She was a country singer, she was a cross-genre singer but now Taylor Swift is an icon and she is going full-throttle pop. We review global sensation Taylor Swift’s new album 1989, a follow up from her last album Red which went quadruple platinum, earned her four Grammy Awards and serious critical acclaim. 1989’s lead single Shake It Off rapidly became Swift’s second Nº 1 single in the US and 22nd track to debut in peak position in Billboard history. She’s on a massive, world dominating roll.
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Taylor Swift – four-time multiplatinum-album-maker, seven-time Grammy winner and billion-time gossip-blog subject – released her fifth studio album only last week (27th October), through her label Big Machine Records. Taylor has ditched her country roots, moved out of Nashville and flown straight into the Big Apple music scene. Her new album has a young-girl-in-the-big-city feel but utilizes the idea of New York (her new home) metaphorically to pass on her messages of growing, making more mistakes but loving your choices and making the most of learning from it all. She seems so happy to be maturing musically she has given her year of birth as the album title. Having only been with us for a mere twenty five years, Miss Swift has not only proven her worth as a country singer/songwriter but has now transcended and conquered a new genre and level to her career. It seems her indie following have never abandoned her since day one giving her an edge over your regular pop princesses, in that she reaches out to more than just your average teeny-bopping audience.
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1989 is a very determined album, which fiercely delivers a strong state of mind and sense of empowerment. We hear a lot less lamenting and a great deal more acceptance, appreciation for one’s self and some power-on-through-the-storm type lyrics. Swift took two years out to write this album and is extremely proud of the results. Rolling Stone reviewed the album as “deeply weird, feverishly emotional, wildly enthusiastic, 1989 sounds exactly like Taylor Swift, even when it sounds like nothing she’s ever tried before” and that “when it comes to Taylor Swift and super catchy Eighties pop-gloss, too much is never enough”.
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She delivers her songs with a tongue-in-cheek attitude alongside some serious undertones. She wants to be taken seriously but does not take herself too seriously. Her seemingly chit chatty words are actually pinpoint accurate if you get her drift. She metaphorically comments on her transgression into pop, her constant media coverage, not selling out and collaborating with a big named rapper to sell records- to name but a few examples of her discrete ‘disses’ on the madness that is being a global phenomenon in the music industry. Taylor works very, very hard; she has used the decade she has been attacking the business to achieve her goal; to get out there and show us all exactly what she can do, and win. Like her or not, the go-getter in her is admirable; she had it in her like a volcano waiting to erupt from day one.
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Taylor has paranoia issues and doesn’t “trust technology” with a constant fear of being exploited or recorded unwittingly, she is wary and always has her guard up. For a long time the only place 1989 existed was on her iPhone. The first person to hear the completed album was one of her best friends Ed Sheeran. She was on tour with him at the time of writing and would knock on his stage room door and discuss lyrics, melodies and beats. She returned the musical ear to his album-in-progress and so it seemed only right that he be the one to give it a final nod.
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She also knows that you need to be liked to succeed, and so her fans get a little something in return from time to time…Taylor dreamt up, organized and baked for the secret sessions at her homes in London, Rhode Island, Nashville, New York and LA; a preview of the full album for 89 of her closest fans at each location, about a month prior to the release date. She played the album for these fans, which she had stringently scoured and selected from the internet, in her own living room to show her appreciation for her followers and give a little back.
1989 could be described as a risk, but Taylor Swift is hardly the gambling type. She is, however, calculated and driven and knows what is required to succeed, as she has proven time and time again. Just look at the triumph of her 2010 country-crossover album Speak Now and the 2012 Red album for reference. The opening track on the 1989 album, Welcome to New York could easily be taken for a simple, “I’ve moved to New York, its great”, type message, however it goes way deeper. You can take Taylor however you like but there’s always an ulterior motive to her light-hearted sounding tracks. She’s telling us via the synth-pop, “sick” beats and eighties sounds, that she has moved on. She is no longer a Country singer, she is now exclusively a profound pop star; so there. “Took our broken hearts and put them in a drawer, welcome to New York”, equals- she’s grown out of kissing, telling and bitching about it and moved on. No more boys, no more country songs.
Taylor Swift – Welcome to New York
Her self-aware wit is apparent in Blank Space as she sarcastically studies and uses her reportedly disastrous dating record to make a play at the media; “Saw you there and I thought, Oh my God, look at that face, You look like my next mistake, Love’s a game, want to play?” She’s being cute, she’s being sly. She’s being the jaded Miss Taylor Swift. Her irony is delivered over a hip-hop drum machine beat (courtesy of Max Martin and Shellback) with a strong eighties influence and modern electro pop twist to it. Similar in sound, Style, which initially reflects her love of timeless fashion, develops into a rocky relationship story with a feeling like you might be in an episode of a funked-up Miami Vice.
Taylor Swift – Shake It Off
Taylor has been critically attacked aplenty for her repetitive lyrics and this album proves that she just can’t help but reiterate her lines over and over and over and over again. Breaking out of a downward spiraling relationship in Out of the Woods and Shake it off, as in shaking off the negative media attention she receives, are both heavy on the repetition, but seriously catchy tunes which obviously makes learning the lyrics a piece of cake! After Swift comes Out of the Woods from THAT (?) unhappy relationship she follows up with All You Had to do Was Stay, where that boy comes crawling back but she blows him off with attitude and a bit of “It’s just too late”.
Taylor Swift – Out of the Woods
There are many other relationship references within the album, most pertaining to her synth-pop backdrop. I Wish You Would finds Swift wishing a lover would come back to her amidst a sampling from the Fine Young Cannibals (courtesy of Jack Antonoff) and a focus on guitar. There’s yet another doomed affair in the sultry Wildest Dreams and How You Get the Girl is an upbeat, acoustic guitar backed shout out to the guys on matters of the heart. This Love is a grab-a-girl-at-the-disco-for-a-slow-dance tune with synthesized waves in motion providing a metaphor, sort of, for the idea that love will come back, as does the tide. With I Know Places Miss Swift combines both her central topics in one as she carried on a love affair while attempting to avoid any media attention. The lovers are being hunted down but Swift claims to “know places we won’t be found” in this almost eerie sounding track. Clean, which was written and recorded alongside Imogen Heap, delivers another water-based metaphor and of course another break up after which she shakes herself off, again, and discovers she is clean and ready to move on, also a metaphor for her new found music genre perhaps. Then there is the seriously angry tirade that is Bad Blood in which she seemingly attacks another artist who tried to sabotage her tour, which may or may not be about Katy Perry; however the hard-hitting lyrics comply with the beat which hits all the right places.
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Swift cleverly added a few bonus tracks in order to separately release the DLX (deluxe) edition of the album. So make sure your copy has the DLX stamp on it so you’re not duped into missing out or having to buy both versions! The album and progression of Swift’s work on 1989 has already been reviewed and highly acclaimed. The New York Times printed that “by making pop with almost no contemporary references, Ms. Swift is aiming somewhere even higher, a mode of timelessness that few true pop stars — aside from, say, Adele, who has a vocal gift that demands such an approach — even bother aspiring to”. It is a statement which outlines how she has set herself apart and above her peers in many ways. That she isn’t asking for this; she is making and taking it to another level. Any other stars trying to reach her would have to go above and beyond to somewhere totally new, just as she has.
Ultimately the album is a success story in that she has delivered exactly what she intended; a punchy, alternative, extreme, eighties inspired, powerful, and game changing pop album. Check.
1989 – Tracklist
1. Welcome to New York
2. Blank Space
3. Style
4. Out of the Woods
5. All You Had to Do Was Stay
6. Shake It Off
7. I Wish You Would
8. Bad Blood
9. Wildest Dreams
10. How You Get the Girl
11. This Love
12. I Know Places
13. Clean
Deluxe Edition – bonus tracks
14. Wonderland
15. You Are in Love
16. New Romantics
17. I Know Places (Voice memo)
18. I Wish You Would (Voice memo)
19. Blank Space (Voice Memo)
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