After 2012’s album RED, die-hard Taylor Swift fans probably looked at Max Martin and they just knew that he was trouble.
The man behind We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together was coming to take Swift away from her country roots and shove her firmly under the pop spotlight. Indeed, Martin is behind seven of this new album’s 13 tracks, including that Oh Mickey-ish opening salvo of a single Shake It Off, but what Swift’s fan don’t realise is that she has been pop for a while.
Pop is all encompassing, with recent additions to its arsenal including EDM, drum’n’bass and dub-step, not to mention Swift’s own modus operandi, country. So here we are, with Tay-Tay coming to the court to play Katy Perry and Kelly Clarkson at their own game.
Reviewed: Taylor Swift’s new album 1989
Kicking off with Welcome To New York, a song that the Devil Wears Prada soundtrack would’ve KILLED FOR, all hand claps and kick drums, it’s just about the only song on here that isn’t about love. Or, more specifically, Taylor Swift’s version of love.
Yes, a high 90% of pop songs have to do with love, but Swift in particular seems more caught up in it than most. Thankfully though, there’s not as many curdling heartbroken ballads, or more specifically, Taylor Swift’s usual version of heartbroken ballads.
There’s the different stages of types of love and break-ups to be found throughout; Out Of The Woods is very much mid-break up, All You Had To Do Was Stay finds Taylor getting dumped, I Wish You Would is yearning for an ex, Blank Space is telling about a future ex before the relationship has even started. There’s not one mention of having fun with her friends in the clubs, there’s nothing overtly to do with sex; 1989 is about love, or the lack of it.
Thankfully, no two songs actually sound all that alike, thanks to Swift’s fantastically insightful way with a lyric, and the peerless production throughout. Bad Blood comes across like a slowed-down Hollaback Girl, with Taylor firing shots at a bitchy female singer (apparently Katy Perry, if rumours are to be believed), or Wildest Dreams which finds Taylor channelling her inner Lana Del Ray (“Nobody has to know what we do, his hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room”) over a ghostly synth beat.
The stuttered, repeated chorus of I Know Places with the marching drum and lightly played Spanish guitar makes for a lovely runners-on-the-run soundtrack, while Imogen Heap joins in the downbeat fun on album closer Clean, a moody but ethereal post-break-up, feeling-better-now highlight.
As pop album goes, it’s unlikely you’ll find one more slickly produced, more cleverly written or more left-field than 1989. There’s no want or need to adhere to current trends, with only the technological advancements in the sound design preventing it from sounding like it could have been released any time in the last three decades. Fans of Taylor Swift will take some getting used to this sound, while everyone else is going to have to get used to suddenly finding themselves a fan of Taylor Swift.
4/5
