1989
by Taylor Swift
Distributed by: Big Machine Records
In 2014, the very notion of “genre” is practically irrelevant. This is especially true of pop music, a genre so fractured and flexible that the term has lost its meaning.
When Taylor Swift declared her new album, 1989, to be her “first documented, official pop album,” one couldn’t help but wonder what her last few albums were supposed to have been.
Swift has been one of our greatest pop songwriters for some time, so it was about time she embraced the title.
1989 is her most accomplished album to date, more cohesive and easygoing than 2012’s Red.
Though she continues to write about love and her exes, she does so with a more practical attitude, with the perfect amount of self-awareness with lyrics like, “I go on too many dates / But I can’t make ‘em stay / At least that’s what people say.”
It’s invigorating to see her stick to her thematic guns, further proving that the most successful artist in the world (by most metrics) often writes about love lost and that doesn’t decrease the music’s value.
Swift wants to have a good time, and she wants you to have one too, but she also demands to be taken seriously.
She appropriates the sounds of other artists such as Lorde with “I Know Places,” and Lana Del Rey with “Wildest Dreams.” While drawing inspiration from others they remain distinctly Taylor Swift songs.
She’s working with celebrated pop producers like Max Martin and Jack Antonoff, curating a run of phenomenal beats to add propulsion to her words. It’s all very slick, reminiscent of late-80s mall pop, and she’s left behind the innuendo of past albums.
This time, she is out front with her sexuality, more abrasive with her kiss-offs (“Got a long list of ex-lovers / They’ll tell you I’m insane / But I got a blank space, baby / And I’ll write your name”). This is the same Swift, but she’s no longer concerned with what you think of her.
There’s a pernicious quality to those that dismiss Swift as an artist, as they often describe her as overly emotional, vindictive, weak, and jaded. It’s the same characteristics typically attributed to angry exes, a phrase many would assign to her, and it’s equally despicable in the attempt to discredit her.
Swift is able to take her feelings and turn them into pop songs that hit platinum multiple times. She’s then able to perform them while exhibiting so much strength and having millions of fans in rapturous attention? That’s power.
On 1989’s best songs, like “Blank Space,” “Out of the Woods,” and “Clean,” there becomes a clear discrepancy between the fairy tale love stories that she’s left behind and the more disenchanted attitude she now employs (the weakest tracks, “How to Get the Girl” and “Wonderland” sound overly generic and lacking in Swiftian charisma).
She’s challenging the boundaries that have been set up to this point, by making a pop album full-stop and by rejecting the narratives prescribed to her with aggressive, emotional songwriting, and incredibly polished production.
Remarkably, 1989 is unique among modern pop records, seeking as it does to critique its contemporaries while sticking out its glossy tongue.
You don’t want to underestimate Swift, because she will invade your space and do it better than you ever could. That’s power.
