eventually gets out without being noticed. The three attendees learn that Swift's last will and testament leaves them each with 13 cents and bequeaths her assets, including a beach house, to her cats Benjamin, Meredith and Olivia. Believing their mother left a secret encoded message, because "that's what mom would always do", a reference to Swift's "Easter eggs", her children keep reading but find out their inheritance is exactly as stated. This leads to bickering over who capitalized on Swift's name the most, in ways such as releasing a book and podcast or even wearing her old clothes. The ceremony ends in a brawl after Chad accuses Kimber of pushing Swift off a balcony to her death. The final scene of the video shows the first two versions of Swift sitting on the rooftop and offering a bottle of wine to the giant version, who happily accepts.

Reception
The music video received generally positive reviews from critics. However, a brief scene in the video alluding to Swift's struggles with eating disorder received mixed reactions from some social media users, who accused Swift of fatphobia. The scene depicts a depressed Swift stepping on a bathroom scale, which reads "fat", making the other, happier Swift shake her head in disapproval. An op-ed from The Cut said the scene "reinforces the idea of being 'fat' as bad". Several other social media users defended Swift. Op-eds from publications such as The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph, and television shows like The View also sided with Swift, arguing that context is important, and given her history with an eating disorder, she should not have to "sanitize" her psychological trauma to make her art "digestible" for audiences. They highlighted that the point of "Anti-Hero" and its video is to illustrate "the warped workings of her brain back when she was in the throes of an eating disorder".

Nevertheless, the video was later edited to remove the specific shot of the scale. The removal of the scene also sparked criticism. Maya Georgi of NBC News questioned why Swift has "once again, let criticism control her actions" and why "did she not stand by the critique she was making with this scene". Georgi also said that Swift was "boldly" demonstrating "the damage the rhetoric of valuing thinness and demonizing larger bodies has done to her", and that "it's not an easy thing to unlearn. I am still unlearning it. Thousands of people across the gender spectrum are still unlearning it." Tomás Mier of Rolling Stone wrote Swift "had to water down her artistic expression and how she chose to portray her lived experience" and concluded, "Simply put: It's not that [Swift] thinks being fat is a bad thing, but that she was made to believe that it was."

The casket in the funeral scene from the music video is a direct-to-consumer model purchased from a company called Titan Casket, based in Bellevue, Washington, and Andover, Massachusetts. It received online attention and experienced a "huge spike in sales", according to the company.

Commercial performance
Upon the release of Midnights, "Anti-Hero" earned over 17.4 million plays in its first 24 hours on Spotify globally, becoming the biggest opening day for a song in the platform's history. The single debuted atop the Billboard Global 200 and Global Excl. US charts, marking Swift's second number-one song on both the charts since their inception in 2020.

In the United States, "Anti-Hero" debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100 as Swift's ninth number-one song in the country, with 59.7 million streams, 13,500 digital downloads sold, and an airplay audience of 32 million. Swift became the first artist to simultaneously occupy the top 10 spots of the Billboard Hot 100 chart; the first artist to debut atop the Hot 100 with solo songs five times; the female artist with the most top-10 entries (40), surpassing Madonna (38); the first artist to debut atop both the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 simultaneously as many as four times; and the first artist to occupy the entire top-ten of the Hot 100, Streaming Songs, and Digital Songs charts simultaneously. The single spent a total of eight weeks at the top spot of the Hot 100, surpassing "Blank Space" (2014) as Swift's longest-running number-one song. It remained atop the Hot 100 for six consecutive weeks, paving way for Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (1994) to top the chart for the next four weeks during the holiday season, and returned to the top spot for two additional weeks in January 2023. "Anti-Hero" is the 10th song in Hot 100 history to spend its first six weeks at number one, and sold 327,000 digital downloads in its third week in the US, achieving the biggest digital downloads week for any song since her own "Look What You Made Me Do" (2017) sold 353,000 in its first week. The song finished 2022 as the best-selling song of the year, with a total 436,000 digital downloads sold. "Anti-Hero" spent 28 weeks in the Hot 100 top ten, surpassing "Shake It Off" as Swift's longest-running top-ten single.

The single was also Swift's first wide success on US radio formats since "Delicate" (2018), topping several airplay charts. "Anti-Hero" debuted at number 13 on the Radio Songs chart, a personal best for Swift, and eventually became her seventh number-one on the chart, making Swift the first artist to score a chart-topper in the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s decades separately. It peaked atop the Pop Airplay chart for three non-consecutive weeks and became her 10th number one on the chart and her first since "Delicate"; marked her ninth number-one on the Adult Top 40 chart, which it ruled for nine consecutive weeks to surpass "Shake It Off" as Swift's longest-running number-one single; and topped the Adult Contemporary chart dated March 25, 2023, to mark Swift's eighth number-one on the chart—the most for any artist in the 21st-century.

In Australia, "Anti-Hero" charted at number one on both the ARIA Singles and Airplay charts. It marked Swift's ninth number-one song in Australia, and became the first song ever to debut atop the airplay chart. It has spent six consecutive weeks atop the singles chart, with its first five weeks alongside Midnights' number-one run atop the albums chart—a record "Chart Double" streak. "Anti-Hero" debuted atop New Zealand's singles chart as well, and spent nine consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Philippines Songs chart, the longest for an international artist.

In the United Kingdom, "Anti-Hero" marked Swift's second number-one single in the UK after "Look What You Made Me Do"; both debuted atop the UK Singles Chart. Swift became the first woman since Miley Cyrus in 2013 (Bangerz and "Wrecking Ball") to simultaneously debut atop the albums and singles chart, following the number-one debut of Midnights as well. "Anti-Hero" spent six consecutive weeks atop the chart, surpassing "Look What You Made Me Do" to become her longest-running number one on the chart, and spent 15 non-consecutive weeks in the top ten, surpassing "Shake It Off" to become her longest-running top-ten hit, later surpassed by "Cruel Summer". It debuted atop the Irish Singles Chart, marking her third chart-topper in Ireland, and formed a Chart Double with Midnights' debut atop the Irish Albums Chart. The song was number-one in Ireland for six consecutive weeks.

Elsewhere, "Anti-Hero" scored Swift her first top-ten song on Germany's Top 100 Songs chart since "Look What You Made Me Do", debuting at number eight and later peaking at number seven whilst charting for 70 weeks, becoming Swift's longest-running single on the chart. "Anti-Hero" charted at number one in Belgium and Latvia, for six and three non-consecutive weeks, respectively. It broke the all-time records for the most streams for a song by an international artist in a week and day on Spotify Brazil and Canada. It received a gold certification from Music Canada within its first five days. "Anti-Hero" also topped the Canadian Hot 100 for five weeks, and marked her ninth number-one song in Canada. "Anti-Hero" was the ninth-most-streamed song of 2023 according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), with an equivalent of 1.31 billion global subscription streams. The hook "It's me, Hi, I'm the problem, it's me" turned into a meme.

Performances and usage

 * Swift publicly performed "Anti-Hero" for the first time on January 12, 2023, as a surprise guest at the London show of English band the 1975's 2023 concert tour, At Their Very Best.
 * A large portion of the song was used in the final episode of the fourth season of You, an American psychological thriller series on Netflix.
 * The song is on the set list of Swift's sixth headlining concert tour, the Eras Tour (2023–2024).

Cover versions

 * The song was covered by British singer-songwriter Mimi Webb and Dermot Kennedy on BBC One's Live Lounge.
 * The song was covered by Australian drum and bass band Pendulum on the Australian radio station Triple J as part of Like a Version.
 * Actor and musician Jack Black sang "Anti-Hero" while performing a striptease during the Give Back-ular Spectacular! Show at Los Angeles' Orpheum Theatre as part of a fundraising event for TV and film crews affected by the SAG-AFTRA strike.
 * The Australian rock musician Paul Kelly covered the song for the radio station Triple M.

Accolades
The single won and was nominated for various accolades. At the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards, Swift received 11 nominations, becoming the most nominated artist of the evening. "Anti-Hero" won six of the seven categories it was nominated in.

Track listing
Digital download and streaming
 * "Anti-Hero" – 3:21
 * "Anti-Hero" (Illenium remix) – 4:27
 * "Anti-Hero" (acoustic version) – 3:16

Digital download
 * "Anti-Hero" (instrumental) – 3:21
 * "Anti-Hero" (Kungs remix extended version) – 3:55

Digital download and streaming – Single
 * 1) "Anti-Hero" (featuring Bleachers) – 3:48
 * 2) "Anti-Hero" – 3:21

Digital download and streaming – Remixes
 * 1) "Anti-Hero" (featuring Bleachers) – 3:48
 * 2) "Anti-Hero" (Roosevelt remix) – 4:59
 * 3) "Anti-Hero" (Kungs remix) – 3:14
 * 4) "Anti-Hero" (Jayda G remix) – 3:35
 * 5) "Anti-Hero" – 3:21

Credits and personnel
Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Midnights.
 * Recording
 * Recorded at Rough Customer Studio (Brooklyn) and Electric Lady Studios (New York City)
 * Mixed at MixStar Studios (Virginia Beach)
 * Mastered at Sterling Sound (Edgewater, New Jersey)
 * Bobby Hawk's performance was recorded by Jon Gautier at Sound House Studios (Lakeland, Florida)


 * Personnel
 * Taylor Swift – vocals, songwriter, producer
 * Jack Antonoff – songwriter, producer, drums, programming, percussion, modular synths, Prophet-5, bass, acoustic guitars, Juno 6, Mellotron, Wurlitzer, background vocals, recording
 * Bobby Hawk – violin
 * Megan Searl – assistant engineer
 * Jon Sher – assistant engineer
 * John Rooney – assistant engineer
 * Şerban Ghenea – mix engineer
 * Bryce Bordone – assistant mix engineer
 * Randy Merrill – mastering engineer
 * Jon Gautier – recording
 * Laura Sisk – recording