1989

About

It’s weirdly easy to forget that in 2014, Taylor Swift was still approaching (nah, <i>engineering</i>) an inflection point in her life and career, reintroducing herself (at just 24) as the all-conquering, planet-like presence we know today. She’d already started adjusting the ratio of country to pop on 2010’s <i>Speak Now</i> and 2012’s <i>Red</i>, working with Swedish superproducers Max Martin and Shellback on the latter. On <i>1989</i>, Swift did away with the idea of ratios entirely—just launched them into the ocean, and went all the way. Musically, it wasn’t just her embrace of big beats and shiny surface, but a sense of lightness and play as well. Where 2008’s <i>Fearless</i> and <i>Speak Now</i> take their dramas to Shakespearean height, <i>1989</i> celebrates a newly liberated life of flings (“Style”), weekend getaways (“Wildest Dreams”), and the kind of confidence a younger Taylor Swift was too passionately involved to grasp. So while “Welcome to New York” is her way of letting everyone know that she’s at least momentarily done with country music and Nashville and the constrictions they put on her image and sound, it’s also a song about turning your eye outward and surrendering to the possibilities only a city like New York can offer. And where she may have taken things personally in the past, now she’s just trying to have fun (“Shake It Off”). “Blank Space” even manages to make light of her gravest and most well-protected subject: Taylor Swift. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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