Issue #61: Practical Magic for Pragmatic People

Baby, it's witchcraft.

Morning Person is a weekly newsletter packed with obsessively-curated recommendations and ideas—let’s get to it!

🎧 Taylor Swift’s new album ‘Midnights (3 am Edition)’: It feels fitting that I was still awake at midnight the night Taylor’s latest album, all about insomnia, came out. At 3 AM EST, she dropped seven additional songs (everything after “Mastermind”). The album is about everything that’s kept her up late at night: love (the album is full of references to Joe Alwyn, including a song she co-wrote with him), self-sabotage, revenge, and false friendships. I’ve been a devoted fan since the days I felt like “Fifteen” was speaking directly to me, but this album, and its accompanying “Anti-Hero” music video, has major ‘1989’ vibes and reminds me of Lorde’s album, ‘Solar Power’ (“Karma” in particular). Favorite songs include, “Lavender Haze,” “Maroon,” “Anti-Hero,” and “You’re On Your Own, Kid.” And, though it feels like poor timing… Carly Rae Jepson’s new album ‘The Loneliest Time’ also came out Friday and is, as the title suggests, all about her relationship with loneliness, written during pre-vaccine pandemic.

🎥 Bodies Bodies Bodies: I knew my best chance of making it through this movie, as with any scary movie, was to see it in theaters. Peer pressure is often the only power strong enough to keep me in my seat and outlast the scary parts. And it was scary, but mostly for Sarah DeLappe’s cutting dialogue. DeLappe, who I attended high school with, wrote the play, “The Wolves,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist comprised of conversations amongst a teen soccer team during warm ups. ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ applies her sharp dialogue to an Agatha Christie tale. A group of friends plays a Mafia-type game where one person “kills” people by tapping on their shoulder, that suddenly gets real when someone actually ends up dead.