Taylor Swift goes pop, returns to singing about living in a big ol' city
Partying Like It's 1989
Taylor Swift's 1989 is the album you make when you're 24, insanely wealthy, live in New York and have the carte blanche to make whatever music you want.
The album — the singer's fifth, and her unabashed foray into pure pop territory — is self-confident without sounding self-serious. It's charming in its complete lack of subtlety. It would be surprisingly self-aware if anyone but Taylor Swift had made it.
But she did. Following in the footsteps of Reagan-era-established superstars like U2 and Madonna, on 1989, the not-so-country girl who epitomizes New Nashville continues to try to elevate her fame to new heights by breaking free of genre constrictions, haters be damned.
By comparison, 2012's Red, in all its jarring, super-pop-rock-dubstep-whatever, genre-bending success, retroactively looks like Swift in limbo. If she set out to make another album full of songs like "I Knew You Were Trouble," she didn't succeed.
1989 is Swift liking what she likes unashamedly, and the result is a cohesive set of songs that play like Swift has been working this genre since the '80s. While first track "Welcome to New York" disappoints as a single (too generic, too repetitive, too insubstantial), it works as a first paragraph to a story. And like any good story, it doesn't matter whether or not the characters are based on real people, as long as they are true.
After "Welcome to New York" comes the Max Martin- and Shellback-produced power-pop one-two punch of "Blank Space" and "Style," which both boast Swift's signature confessional lyrics ("I've got a long list of ex-lovers, they'll tell you I'm insane"). On the whole, the songs helmed by Martin and Shellback are the album's strongest, while the ones co-written and produced by OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder burn up in the blaze of catchy '80s pastiche. Fun. guitarist/Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff provides just the right amount of friction with darker, moody tracks like "Out of the Woods" and "I Wish You Would" — the album's most '80s-sounding offerings.
It's easy to look at each track and point to the contemporary pop artist it sounds like ("Bad Blood" sonically conjures Demi Lovato; "Wildest Dreams" weirdly evokes Born to Die-era Lana Del Rey). But Swift's singularity rests in how she carefully toes the line between her plaintive, dear-diary lyrical confessions and the light, airy (occasionally annoying) plight of tossed-off mainstream pop. But by raising the standards she occasionally falls victim to them.
When songs like "Welcome to New York" fall short of bubblegum transcendence, it's more disappointing than if we'd heard the same tunes on Katy Perry or Ariana Grande records. Easy to digest beats and tongue-in-cheek lyrics that are fun to sing are awesome, but from Swift we expect a little substance, we expect vulnerability and feeling, and soft ballads that reach the six-minute mark. Though those are in sadly short supply, 1989 is everything a good pop album should be: fun and catchy while still being uplifting and empowering — the kind of work that is truly 2014, and one that applies Music City story-songwriting acumen to modern-throwback Top 40 tropes.
Swift's shtick is that though she lives a radically different life from the average millennial, she has made herself endlessly relatable. There's something of Nashville reflected in her — the same push toward change; the same idea that you don't have to eschew your identity to evolve. Nashville and Swift have flourished on a parallel trajectory, each appealing to more masses while standing on the shoulders of their own musical histories.
But 1989 is bittersweet for Nashville. Swift is the best friend who went off to college and is now living in a big ol' city, cooler and more self-assured than she's ever been. But you can still look at her and remember the nights you stayed up late sharing stories of heartbreak and wishing boys would throw rocks at your windows and kiss you in the pouring rain.
Email music@nashvillescene.com.
1989 out now via Big Machine Records
