Album Reviews

Taylor Swift’s 1989 released in October of 2014, sold 1.27 million albums in its first week and debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. By the end of the year it had sold 3,660,000 copies, remaining at the top of the chart for most of that time.

The album remained at or near the top of the charts throughout the first half of 2015. Through this June it has sold a total of 4,950,000 copies sitting at #2 on the charts just behind James Taylor’s Before This World, which debuted at #1—his first #1 album.

Taylor Swift is named for James Taylor, so how great is that? How great is Taylor Swift’s album? For most of this time, while paying attention to the numbers, I’ve ignored the album of pop inspired by the music of Swift’s birth year, 1989.

Why? I just didn’t think it would appeal to me. Yet, Swift is a vinyl fan. As far back as 2010 she told Entertainment Weekly: ““The vinyl is really important to me because I’m so in love with the concept of an album – a collection of memories from your life that you’re giving to people. It’s a piece of you. Buying them on vinyl is just taking that one step further and acknowledging that albums are important.”

She even tours with a turntable! Swift recently took her music off of Spotify and more recently convinced Apple to pay royalties during its streaming roll-out saying “You don’t give out free iPhones, why should artists supply free music”? That girl’s got balls!

So finally, I bought the double LP set of thirteen tunes just to better understand the album’s “legs”. What is it about 1989 that has kept it for so long at or near the top of the charts? After all, it’s not DSOTM or some kind of elaborately produced “concept” album. It’s a retro-synth-pop album!

I didn’t expect to like it. I just wanted to understand it. It’s obviously not aimed at people my age. It’s for kids. But a funny thing happened: I can’t keep it off my turntable and during the almost twenty four hour trip to Bangkok (with a Tokyo layover) I played it repeatedly on my iPhone. When Taylor sings directly into your ears, you do tend to get “tingly” all over.

After all of the plays I understand its appeal and why it keeps selling. So in case you’re not familiar with the record, let me explain why you should buy a copy.

The concept was simple: produce a pop album inspired by the music and production typical of 1989—the year Taylor Swift was born, which would mean primitive programmed percussive beats, “old school” synth backing tracks, pulsating bass lines, chrome-sheened, icy vocal processing and all of the studio tricks that helped produce that era’s “sonic signature”.

Ironically, in 1987 NARM (The National Association of Recording Merchandisers) claimed in a letter to its constituents that “After October 30th, 1989 there will be no more vinyl pressed in the USA.”

The album opens with “Welcome to New York”— a “three-chords-and-a-cloud-of-dust” “Baba O’Riley” progression with a primitive synth rhythm track that will take you back to when MTV was happening. The hook is as infectious as the backing track that while familiar to “old folks” must sound new to young ears.

Swift sings about moving to New York and starts in Greenwich Village where:
“Everybody here was someone else before
And you can want who you want
Boys and boys and girls and girls”.

In that short lyric she’s talking to disaffected youth of all stripes, telling them there’s a way out. Imagine yourself that young listener carried away by the song’s exhilarating message. Swift is donating all of the single’s profits to the New York City Department of Education. Seriously.

Her voice is both pure-toned and powerful with not a hint of vibrato. There's little in the way of level modulation either. It's more on and off, ending with breathy exclamations reminiscent of Alanis Morissette's

“Blank Space” is like a diary entry:

“Saw you there and I thought oh my god
Look at that face, you look like my next mistake.”

She describes herself as “…a nightmare dressed like a daydream”.

The chord progression and especially the synth arrangement and pounding beat will for sure take older listeners back to the mid 1980’s “New Wave” era. It’s skillfully produced and performed. Ditto the side closer “Style”, which expresses a power couple feeling invincible. It can move young listeners forward while taking older ones back to a time when such things were not just important but essential.

Side two begins with “Out of the Woods”, which, with its minor key and ominous bass drone sounds to me reminiscent of vintage Peter Gabriel, though were he to write the lyrics it would be about escaping from a political kidnapping, whereas Swift’s is about mending a troubled relationship.

I’m not going to go through the entire album, but there’s really not bad song on it and most are multi-faceted and ridiculously catchy as well as being obscurely familiar without revealing their inspirations. If your system does deep bass you'll get plenty from this record.

What really seals the deal for me is the lack of cheap and tawdry posturing, which so pervades pop music today. Less so in 1989.There’s more than a little bit of Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, Madonna and FYC (Fine Young Cannibals) in the grooves of this record.

“How You Get the Girl”, which tells guys how to do just that is among the most interesting while “Shake It Off” is a most shallow dance-pop confection that is still great fun and contains musical and production elements that will awaken deep memories of The Cars, The Supremes and more recent ones of OutKast. It’s a message song about not letting the opinions of others get to you.

There are break-up songs, songs of regret, and there’s a song about the burdens of being in the public eye.

Swift herself sums it up best in a liner note to her adoring young fans:

“This is a story about coming into your own, and as a result….coming alive.”

There was a story not that long ago about how Joni Mitchell had nixed Taylor Swift playing her in a bio picture but that really wasn’t true. Mitchell had actually nixed the script. Now that I’ve gotten to know more about Swift through this album I think she’d be perfect playing Mitchell and I’ll tell you why: she’s clearly not shallow and not a vacuous pop-icon, though she’s playing one now because that’s what the times demand, much as Mitchell played the Laurel Canyon “hippie chick” in her early career because that was the cultural environment in which she found herself.

Once Mitchell had established herself in that milieu, she broke free of it to become a “jazzer”, taking her first steps on Court and Spark and then Hejira and beyond. Who would have guessed “the lady of the canyon” would end up collaborating with Charles Mingus?

I don’t think we’re yet seeing the real Taylor Swift. So if you’ve dismissed Swift to date, you might find this album appealing and interesting if you give it a chance. It even sounds good, within the constraints of synth-pop (though it does not sound nearly as good as what the late Martin Rushent managed with Human League or what Alex Sadkin did with The Thompson Twins). I think, though, that she’ll grow into something far more interesting and provocative, so I’m glad I bought into the album because it will be more satisfying watching her grow as an "insider".

The record is a collaborative production effort between Swift and producers Max Martin and Swedish producer/songwriter Karl Johan Schuster (better known as Shellback). Also involved were Jack Antonoff (Fun) and Ryan Tedder. Antonoff co-wrote and produced “Out of the Woods” and “I Wish You Would”.

The 180 vinyl issue is well-pressed though I’m not sure where, nor is anyone credited for lacquer cutting. The gatefold packaging is okay, though the artwork must make the Polaroid folks happy.