Maroon (song)

"Maroon" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift from her tenth original studio album, Midnights (2022). Written and produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, the lyrics contain references to different shades of red such as maroon, burgundy, and scarlet in order to describe the haunting memories of a long-gone relationship set in New York. Musically, "Maroon" is a ballad combining dream pop, synth-pop, electropop, and trip hop. Its ambient production consists of reverbed layered vocals, trap beats, and an oscillating electric guitar creating a sustained note throughout the track.

Some music critics complimented the production and deemed the lyrics evocative, but others found both the theme and sound derivative. "Maroon" peaked at number four on the Billboard Global 200, number three on the US Billboard Hot 100, and charted within the top ten in Australia, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. The song received certifications in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Swift occasionally performed "Maroon" on her sixth headlining tour, the Eras Tour, in 2023 and 2024.

Background and release
On August 28, 2022, during her acceptance speech for Video of the Year for All Too Well: The Short Film at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift announced her tenth studio album and its impending release date on October 21. Soon after, Swift revealed the album's title—Midnights—and its cover on her social media, but she did not immediately release the track list. On September 21, about a month before the album's release, Swift announced a thirteen-episode series called Midnights Mayhem with Me on the social media platform TikTok. In each episode of the series, Swift revealed the title of one album track. In the fifth episode on September 30, Swift revealed "Maroon" as the title of track two. Republic Records released Midnights for streaming, download, and physical formats on October 21, 2022.

In 2023, Swift performed "Maroon" as a "surprise song" outside the regular setlist at four stops of her Eras Tour: East Rutherford (May 26), Inglewood (August 3), Mexico City (August 27). In 2024, she sang the song during the tour as part of mashups with "Forever & Always" (2008) at a Sydney show on February 26; with "Cornelia Street" (2019) at a Liverpool show on June 13; and with "The Black Dog" (2024) and "Come Back... Be Here" (2012) at a London show on June 21. Swift also performed it as a standalone track at an Eras Tour show in Paris on May 11.

Lyrics
"Maroon" is 3 minutes and 38 seconds long. It is a recollection of the memories of a long-gone romance. Swift's character reminisces an ex-lover—"the one [she] was dancing with in New York". The lyrics use imagery of red shades to recall specific items: the pink of a cheap rosé, the burgundy on her T-shirt from a splash of red wine, the scarlet of the blood that "rushed to [her] cheeks". In the refrain, the word "maroon" is used to describe the remnants that the decayed relationship evokes: "the mark they saw on [her] collarbone", "the rust that grew between telephones", "the lips [she] used to call home", and the funeral carnations. American Songwriter's Alli Patton wrote that the line "the rust that grew between telephones" implied that the relationship in question was a long-distance one. After detailing how the relationship derails in the second verse, the narrator contemplates how the relationship still leaves a mark on her in the bridge ("And I wake with your memory over me / That's a real fucking legacy, legacy").

Music critics found connections between "Maroon" and Swift's past songs. Billboard journalist Jason Lipshutz wrote that many of the lyrical motifs on "Maroon" were hallmarks in Swift's songwriting: memories in rich detail, vulnerability, missed romance, and the resultant feelings. Some reviewers noted a probable reference to Swift's 2012 album Red, with Carl Wilson from Slate saying that "Maroon" was a "more melancholy and experienced version" with similar themes about heartbreak. John Wohlmacher of Beats Per Minute wrote that in addition to Red, "Maroon" references the "flushed cheeks" imagery on "Illicit Affairs" (2020). He added that the New York setting was similar to the sentiments of "Cornelia Street" (2019) and "Hoax" (2020), which represented "a secret affair and emotionally crushing loss". Sharing the same idea, Powers and Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone commented that "Maroon" was a sequel to "Cornelia Street", a track about a haunting romance set in New York.  Sheffield added that "Maroon" recalled the New York romance of "Holy Ground" from Red.

Production and music
Swift wrote and produced "Maroon" with Antonoff, who programmed the track and played instruments including percussion, synthesizers (Juno 6, modular synth), piano, electric and bass guitars. Evan Smith played organ, saxophone, flute, and clarinet, and he recorded his own performance at Pleasure Hill Recording in Portland, Maine. Antonoff and engineer Laura Sisk recorded "Maroon" at Rough Customer Studio in Brooklyn and Electric Lady Studios in New York City. The track was engineered by Antonoff, Sisk, and Smith, with assistance from John Rooney, Jon Sher, and Megan Searl. "Maroon" was mixed by Serban Ghenea with assistance from Bryce Bordone at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and mastered by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound in Edgewater, New Jersey. "Maroon" is a ballad with an atmospheric and ambient soundscape. The production incorporates a thick reverb, layered vocals, synthesizers, and preset drums that create trap beats. It uses an electric guitar played on an EBow, which creates a single note that sustains and slowly oscillates up and down through the track; Alexis Petridis of The Guardian said the guitar sound evoked shoegaze. The song's second half has a buzzing synth drone. Music critics characterized the genre as dream pop, synth-pop, electropop, and trip hop.

The Line of Best Fits Paul Bridgewater described the production as "brooding", and Spins Bobby Olivier regarded the track as a "slow burner". In Paste, Ellen Johnson compared the trap-tinged production and "light rapping" on "Maroon" to the music of "Dress", a track off Swift's 2017 album Reputation. Ann Powers from NPR said "Maroon" evoked the music of the drama series Twin Peaks, while Pitchfork critic Vrinda Jagota said the "droning synths" resembled Lorde's 2017 album Melodrama. Wohlmacher found the single-note electric guitar to complement the "lingering pain" expressed in the lyrics, resulting in a "borderline traumatic" listening experience. Quinn Moreland from Pitchfork wrote that whereas the lyrics were intensely personal, the production had a "consistently austere" atmosphere that made the track "oddly impersonal, bordering on numb".

Critical reception
Some critics praised the lyrics of "Maroon". Courteney Larossa and Callie Ahlgrim from Insider hailed "Maroon" as a standout track from Midnights; Lacrossa called the song a "brilliant" play on Swift's color theory about love, while Ahlgrim stated that it was a "shimmering" nostalgic rush of her past songs. Pop-culture writer Kenneth Partridge, in an article for Genius, found it to contain some of the most poetic lyrics Swift had written. Melissa Ruggieri from USA Today described the lyrical imagery as "striking" and "classically vivid".

Some others were fond of the production. Sheffield praised the song as a "gorgeous ballad", and Esquire critic Alex Bilmes said it had "a killer vocal and lyrics worthy of a Ryan Murphy soap opera". Lipshutz said that although "Maroon" contained many of Swift's songwriting details that had been familiar, "their impact hasn't dulled one bit". Wohlmacher labeled it as an "immediate masterpiece" and said it was "maybe the pop song of the year", and Moreland said that it was a track that "may be the one that keeps [her] awake at night". Petridis called the song "superb" and deemed it to represent the album's subdued, atmospheric production, and Bridgewater remarked that it was one of the album's "minor flashes of brilliance". Mark Richardson of The Wall Street Journal deemed "Maroon" the best track on Midnights because it "unfolds gradually and hits an exciting peak where words and tune are precisely matched".

In a less enthusiastic review, Jon Caramanica of The New York Times was not impressed by the production and said that Swift's vocals were "stacked together to the point of suffocation". Similarly, Paul Attard from Slant Magazine found the production somewhat redundant. Wilson considered "Maroon" a decent song on its own but thought that it made the album drag. He added that its songwriting was "a bit generic and fan-servicey". Exclaim!'s Megan LaPierre appreciated the first verse and the bridge but found that the rest of the song "stumbles in comparison".

Commercial performance
"Maroon" debuted and peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100; its first-week figures included 37.6 million streams, 2,900 downloads, and 471,000 airplay impressions. The song along with nine fellow Midnights tracks made Swift the first act to concurrently occupy the top 10 of the Hot 100 and surpassed Madonna as the woman with the most top-10 entries. It peaked at number four on the Canada and was certified platinum. The song reached number six on the United Kingdom's Audio Streaming Chart and received a silver certification.

Elsewhere, "Maroon" appeared on many territories worldwide: it peaked within the top 10 on singles charts in Australia (4), the Philippines (4), Malaysia (5), New Zealand (5) and the top 30 in Portugal (11), Vietnam (11), Iceland (12), South Africa (12), Croatia (19), Luxembourg (20), Hong Kong (22), Sweden (26), and Norway (30). The song peaked at number four on the Billboard Global 200.

Personnel
Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Midnights.


 * Taylor Swift – vocals, songwriting, production
 * Jack Antonoff – songwriting, production, engineering, programming, percussion, Juno 6, modular synth, piano, electric guitars, bass, recording
 * Evan Smith – engineering, organ, saxophone, flute, clarinet, recording
 * Laura Sisk – engineering, recording
 * Megan Searl – assistant engineering
 * John Sher – assistant engineering
 * John Rooney – assistant engineering
 * Serban Ghenea – mixing
 * Bryce Bordone – assistant mixing
 * Randy Merrill – mastering