Maroon (song)

It has an ambient production consisting of reverbed layered vocals, trap beats, and an oscillating electric guitar that creates a sustained note throughout the track.

Several music critics who picked "Maroon" as a highlight on Midnights complimented the production and deemed the lyrics evocative, but some others found both the theme and sound derivative.

[2] 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.

[9][10] 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.

Billboard's 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.

[16] Some reviewers noted a probable reference to Swift's 2012 album Red,[17][14][18] with Carl Wilson from Slate saying that "Maroon" was a "more melancholy and experienced version" with similar themes about heartbreak.

[11] 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.

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.

[15] 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.

[27] Ann Powers from NPR said "Maroon" evoked the music of the drama series Twin Peaks,[19] while Pitchfork's Vrinda Jagota said the "droning synths" resembled Lorde's 2017 album Melodrama.

[11] 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".

Sheffield praised the song as a "gorgeous ballad",[20] and Esquire's Alex Bilmes said it had "a killer vocal and lyrics worthy of a Ryan Murphy soap opera".

[32][36] 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".

[40][41] 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.