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Taylor Swift - 1989
 
Taylor Swift was born on 13 December 1989 is the world’s biggest pop star and has an estimated worth of $64 million.
 
I, Rob Leedham, was also born on 13 December 1989, have 1,209 Twitter followers and am writing this review as water drips from the ceiling of my crap South London flat.
 
Where did it all go wrong for me? Why are our lives so different? Will someone ever write a list about 10 Times I Left The Gym Looking Flawless? Perhaps the Pennsylvania-born idol’s fifth album will provide some answers. Assuming it doesn’t, I’ll simply assume that life is fundamentally unfair and my mother is the only person who’ll ever appreciate me.
 
If there's one thing you should know about Taylor Swift, it's that she's perfect. An all-American girl with the songwriting flair to write every millennial's favourite 'Love Story' at 17 years old, she’s cultivated an aura where even her flaws are a source of enduring popularity. When I publicly celebrate my inadequacies with booze and ex-girlfriends, this usually leads to a ‘final warning’ email. When Taylor makes light of her 24/7 party lifestyle and inability to keep a man, she’s rewarded with her second US Number 1 single.
 
Like ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’, ‘Shake It Off’ is more than a song - it’s a mantra. Swift’s self-empowerment is so irrepressible that you can actually hear her kiss off the haters with the help of a brass backing section. Now I have nothing against strong, independent women with the world at their feet. Were I not destined for eventual greatness, 1989 might make make me feel unimportant and a failure.
 
Much like my soon to be published journal, the album is littered with not so subtle references to former friends and ex-lovers. Yet it's a rare occasion when Swift plays the victim. Even in the Lana Del Rey-inspired 'Wildest Dreams', where brooding synths and doomy fatalism collide, the emphasis is on Taylor moving onto better things. I'll stick my neck out here and say her arrogance is entirely justified.
 
Much has been made of the ‘Fearless’ singer's switch from country to pop by buddying up with producers like Max Martin a.k.a. the bloke behind '...Baby One More Time'. What's really more significant is her enduring positivity in the face of adulthood. The proud defiance of 'Welcome To New York' and 'Bad Blood' remind me of several iconic hardcore bands you've probably never heard of. There's that same 'stay positive' philosophy, and a fair few shouty bits. Best of all is 'Style', which celebrates Swift's fling with 1D's Harry Styles (geddit?) as though being young and reckless is all a part of growing up. This is something anyone can relate to, whether they've made a string of poor romantic choices or 'done a whitey' on the weekend gone by.
 
Taylor Swift may not be challenging societal norms in the same way as Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and my own band CHRIST ALIVE are, but she’s relatable and that counts for a lot. I spent a surprising amount of 1989 rooting for its protagonist and sharing in her triumph. As it turns out, we’re not so different after all. Now if only I knew how to make more people adore me…
 
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1989 Album Review
 
Let's get a couple of things out of the way. Taylor Swift is not an alternative artist. Her phenomenal success and multi-millions in sales will always separate her from a coterie of musicians scrabbling to create something worthy or pure, even distancing her from fellow pop artists who cannot conceive of eclipsing her reach. Taylor Swift is not–as yet–pushing sonic boundaries or changing pop music. If anything, she is precisely what we imagine the face of pop music to be; she is doll perfect and upbeat, she loves, (to quote the 2011 documentary Journey To Fearless) "glitter, surprise and costume changes", her voice is clear and bright, but not extraordinary.
 
But it's tedious both to ignore and to dismiss Taylor Swift. Of course if you want to that's fine–but I can guarantee she doesn't give two shits if you do, and it's unlikely to stall her in her shimmering tracks. Whether you see her as a perky nuisance, or an artist using her success to forge independent strides, it's impossible to deny that the release of her fifth album (titled after the year of her birth) is a cultural event, deserving of attention outside of its milieu. When Lena Dunham requested the indomitable lead single 'Shake It Off' during a recent 6 Music interview, it sent audible, grumbling ripples through their serious music listenership.
 
Swift has long be rightly hailed as a skilled songwriter and 1989, which features more collaborative efforts than any of her other releases, takes that skill and polishes it to a melodic landscape you can both see your face in and eat your dinner off. I listened to it non-stop over a weekend and, when I put it on again five days later, I still knew every melody and around 65% of the lyrics.
 
While opening track 'Welcome To New York' might be the weakest song on the album–a little too ripe for insertion into a future episode of Glee and less interesting and shadowy than the rest of the record, it's also the exception. Every other song is crammed with merit, from the complexities of her lyrics to the tight production choices which cloak her melodies and are the cause of the album's irrepressible catch. In swapping her acoustic led, country-tinged confessionals for the colder embrace of synth patterns, drum machines and processed vocals, Swift has smoothed her Disney-edge while retaining the very particular, very appealing identity of her narrative world.
 
The subject is her stock in trade, namely heartache, yearning and romantic tribulation; "I'm dying to see how this one ends," she ponders/assumes in the wry, twisting banger, 'Blank Space'. Then there's 'Out Of The Woods', co-written with Jack Antonoff, a paean to a knife edge love affair and nothing less than a sonic gateway drug that will mould a new generation of Kate Bush fans. My personal favourite, 'All You Had To Do Was Stay' wastes neither a word, note or rhythmic shot, from the rat-a-tat of the verse to the electronic falsetto stabs of the chorus. While the thudding girl-gang anthem 'Bad Blood' sees her voice crack with the pop equivalent of the cry-break, all sass and bile.
 
The dreamlike ballads and more saccharine fairy tales are still there ('How You Get The Girl', and 'You Are In Love') but they're balanced with a metaphorical distance and melancholy that gathers itself within the sisterhood of Cindy Lauper, The Bangles or Stevie Nicks. 'Clean' and 'I Know Places' bid farewell to schoolgirl crushes, welcoming in a dusky adulthood that's sound-tracked by spare piano and echoing drums, her never throwaway lyrics sparkling–sad and clever over the surface.
 
Swift has traded girlish humour for knowing wit, and wide-eyed romanticism for lived through ache, citing pop music prevalent in the late 80s as her inspiration. While these references are clear to hear ('Crazy For You' era Madonna and Lauper's 'Time After Time' in particular), what the album really does is ally her more with the likes of Robyn or Haim, who have both curved the popular genre to their individualistic whim. A sensible niche to occupy as a maturing pop phenomenon.
 
As such, this direction is bold and new in terms of Swift's own journey, if not in the sense of pop music as a whole. It's the sound of her trying out the vocal tropes, anthemic choruses and recognisable production trends of her contemporaries but, rather than ironing the character out of her, it somehow crystallises into something formidable. OK, perhaps you might not be able to pick her out of a vocal line up, but I like that the fact that it's her writerly, rather than her physical voice which sets her apart. Swift broadcasts her enthusiasms and messy, emotional humanness to such a volume that no amount of drum machines or slick production can drown her out. With 1989 she has succeeded in leveraging the most cordial and familiar of pop music outpourings to something that feels like a statement, a work of note and the sinew of some kind of emotional connective tissue–binding tastemakers, rock critics, guys I work with and my 12 year old cousin; irrevocably and unexpectedly. The only way this is possible is by making something that's very good, or at least, as perfect as 21st pop albums get.
 
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1989 album review
 
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There are three storylines at play on Taylor Swift’s excellent fifth album 1989, sixth if you include the Christmas album and seventh if you include the live album:
 
1. The trip from Nashville to New York City.
2. The trip from country to EDM.
3. The trip from the heart to the feet.
 
It is a straight continuation from her previous album, Red, both musically and thematically, it negotiates between memories of a lost love and the sort of songwriting professionalism she has nailed on earlier movie songs like “Safe And Sound” and “Today Was A Fairytale”. With an exuberance mistaken for egotism and shielding melancholia, she expresses life as a twenty something at the top of the pop pile: Big Apple Red, if you will. But everything edges towards a sort of loneliness and a making do: it is sad in many ways, it keeps on looking back at the hopes of the teen Tay and making do, it diminishes her hope in the happy ending, but it won’t admit it to itself. Taylor’s just going to dance, dance, dance.
 
That’s the first confusion on 1989, when she sings “This love is good, this love is bad,this love is alive back from the dead, these hands had to let it go free and this love came back to me” it sounds like the world of imagination in ways “I say I heard that you been out and about with some other girl… He says, what you’ve heard it’s true but I can’t stop thinking about you and I said I’ve been there too a few times” doesn’t. Piecing this story together, the story inside, it is just a long goodbye where Taylor settles for a second best relationship at odds with the hopes of “The Story Of Us”. So, to settle down the storyline, she fakes it a little.
 
Then she added Max Martin and Shellback and some stuff with the dreaded Ryan Tedder and the excellent Jack Antonoff, and produced it into a sleek big machine hook and tune laden masterwork: yes, a diary, but a diary where she daydreams what she can’t actually do, and like one of those weird daydreams that turn dark on you she loses herself inside them. It works from one end to another because Taylor’s calling card, her songs, survive and sometimes thrive whatever the arrangement. 1989‘s weakest song is the Tedder co-written “I Know Places”  and it is perfection in the voice memo demo piano only version, it was hurt in the arrangement.
 
This is essentially the story of relationship that began with “I Knew You Were Trouble” on Red and ends with ‘Clean”, the last song where she compares the finishing end of her romance  to a recovered addict.  It is one of her great songs as  is  “You Are In Love” (off the deluxe Target version – not the first time Tay has left a masterpiece off an album and given it to them: the elegant “Ours” was as good as anything on Speak Now, and the acoustic “State Of Grace” remains her greatest vocal tour de force), where Taylor finds the maximum distance between the songs sentiments and her own singularity, “You understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars and why I’ve spent my whole life trying to put it into words” she sings in what amounts to her saddest line ever.
 
1989 opens with the eager  “Welcome To New York”, the one song everybody hates though I love it. Considered proforma electro pop by those in the know, I think it is an enthusiastic arms open wide introduction to the Big City (no wonder they named her the head of the New York welcoming committee). It is much much better than the atrocious “Empire State Of Mind” -really, why are we all singing the praises of Jay-Z in a New York anthem?
 
New York anthems. Let me help:
Manhattan
New York New York (from  “On The Town”)
New York New York (Sinatra song)
New York State Of Mind
 
After that, pick and choose but include “Welcome To New York” miles ahead of Hova.
But if you wanna say “Welcome to New York” could be better, alright it could be better, but nothing can compete with the next three songs, “Blank Space”, “Style” and “Out Of The Woods”. Of the three only “Out Of The Woods” has to be electronic pop, only “Out Of The Woods” could not be simply rearranged for acoustic guitar. Both “Blank Space” and “Styles’ (Shellback and Max Martin co-wrote those two with our hero) don’t need the fizzed out mid-80s synth pop to signify. The three are the soul of 1989. As the album goes deeper inwards, Taylor can’t get the hues of the song perfect the way she does on these three songs. Those songs sound like her dancing, they sound like the relationship she is writing about: a joyful misstep, a bright and dark mistake: but if there is any emotional compromise it isn’t in the music: “Blank Space” sneers at her reputation , “Style” describes what it really is like inside the relation and “Out Of The Woods” expresses how it feels.
 
All three of these songs are very stylized and sleek modern pop, but what that proves is that like many a media person before her,  she expresses her deepest feeling best within the confines of a studio manipulated sound. We know Taylor can sing by now but she tweaks and manipulates her voice, remember, she has sung with T-Pain. “”I Wish You Would” starts like Joni Mitchell with doctored acoustic guitars and then swerves away, “All You Had To Do Is Stay” splices in an operatic up an octave “stay” at the end of each line of the chorus give it a derailed feel. She gets closer to the reality of her feelings by using the studio to play with the sounds. She lets the studio signify.
 
Two songs later she sings her great pop triumph: “Shake It off” and there are two more triumphs, “Clean” and “You Are In Love’ before the end of the album.
 
Six songs, “Blank Space”, “Style”, “Out Of The Woods”, Shake It Off”, “Clean” and “You Are In Love”  carry 1989 but nothing else is remotely bad, both “All You Had To Do Is Stay” and “I Wish You Would” are sweet earnest and honest and the sort of mid-album sureness of hand Katy “Bad Blood” Perry didn’t manage with Prism. “How You Get The Girl” is a rules for girls thing-y. “New Romantics” an in-joke. All of it is hook driven melodic electro pop but don’t let the form confuse you, this is what Taylor does and the little girls will love it all. It follows a romance storyline on one hand, and an On The Town on the other, tangles em up and leaves em stranded. When it misses, “Wildest Dream” and “I Know Places”,  it isn’t a disaster, there is no long girlie shrugs as occurs on Speak Now and Fearless: it is on an even keel. And while nothing here beats “State Of Grace”, let alone “Our Song”, there is nothing as bathetic as “Back To December” or self-serving as “Dear John”.
 
Seven of thirteen songs are produced by Max Martin· Shellback, two produced with Tedder, two with Antonoff and one with indie Queen Imogen Heap –it comes together though as purely a Taylor Swift production, as the latest in her two year cycle of album making, of living her life, and sharing her life, and studying the intersections between who she really is and who she thinks she might well be. Any reading of that Rolling Stone interview this summer will find a woman living a life so out of everyday experience it is hard to remain centered and people misread her: she uses social media to ground herself much better than Lady Gaga ever did, and she speaks to her audience of teenage to 20 something girls and women very directly and clearly, over the heads of PR handouts and even pop sales (and even me). Two days ago Billboard predicted 1989 will sell over a million copies in its first week.
She deserves it.
 
With all the clamor around her, the songs are the story, it is ALL CONTENT. The interviews, the reviews, the cover stories, the talk shows, all of it is background noise. The only thing that matters is the music and the music is excellent. Is 1989 more than a masterpiece? It is hard to figure out what will last and the album has a hole where the love story should live: it is about an absence and it is about the why of the absence, and, like the search for god, you can’t prove a negative. It appears to be another story of love lost and the growth that occurs, how it isn’t always a love story. It is always back to that ride in a car where the guy admits to being unfaithful and the girl says “been there done that”. And that is a hard thing to write an album that will last based solely upon. Taylor is prevaricating, or if that suggests telling a half truth I don’t quite mean that, she is studying her heart in comparison to other peoples hearts and working through its universality, through how it reflects in all our hearts.
 
Taylor suffers a little from Mamet’s “too big for your britches” –nobody can find anything to whinge about so they complain that she brags about her houses. Since there is no real stain, and you try being that rich and that popular and the worst thing they can find to complain about is that you are a serial monogamist and brag about your houses, gwan just try it, The woman is, indeed, an exemplary role model and more importantly…
 
I go back to the songwriter. She is a great great great songwriter, all  producers and musicians really add to her songs are arrangements, she does the songwriting herself. There is no way of denying “Out Of The Woods”, it is one of the great dance tracks and it is a unique paradigm, the break neck verses to the hard swinging spooked out chorus, the operatic “All You Had To Do is Stay”, the deep blue “This Love” and the rinky dinky “Clean”. First and foremost these are great songs.
 
Will the songs last forever? Maybe a couple will, maybe not, but will they get you through to Jingle Ball? Undoubtedly.  The media, the Bob Lefsetz of the world, believe that because they remember an album from 1971, the album is remembered. It isn’t. Pop is ephemeral by definition, it is disposable and it should be, it comes and goes and if it sticks that has much to do with what we imbue it with as with the other qualities it has. Complaining that pop music doesn’t last is like complaining that you can no longer taste an ice cream you enjoyed an hour ago.
 
 1989 is a tragedy disguised as a comedy, it is about  what happens when the one thing that matters most to you ceases to be a reality and how you qualify the loss by lowering your expectations. You compromise, you throw yourself at your work, your home, your friends, you shake it up and you shake it off, and you even compromise with the guy and become buddies with benefits and then in the end, the pain isn’t gone, it is just dulled. What I am trying to say is: it is a major theme for a major album. In a shallow pop moment, it has real depth and beauty.
 
Grade: A
 
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Album Review: Taylor Swift, '1989' (Big Machine Records)
 
I’ll admit it, I’m a music snob who didn’t even think about giving Taylor Swift’s “1989” the time of day. Late afternoons combing Guestroom records for Pulp reissues or that random Wild Beasts masterpiece is more up my alley. But what kind of reviewer would I be if, from time to time, I didn’t remove myself from my comfortable waters of nose-turned-up music listening and dip my toes ever so tenderly into the jaws of the pop behemoth?
 
First up is the anthem “Welcome to New York,” in all of its cheesy, fist-pumping glory. The synth and key work is actually entertaining and, honestly, pretty great. However, it’s hard to get behind lyrically, seeing as how I just can’t believe any of this comes from personal experience, written by her or otherwise. Taking it literally, it could be easy to pick apart, but that’s not what pop music is about. It’s about satisfaction and escapism. “Style” immediately caught my attention, as it has flashes of Chromatics and College, both given time in the sun with the “Drive” soundtrack.
 
When I arrived at “Shake It Off” I was completely ready to write it off, but something about that chorus is absolutely infectious. I found myself humming it while out with friends, only to cut myself off abruptly with my eyes darting around the table to make sure no one heard me. “Bad Blood” has that beat that’s omnipresent and gargantuan at every turn, yet lacks the bite and growl to really shine in the presence of the pop pomp that surrounds it. In the hands of a band like Sleigh Bells, “Bad Blood” could be potentially deadly. “This Love” actually reeks of Chromatics in a great way in places, and “I Know Places,” for being the penultimate track, only clocking in at three minutes and change, does a great job trimming the fat and being big in all the places that count.
 
With her grand entrance into pop music with “1989,” Swift makes a big argument for her longevity in the global spotlight. The record is razor sharp, expertly executed and admittedly fairly fun. I was surprised when I browsed through the notes on iTunes that she actually mentions her writing and producing team in the second sentence, which impressed me. Maybe I shouldn’t be embarrassed for humming “Shake It Off” after all.
 
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A Reasonable Conversation About Taylor Swift's New Album, Which Is The Best Album Ever
 
JEN VAFIDIS: HI JANE. There is a new Taylor Swift album out today, and it is already totally undeniable. The first single is a #1 hit, the second single was #1 on iTunes within 10 minutes of its release, and Taylor has been teasing us via Instagram about these new songs for what seems like years. It’s only been a few weeks, but still. I love her, you love her, let’s talk about her.
 
JANE HU: When I tell people that 1989 is going to get me through the rest of 2014, I’m 100% not exaggerating. Even though the three pre-releases have really sent some MIXED SIGNALS about the feel of the album, T-Swift has never let me down before. I adore this album, but the leading track actually had me a little worried for a moment!
 
VAF: I hate the first song on this album, and I have a feeling you also don’t love it. But maybe I am wrong?
 
HU: No, I think you’re right! This opening track is kind of terrible. Why is this the opening track? Why is this track even on the album? Is the album about New York? NOPE. Also, as someone who has once upon a time fallen HARD for New York, I’m just not sure it captures anything cogent about the experience. It’s so repetitive. Do you have anything else to say about this track?
 
VAF: It’s so repetitive. And it’s bland, which is something I haven’t thought about a Taylor single before, I think. It’s so flat and non-specific that it’s about nothing instead of being universal. I have been pretending it doesn’t exist, basically. Do you want to skip ahead to the next track, which we both love? I kind of want to do that.
 
HU: YES, LET’S. “Blank Space”! Where do I even start? This might be my favorite track on the album so far? Though Tay albums are usually slow burns, which is part of why they’re amazing.
 
VAF: Yes. Somehow my favorite song from Red is “Holy Ground” now? I don’t know when that happened.
 
HU: There’s a general consensus around how unequivocally “poppy” this album is, which I think is basically another vague way of saying that Tay is continuing her departure from country (confessional/narrative) songs toward the more general (vague? repetitive? timeless?) tradition of “pop” lyrics. “Blank Space” is pop, but it’s also doing something incredibly interesting vis-a-vis Tay’s earlier music; instead of fixating on the end of a relationship (post-break-up) or the burgeoning start of a romance (see half the tracks on Red), “Blank Space” is thinking in terms of the whole trajectory of one relationship BEFORE it begins.
 
VAF: Yes! The narrative has changed from “I’m taking a risk and I don’t know how it’s going to turn out” to “I can see how this is going to go, and I’m going to do it anyway.”
 
HU: As someone who unabashedly overidentifies with Tay’s ability to build deep attachments very quickly—over and over—this feels like a song that I didn’t even know I was waiting for. Jon Caramanica describes it as “a meta-narrative about Ms. Swift’s reputation as a dating disaster,” but it might be more than that? It’s meta, certainly, but it also allows for the possibility of different future outcomes that do not have to repeat Tay’s past (whatever that might be). I mean, the song is titled BLANK SPACE. “So it's gonna be forever / Or it's gonna go down in flames.” There’s a lot of old Tay even in this pop song, by which I mean it’s not really about being a disaster, and a lot about being hopeful.
 
VAF: Right. Call her insane, but she’s more than that. She puts extremes side-by-side to reveal their limitations and to show they can co-exist. She’s “a nightmare dressed like a daydream.” That’s such a great reveal: you’re the bad boy, but guess what, I’m worse! And I’m one step ahead of you because I know I’m like this, I’ve always been like this, and you’re only about to find out.
 
HU: If she’s a disaster, she’s a very disciplined one: “I could make the bad pass good for a weekend”; “Find out what you want / Be that girl for a month”; Keep you second guessing like oh my god, / who is she?”
 
VAF: If it’s a game, she’s going to win. How about the third song? My first thought, before I realized I loved it anyway, was: someone loved the Drive soundtrack, I guess.
 
HU: And like Drive, it’s completely invested in CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD TROPES.
 
VAF: OH GOD, YES. All surfaces. He’s driving her around, like the guy from “All Too Well” was upstate, but no one is finding out about anyone’s T-ball days in “Style.”
 
HU: Totally. It’s so unspecific! Unlike the next track, “Out of the Woods,” which has this amazing bridge that is kind of surprisingly specific? “Remember when you hit the brakes too soon? Twenty stitches in the hospital room.”
 
VAF: Oh Lord, that bridge. It’s something, right?
 
HU: It simultaneously enacts loss AND hope.
 
VAF: The way she sings “I remember” makes you think that’s the most powerful thing a person could say about something so distressing. She’s so good at that.
 
HU: I am pretty breezy about the next track, “All You Had To Do Was Stay.” It’s just fine for me! What about you?
 
VAF: Oh man, I love this embarrassing song. It’s the most Max Martin-y song on the album, I think? Like, put this song in the hands of a boy band, film them dancing a really literal dance in an airplane hangar, and it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise.
 
HU: My favorite part is definitely the dragged-out “this is what you wanted (ah ah ah-ohh)” bridge. (The bridges on this album are incredible.)
 
VAF: She’s teaching a master class on both pop bridges and uncomplicated (but perfect) rhymes.
 
HU: Ummmm speaking of: what about the talky bridge in “Shake It Off”? “TO THE FELLA OVER THERE WITH THE HELLA GOOD HAIR”? I think about that line all. the. time.
 
VAF: Ahhhh, I meaaaan. I feel like the bridge to “Shake It Off” is unfairly maligned, Jane. UNFAIRLY MALIGNED. It’s not cool, it’s not good “rapping,” but it is somewhat uncanny, right? It’s fun, it seeps into your brain. It’s just kind of a fact, I’m used to it now. I also find “Shake It Off” sad, but maybe I’m alone in that. The way she sings “But I keep cruuuising” makes me sad.
 
HU: Y’know, the way Tay has to necessarily clamp up a bit in this album in order to be more pop is melancholy in its own way. Or that the trick here is to “shake it off” instead of laying it all out there in the open? Shaking it off is, more often than not, HARD. And perhaps not coincidentally, the track that follows is all about forms of not letting go. The opening line, “It's 2 am, in your car”—which later modulates to “It’s 2 am, in my room”—resists forgetting, and I think that spirit haunts a lot of this album that is often about nostalgia.
 
VAF: Yeah, one of my favorite Taylor themes is a song’s potential to shape someone else’s nostalgia. “When you think Tim McGraw / I hope you think my favorite song” being one of the best examples, of course.
 
HU: Your point about “Tim McGraw” also helps clarify Taylor’s move from drawing from a country music legacy to a pop one. “Out Of The Woods” sounds like a track from The Breakfast Club soundtrack.
 
VAF: Oh god, it does. Taylor’s version of the late 80s/early 90s is pop you’d hear in a dentist’s waiting room. I made a Spotify playlist to keep track of the songs/artists I was reminded of while listening to this album, and there are a LOT of Roxette songs on it. There are also some Phil Collins singles, some Amy Grant classics (lol), and one T’Pau song. Sometimes I thought she was trying to remake Diamonds and Pearls without the sex. Like, if Prince sang “Cream” or “Gett Off” without sounding like he had a painful erection. Which some people might argue is a bad/impossible thing, but I don’t know, it makes sense in my head, and it’s kind of sweet when it’s Taylor. Lots of these songs sound like she’s enthusiastically playing air drums in the car. The beginning of “Bad Blood” is some arena rock/glam thing, and I LOVE it.
 
HU: “Bad Blood” reminds me of anthemic Queen, in a very endearing way. Its “Hey!”s are far more Brian May than Marcus Mumford. The metaphors are sometimes painfully literal (“Band-aids don't fix bullet holes”), but they completely work in the context of such instrumentals.
 
VAF: It’s a musical step up from her previous brat anthems (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” e.g.), but the lyrics are still classically junior high. I want to congratulate both of us on not saying who any of these songs are “about,” by the way.
 
HU: We’ve made it so far!!! Whoever he is, he completely deserves the rhyming designations of “mad love” turned to “bad blood.”
 
VAF: She rhymes “love” with “blood.” And “problems” with “solve ‘em.”
 
HU: She’s a poet. So even while people won’t stop comparing “Wildest Dreams” with Lana Del Rey, I actually think the poetic logic is still fundamentally different there.
 
VAF: Go on! I am lukewarm on this one, mostly because it depresses me. She wants him to remember her, but does he? Probably not. I do love the bridge though.
 
HU: Part of what’s so enabling about Taylor’s lyrics are that it’s almost irrelevant whether he remembers her or not. His wildest dreams are, first and foremost, hers—I love the privileging of that! Lana Del Rey sings “Summertime Sadness” (the closest relative to “Wildest Dreams”?) largely from a position of what she can communicate to the departed: “I just wanted you to know that, baby, you're the best.” But Taylor oversteps this and allows the other to exist ONLY in the context of him desiring her. Does that make any sense, or have I completely lost it?
 
VAF: It makes perfect sense. She did it on Red too, which I think we emailed feverishly about. She says that maybe what they had was a “masterpiece” and “the only real thing” he’s “ever known,” and it’s way over-the-top and flattering to her and her alone. She might as well be saying, “Oh, maybe I’m amazing, and you’re the worst?” Another good Tay theme that comes up on this album is her obsession with vows. Speak now or forever hold your peace: you get the girl, she tells us on “How You Get The Girl,” by telling her how you feel AS SOON AS YOU CAN. Meet me in the pouring rain, etc.
 
HU: “How You Get The Girl” is, for me, a kind of sweeter response to “Blank Space.” It’s also about the prelude to a relationship, and again, deeply about timing:
 
Say it's been a long six months
And you were too afraid to tell her what you want
And that's how it works:
It's how you get the girl
 
And then, later: “I want you for worse or for better [...] I want you for ever and ever.” That’s a LOT of commitment to be thinking about for someone who hasn’t even asked the girl out yet. It’s insane and bold and I love it. It’s like, Taylor knows it’s inappropriate to ask these things on a first date, but she’s still going to FLIRT with the idea of forever. Deeply romantic in retrospect, maybe, but overwhelming and potentially creepy to start? But, I mean, I get it.
 
VAF: I get it too. It’s what we love about her. She’s a demanding person.
 
HU: But demanding with a PURPOSE. The lyrical implications of the song are kind of buried by the fact that this is basically a disco song? It really reminds me of Rita Ora’s “I Will Never Let You Down,” which is about forever in a different way. Disco can get away with a lot of feverishly dreamy content.
 
VAF: Right, because disco operates in the dark, when everything is INTENSE and you say shit you might not mean in the morning.
 
HU: See: this photo.
 
VAF: LOL. I think here is where we mention that there’s an excessive cheesiness to Taylor’s pop moments that is reminiscent of Dolly Parton’s pop moments. Both women like sequins and fringe and silliness. But you know what’s sort of not silly and seems to be on a different plane from the rest of the album? “This Love,” the eleventh track, is so, so serious. Like Taylor is gunning for having her songs overplayed at every wedding ever.
 
HU: This is going to reveal the range of pop I listen to, but “This Love” reminds me of Emmy Rossum’s “High”?? I think it might be trying to be Annie Lennox but it ends up sounding like over-synthesized classical pop–which, again, not necessarily a bad thing.
 
VAF: I’d also throw Donna Lewis’s “I Love You Always Forever” into that mix.
 
HU: Oooooooh yes, totally. “Your touch / my cheek” makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. “I Know Places” escalates Seriousness one step further, eh?
 
VAF: I hate “I Know Places.” Taylor is the most paranoid singer in pop right now, and it’s stifling on this song.
 
HU: What is happening in that intro!
 
VAF: NOTHING GOOD, JANE.
 
HU: I don’t think anyone can get away with ending so many phrases with vocal up-slides.
 
VAF: Not even Taylor.
 
HU: MAYBE RIHANNA. Maybe Rihanna could get away with it.
 
VAF: Rihanna could get away with several murders.
 
HU: Can you imagine ANYONE ELSE singing “Rude Boy”??
 
VAF: Nope. No one else should sing “Rude Boy,” it’s a proven fact.
 
HU: If Taylor Swift is the most paranoid singer in pop, then we just might be the most paranoid readers of her. I have to tell you my theory that the next track, “Clean,” actually doubles as a song about the current drought in California. We just had experienced a good bout of rain over the weekend for the first time in tooooo long!
 
VAF: I’m glad to hear it! I hate this song though, and I don’t know why.
 
HU: You probably hate it because it’s just a slightly less slide-y version of “I Know Places.”
 
VAF: Yes, that’s probably it. Okay, moving on. THE BONUS TRACKS.
 
HU: MOVING ON TO “WONDERLAND.” OK, can we please discuss the cameo of Mr. Green Eyes? These lyrics: “Didn't you flash your green eyes at me.”
 
VAF: Oh, I didn’t notice that!
 
HU: I sort of want Taylor to be singing about green eyes forever. This song is lilting and lyrical, but I don’t find it tired or anything. It kind of moves between angry and dreamy? Even that line about the green eyes is menacing: he FLASHES them at her? This song is torn!
 
VAF: You mean it’s TORN???
 
HU: “Torn” is such a musical predecessor to Taylor Swift. But I think maybe the song that cites most explicitly from pop music’s repertoire is “You R in Love.”
 
VAF: Yes, that song strongly echoes Bruce’s “Secret Garden,” which, you might recall, was on the JERRY MAGUIRE SOUNDTRACK. How romantic. I bet Taylor does a really good “Dancing in the Dark” at karaoke.
 
HU: Oh my god. I sort of like to think of this song as the real coda to 1989, because it thematizes retreat and retraction. Instead of lyrical over-telling or over-compensating, it makes an attempt to mark silences. So first the chorus goes: “You can hear it in the silence (silence) / You can feel it on the way home (way home).” But THEN, she takes out the echoes so that you get this space where you expect/recall the words without actually needing them present. It’s sort of how the album works for me in terms of Taylor’s entire oeuvre? Like, her prior work is embedded into the work of 1989, but they can haunt her “pop” songs without her needing to inject it with biographical details. The clues are there and not there: “You understand now why [...] why I've spent my whole life try to put it in words.” Yes, we do. And now, this song can simply be about that quiet moment when you’re “on the way home,” just contemplating the beginnings of falling in love. I like that it’s allowed to be simple.
 
VAF: That analysis makes me like this song so much more, Jane! Now the last bonus track seems even less substantial than I thought. But I look forward to having “New Romance” on my workout playlist for at least a month or two. It seems destined for the trailer of a Garry Marshall holiday movie.
 
HU: I was thinking, it’s an anthem, yes, but it’s also kind of a new pop music manifesto??
 
VAF: Oh, true. I do like how she brags on it. “Mine is better.” Also: “the rumors are terrible and cruel / but honey, most of them are true.” LOL, you bitch.
 
HU: LOVE New Pop Bragginess. There are so many delicious details like that in the song that actually make me believe in its message too–who hasn’t cried “tears of mascara in the bathroom”?
 
VAF: I can’t say that I haven’t!
 
HU: Cried mascara tears in the bathroom, A+, would do again. “And please take me dancing / And please leave me stranded it's so romantic.”
 
VAF: You know, I was thinking: maybe I’m too jaded for Taylor? But then she proves me wrong. It feels pretty great.
 
Jane Hu is an English PhD living in Oakland. Her first favorite Taylor song was "Tim McGraw."
 
Jen Vafidis is a writer living in Brooklyn. Her first favorite Taylor song was "You Belong With Me."
 
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Taylor Swift '1989' Deluxe Edition Album Review
 
Following Taylor Swift's two year album release schedule, '1989' drops right on time and came with an announcement that this would be her first pop album in August's Yahoo World Stream and premiere of chart topping lead single 'Shake It Off'.
 
 
Whilst many have criticised Swift for 'selling out' and blending into mainstream pop, the album has received mainly positive reviews with regards to Swift's honest transformation and the record justifies it.
 
~~~~TRACK LIST~~~
1. Welcome To New York 4/5
A keyboard heavy track that literally sounds like what Time Square would feel like- though I've never been, I can visualise the colours, sounds and atmosphere of this vibrant centre. The production is slightly heavy and feels overdone for a T Swift tune, but kind of works for this track. 
 
2. Blank Space 5/5
The second track on '1989' carries a air of Swift's past songwriting and early era country sounds in a modern pop way. Lyrically brilliant is "I've got a blank space baby *click* and I'll write your name", reminiscent of demo 'Permanent Marker'.
 
3. Style 4/5
The late 80s early 90s intro and verse blends into a contemporary pop chorus that is viciously catchy if slightly disjointed. Nonetheless, the track about her relationship with Harry Styles (one of the most talked about and anticipated tracks) makes a strong impact on the record.
 
4. Out of the Woods 5/5
Promo song 'Out of the Woods' however, is the anthemic answer to 'Shake it Off's all too radio friendly pop sound. Though the catchiness persists, the personal Swiftopian lyrics put a familiar stamp on the track.
 
It's not the first time Swift has done pop. Time and time again her so called 'country' albums are infested with catchy pop tracks. More than likely her country roots will permeate in some way in this album. What I've learnt through the years is that what makes Taylor Swift so lovable is not which genre or sound she claims to be but the lyrics within each track and so ultimately, whatever she dabbles in, is Swift.
 
 
5. All You Had to do was Stay 4.5/5
The catchiness does not end with track 5's 'All You Had to do was Stay', that launches straight into an explosive and beaty chorus.
 
6. Shake It Off 4/5
Much like 'Red's lead single 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together', 'Shake It Off' is a full on catchy track that parasitically fuses with your brain. Reportly playing on radio every 18 minutes, the song has instantly topped the US Billboard charts as well as iTunes. 
 
Whilst this song performed flawlessly commercially, the track almost lacks the beloved Swift personal touch. The generic lyrics could have been written for any solo female artist and thankfully this does not accurately represent the album overall, though is the clear stand out in the album as the catchiest song Swift has ever made.
 
7. I Wish You Would 5/5
With a dub beat that runs through the track, the HAIM-like chorus gives this track it's own identity. Musically unique and exciting, the words are unfortunately somewhat lost amongst the production.
 
8. Bad Blood 3.5/5
Trying to be angsty, 'Bad Blood' is more fitting for 'Avril Lavigne' than our very own Swift. Lyrically quite smart ('bandaids dont fix bullet holes' etc), the transition to music doesn't work for me. Part anthem, part angst, with a ballad bridge- the whole song is all over the place- a patch work genres glossed over with production from Max Martin. I'd love to hear an acoustic version of this.
 
9. Wildest Dreams 4/5
'Wildest Dreams' is the first break from the loud explosive choruses from the previous eight tracks that firmly cement Swift's new album into pop territory. Track 9 is an obvious infusion of Lana Del Rey, which Swift surprisingly manages to take control of musically. 
 
10. How You Get The Girl 3.5/5
Over produced, 'How You Get The Girl''s chorus has a very similar tune and structure to 'Style'- this track is probably the one that will be forgotten amongst the rest. I'd love for this to be stripped back completely with just guitar.
 
11. This Love 3.5/5
The softest track on the record, 'This Love' is like the 'Last Kiss' of 'Speak Now' and for once, the right amount of production elevates this track. It's easy to listen to and ethereal, but again, could be forgotten at this point in the album.
 
12. I Know Places 4.5/5
The penultimate track to the album brings Swift's new definitive pop sound back in a darker way, with beautifully written lyrics "I know places we won't be found... they'll be chasing their tails trying to track us down...  I know places we can hide..." Really hope this becomes a single- I can see a stunning video.
 
13. Clean 4/5
Closing track 'Clean' lyrically and musically marks Swift's moving on from break ups, bad press, gossip and rivals. 
 
 
DELUXE TRACKS:
 
14. Wonderland 4.5/5
Angsty track 'Wonderland' has great lyrics but it's as if Rihanna has trashed this perfect musical tea party. 
 
15. You Are in Love 4/5
An ode to love and relationships. 
 
16. New Romantics 4/5
A dark goth sound sweeps the track, with Paramore-esque lyrics and disco beat. 
 
17. I Know Places (Voice Memo)
18. I Wish You Would (Voice Memo)
19. Blank Space (Voice Memo)
 
The voice memos are really interesting additions to the album as raw beginnings to the tracks and it feels like there should be whole bonus disc or DVD for this process for the whole album as it's just so interesting, but as bonus tracks, I think I still prefer acoustic versions :P
 
SONGS TO LOVE: Out of The Woods, Blank Spaced, All You Had to Stay, I Wish You Would, I Know Places
SONGS TO SKIP: None, but 'Bad Blood' and 'How You Get the Girl' are lacklustre.
 
~~~OVERALL 4/5~~~
Taylor Swift's '1989' might not be Swift's most consistent album in terms of sound, but is definitely her most progressive, exploring a range of musical themes and ideas. 
 
Working with Tedder and Max Martin for the album, '1989' features a plethora of potential hits, such as 'Blank Spaced', 'Style' and 'I Know Places', perhaps in an effort to repeat the success of 'Red''s 'I Knew You Were Trouble'. Unfortunately, the inevitable overproduction from these two producers overpower the carefully written lyrics in quite a few instances.
 
'1989' shows Swift exploring music territory that inspires her and has created a strong and diverse album, proving her musical ability to adapt and transform, that she cannot be put in a box and churn out the same stuff over and over. Only time will tell where Swift ventures next, but be assured, she'll be working her butt off striving to top this one.
 
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Album Review — Taylor Swift: ’1989′
 
With Taylor Swift’s latest album, 1989, it appears that she is trying to shed her country origins like a butterfly shedding its chrysalis. In her reverent ode to the Big Apple, “Welcome To New York,” she implicitly shuns the backwards, unexciting life she’s left behind in Nashville by exulting in the gaudy wonders of the big northern city. Swift has thrived on her odd balancing act between aw-shucks down-home country girl and ultra-sleek, savvy pop star, and her career has taken off with its feet firmly at the top of two ostensibly separate charts. You have no choice but to feel bad for her when she complains pleadingly, “Why you gotta be so mean?”, almost like she’s embracing the troubling notion that the listener will be the one to save her from said meanness. You also had to smirk at the acid dripping from the microphone when she asserts her anger at all of her caricatural boyfriends, more figures and devices than actual humans in front of Swift’s withering glare.
 
1989 demonstrates a marked change in Swift’s ethos. No longer does it represent a full relinquishing of her curly-haired dominance of the pop-country charts, but it’s also far more hopeful than most of her earlier oeuvre. The album seems to be an attempt to isolate and capture the sheer power of Swift’s reciprocated love — she declares that while “the rest of the world was black-and-white, we were in screaming color” in “Out Of The Woods.” This is Swift at her most jaded yet her most vital — she is no longer satisfied with a moony-eyed, doomed-to-plummet romance straight out of some high-school misinterpretation of Romeo and Juliet. Swift knows she’ll eventually fail, make no mistake, but she wants to fail spectacularly, screaming all the way down.
 
This is primarily where the album fails. At times, Swift actually proclaims her own independence, as on album highlight “Blank Space,” where she coyly acknowledges her infamy while teasing the standard “new-money” love with whom she dabbles so often. However, far too often Swift eschews her own individuality (or at least as much individuality as the music execs are willing to give her) in favor of a standard white-bread pop star approach, where she could realistically be swapped out for any no-name backup singer with a good enough voice. Nowhere is this clearer than the meek, pointless “Out Of The Woods,” in which she tells an all-too-often-recited tale about the Impossible Love and the subsequent Falling Out and Love Lost, all tied together with one of the most inane choruses this side of the Disney machine. It’s just a boring song, with vanilla production and an obtuse, plodding beat, drowned-out acoustic guitar and saccharine pads feeling as pointless as possible.
 
If one didn’t know any better, they might assume this is just another below-average, cookie-cutter “indie” pop release (a la Imagine Dragons or American Authors) from the gently thrumming, rocking guitar and synth stabs of “All You Had To Do Was Stay.” This impression is fueled by the fact that, unlike most radio-pop superstars of today, Swift doesn’t derive her modus operandi from a co-opting of a traditionally black sound – there are no threads of house, no remnants of hip-hop, no microbes of soul or funk to be found here. Rather, it’s almost as if Swift is embracing her white-bread sound – just look at the video for “Shake It Off,” where Swift declares she’s most confident dancing awkwardly among her kin, realizing I problematic an Iggy-Azalea-esque attempt at posing as something she’s not might be.
 
And as heartening as it is that Swift seems to be taking command of her own sound, 1989 ends up being a thinly-veiled show of stealing from other white pop stars stealing from other white pop stars, until nothing even displays a semblance of originality. The album is one of those thankfully rare beasts which grows off of the listener with each playthrough as he or she realizes just how sappily derivative the whole thing is. It’s nice to see Swift take a stand on where she wants her music to go from here, and it’s commendable to see a young artist try so very hard to show some sort of maturation. However, beneath all the bells and whistles of saccharine, fluffy production and wonderful vocal harmonies, this stands out more as Generic Pop Album #1452 rather than Tay-Tay #5. As unfortunate as it is to suggest that she might have been safer in the nigh-impossible-to-crack mold of today’s pop-country, at least it would have been harder to blame her lack of originality.
 
Rating: 5/10
 
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Pop Is a Banana-Quinoa Muffin: The Artisanal Aloofness of Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’
 
If you know anything at all about Taylor Swift’s new LP, 1989, which was released yesterday, it’s likely the following:
 
1. 1989 is Swift’s self-described “very first documented, official pop album.”
 
2. 1989 is inspired by artists who were popular around the time of its titular year, when Swift was born, including Phil Collins (during his socially conscious … But Seriously period) and Fine Young Cannibals (because apparently they come up early in a “music of 1989” Google search).1
 
These talking points have been hammered constantly by Swift and others during the album’s lengthy promotional cycle. Swift has, in other words, made a concept album, or at least a highly conceptual album. The idea is that 1989 is a record unlike any Swift has created before, though the constructed musical persona doesn’t get in the way of Swift’s personal truth. This is made clear when you hear the entirety of 1989, which begins with “Welcome to New York.”
 
When “Welcome to New York” arrived online last week, provincialists instantly pilloried Swift for presenting a phony, bumper-stickerized version of the city circa 2014. In the song, Swift describes Manhattan as Charlie might’ve waxed rhapsodic about Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory — as a Technicolor fantasia where the big hearts of the bustling locals beat like kick drums in a disco song as they rush excitedly toward the realization of their most profound ambitions. The critics of “Welcome to New York” are inarguably correct: It is not a very true-to-life song. Also, The Warriors is an overly stylized and highly inaccurate depiction of New York City gangs in the ’70s and Ghostbusters is an insensitive portrayal of municipal bureaucrats fighting to keep paranormal investigators environmentally responsible in the ’80s. Fact-checking fantasies is important.
 
In the context of 1989, what should have been obvious all along about “Welcome to New York” is suddenly unmistakable: Swift isn’t singing about a city, she’s singing about her idea of a city. “Welcome to New York” articulates a vision that so many individuals in their early to mid-twenties have when they leave some Middle American Nowheresville to chase the promise of NYC. Basically, the belief is that New York will allow you to become the best possible version of yourself. “Everybody here was someone else before,” is how Swift puts it. New York is what you thought high school would be in junior high, or what college would be in high school. New York is where you go after those dreams of transformation rise and fall, and you still expect external forces to change the person you are inside.
Of course the sentiments of “Welcome to New York” are corny and misguided; the myth of New York exceptionalism endures because of the corny convictions of misguided outsiders who keep searching for something in the city that’s not there. Swift captures that phenomenon in “Welcome to New York” so completely that you suspect that she’s also living it out.
 
Part of leaving home is rejecting what home signifies — the restrictions, the dullness, the familiarity — hence Swift’s oddly worded proclamation about 1989 being an “official” and “documented” pop album, and the decision not to service her new music to country radio.2 Even if Swift isn’t consciously thinking in those terms, her former peers sure seem to be. In an interview with the New York Times, one radio programmer struck a paternalistic pose when talking about Swift, like a dad dropping his daughter off at the dorm for the first time.
 
“Taylor is one of us, one of our children,” Mark Razz, the music director at Philadelphia’s WXTU-FM, told the Times’s Ben Sisario. “You’re there for them along the way, and then they need to go to what they are going to do. She’s gotten to where she is through country music, and if she goes on to be the next pop sensation around the world, we are behind her 100 percent.”
 
Here’s a nagging question I can’t shake: How is Swift’s previous album, 2012’s Red, not a pop record? Red is undeniably popular music, going quadruple platinum in an era when doing so is the equivalent of moving 10 million units in the ’90s. Those sales figures were matched by the broadness of Red’s musical scope. U2-size guitar anthems, sing-along mall ballads, shit-talking dance stompers, rough-and-tumble singer-songwriter introspection — that album had it all. The occasional token banjo lick aside, Red wasn’t really a country record any more than it was a rock record, a pop record, or any other kind of record. It was country because she said it was country, but in reality Red made Taylor Swift her own genre. 1989, in comparison, is deliberately much narrower, working and reworking a monochromatic template of mid-tempo synth-pop that gradually loses flavor over the course of 13 songs. Perhaps Swift rushed to publicly define 1989 because the album doesn’t define itself with nearly the clarity her previous work did.
 
Since semantics matter to Swift, it’s worthwhile to note the difference between “pop” as shorthand for popular and “pop” as its own genre. Popular music is shrinking, but it still encompasses large swaths of rock (the best-selling genre, according to Billboard’s latest quarterly report), country (the most dominant genre in radio), and rap (the most influential genre on other aspects of culture). There’s virtually no popular music of that sort on 1989. Instead, Swift has defined pop the way it is commonly discussed on the Internet, as a cross section of so-called “outsider” acts played on the radio (such as Lorde and Fun.) and retro-leaning underground stars who generate a sizable social media footprint (such as Robyn and Haim). It is the preferred soundtrack for the upwardly mobile urbanites that Swift now lives among.
 
Pop, like other mass-market products such as beer and red meat, has gone artisanal. It’s a boutique item now, and 1989 is a boutique record, as precious and impeccable as the banana-quinoa muffins that Swift can’t stop buying from that awesomely hip place down the street in her new neighborhood. You can easily imagine Hannah and Marnie achieving a moment of catharsis while dancing in an episode of Girls to one of Swift’s latest songs — a few of which are cowritten by Jack Antonoff, Lena Dunham’s boyfriend, no less. You remember how on Red’s signature tune, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Swift snarked about a dim ex-boyfriend’s preference for an “indie record that’s much cooler than mine”? With 1989, Swift has made her version of a record that’s much cooler than her other albums.
 
This is not to say that 1989 won’t sell boatloads or stream out of earbuds from Queens to Omro to San Luis Obispo. It’s Swift’s job to make songs that imprint on billions of brains, whether people want them there or not, and she’s still extremely good at her job. The first half of 1989, from “Welcome to New York” up through “Shake It Off,” is particularly unstoppable. From 2014’s (admittedly underwhelming) class of noteworthy albums, only YG’s My Krazy Life flows as well as 1989 does in the early going. (Sorry, Max Martin and Shellback, but DJ Mustard wins this round.) 1989’s best song is “Out of the Woods,” a doomy slice of bubble-goth gloom wherein Swift’s latest deadbeat boyfriend puts on the literal and figurative brakes, leaving him with 20 stitches and her with visions of monsters posing as trees. A close second is the velveteen slow-roller “Style,” which is Swift’s “I just watched Drive for the fifth time on Netflix and/or tried cocaine for the second time” song.
 
But once Swift dispenses with the (alleged) Katy Perry dis “Bad Blood,” the rush wears off, and 1989 starts to recycle what’s already been recycled too many times. All that’s left in the back half of 1989 is Swift’s unerring sense of craft and growing paranoia, which is enough to keep the anti-paparazzi song “I Know Places” afloat, but not much else. At least “I Know Places” has some of Swift’s distinctive lyrical weirdness — notice how she likens herself to a fox being chased by the hunters in the press, and try to discern whether there’s a trace of a sly smile. Otherwise, the bulk of 1989 feels shopworn, reiterating the same set of ’80s reference points — the echoing drums, the “Take My Breath Away” silhouette synths, the melodramatic vocal swell — that have become de rigueur in recent years.
 
In his perceptive review for Rolling Stone, Rob Sheffield likened 1989 to Prince’s post–Purple Rain work, which included stylistic left turns into psychedelic train-wreckism like Around the World in a Day and Parade. It’s telling that making an “official” pop record would be likened to an infamous drift into esoterica, but it suits 1989. What’s troubling is that Swift doesn’t seem to find herself in the process. Red was an album that only Taylor Swift could’ve made, because nobody else was famous enough to even think of trying to reach so many people. On 1989, Swift blends in with a different, trendier crowd. And that’s where she gets lost.
 
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Album Review: Taylor Swift – 1989
 
Last week, Taylor Swift’s new album 1989 sold 1.2 million copies. This immediately made it the best selling album released in 2014 (the indefatigable Frozen soundtrack, which came out at the tail end of last year, sold around 3 million this year). It was the best first week for an album since The Eminem Show released in 2002. Most notably, with about a month and a half left in the year, it’s the only 2014 album to go platinum.
 
The fact that there’s only one platinum album this year isn’t particularly surprising. Beyond Swift, there haven’t been a ton of heavyweight pop releases this year, and traditional album sales are still being affected by iTunes and Spotify, et al. But doing that in a week? Having the best week for an album since 2002 in the worst year for music sales that I can recall? That’s incredibly impressive, and I think it speaks to Taylor Swift’s accessibility more than anything else.
 
It makes sense, then, that she’s called 1989 her first pop album. She isn’t kidding. Though 2012’s Red sorta kept the whole country pop thing, 1989 drops any and all pretenses. This is a pure pop album, one that gets downright experimental at times (for Taylor Swift, granted). In true Taylor Swift fashion, every damn song on this record is a potential hit single, even the ones I don’t like.
 
And there are a few of those. Lead single “Shake it Off” overstays its welcome almost immediately, and its “haters gonna hate” chorus doesn’t help much. “Welcome to New York” is helped by Swift’s infectious earnestness, but the song itself is shallow and boring, perhaps the most standard song on an otherwise fairly adventurous record.
 
But beyond that, goddamn are there a lot of good  songs on this thing. Second single “Blank Space” combines a vaguely dubby beat with bright keys, bringing it all together with a typically giant Taylor Swift chorus. “I Wish You Would” is probably the best U2 song of the last decade. “Style” sees Swift getting more lyrically intimate than something like “Love Story” would have ever suggested. And then there’s “Out of the Woods.” A stunning combination of synths and Swift’s world conquering voice, it might be the best song she has ever released.
 
It’s also the moment where, thematically, the album goes from good to bad. Ostensibly a concept album about her relationship with One Direction’s Harry Styles, 1989 traces something of a relationship arc throughout its 13 tracks. She starts with wide-eyed optimism on “Welcome to New York,” hits utopia on “Out of the Woods,” gets angry on “Bad Blood” and, by closing track “Clean,” is ready to start something new.
 
If that all seems like an incredibly simple, even rote, concept for an album, that’s because it is. But that’s why this album, and really Taylor Swift’s entire career, works so well. She makes all of the moves that you’d expect an artist releasing a Big Pop Album to do, but she does everything with such craft, with such an incredible ability to sing a hook or write a catchy lyric, that you can’t help but be amazed by what she’s doing. “Out of the Woods” does nothing particularly novel; it does everything that your typical Top 40 pop song does. But it does these things so damn well, and so much better than just about anybody out there, short of Beyonce, that you can’t help but be staggered by its impact. Taylor Swift will probably never release a truly experimental album. Judging by 1989, that’s totally OK.
 
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