Taylor Swift, 1989 – review

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Red was hailed as Swift’s first all-out pop album, but 1989 marks a departure from a signature sound that was still very present in 2012. Gone are the jaunty guitar-driven ballads, the homely references to football helmets and freckles, and the tentative embrace of being a young twenty-something. Opener Welcome to New York is a declaration of musical intent, with a clapping snare and jingly synth melody that signpost her move into 80s territory. It sets the tone for the album but is not one of the strongest tracks, suffering lyrically from taking the trope of New York as the big city and exaggerating it to a bland universalism.

If Swift is going for a more grown-up sound on 1989, that means harder, more generic, and more aloof. Even her voice sounds distant, gliding and repeating over the electro-pop sounds. At certain points she employs a cheerleading-chant technique reminiscent of bad Avril Lavigne songs, which is somewhat cringey on lead single Shake It Off but works to better effect on the feisty Bad Blood. There is a distinct note of Lana del Rey’s 80s-inspired sultry fatalism throughout; one could be forgiven for thinking del Rey herself made an appearance on Wildest Dreams, where Swift moans and sighs about the boy who’s so bad she “can see the end as it begins”. This is the sexiest the album gets — on the rest of the tracks the earnest cheesiness of her earlier work has been replaced by cheeky but clean sentiments.

The album is impressively consistent and the songs are incredibly catchy — arguably the most important attribute of a good pop song. Blank Space is the song on which the new elements of her sound and persona come together most successfully, with Swift crooning “love’s a game, want to play?” over sparse percussion. How You Get the Girl and All You Had to Do Was Stay have irresistible choruses and stand out for not succumbing to the rather insipid structure of songs that try too hard to be sophisticated, such as I Know Places.

There aren’t any tracks that seem likely to capture the listener’s imagination as much as previous singles, simply because the personal element isn’t there. In trading small-town for big-city, Swift has been unable or unwilling to transfer the relatability and vulnerability that set her apart from pop divas such as Katy Perry and Kesha who spout a mixture of club glamour and shallow empowerment anthems. Old Taylor may have been twee, but it was undeniably enjoyable to listen to a superstar whose songs sounded like the most embarrassing pages of your diary.

1989 is available now on general release.

 

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