Thursday, October 26th at 11 pm CDT Taylor Swift released her re-recording of 1989, her second pop album, and marked her transition from a country singer to a pop singer. 1989 was the fifth album she ever released and was originally released on October 27, 2014. Her first pop album was Red but this marked the beginning of a new era for Taylor Swift as there were no country songs in 1989 while Red has country songs like “Red”, “I Almost Do,” “Stay, Stay, stay,” “The Lucky One” and “Everything Has Changed.”
A bit of background of the album 1989 is that 1989 is also Taylor’s birth year. This album also was meant to show the media and her fans that she doesn’t just write songs about her ex-boyfriends. She grew upset that her career was being overlooked as a songwriter and singer but instead, she was only being looked at because of the parts of songs where she spoke about her ex-boyfriends and her personal life. She wanted to write an album where she addressed what the media was portraying while also making the transition into pop music.
The first song on the track is titled “Welcome to New York” which was inspired by her first move to New York. The song talks about her new experiences moving to a big city from Nashville. The song is an upbeat pop song about the new freedom that comes with this move. The new version of the song is just as upbeat and is even more clear than the original (which is to be expected for all of her songs). In this version of the song, there is more of an echo and the harmony can be heard more. The instrumental is now louder and more bass-heavy than the 2014 version.
Next is one of the most popular songs on this album, “Blank Space” which is a commentary on how the media views her and describes her. It starts by talking about falling in love with a man and how she goes crazy and breaks up with him. This is seen through the lyrics “Got a long list of ex-lovers, they’ll tell you I’m insane” and “’Cause, darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.” Compared to the 2014 version of the song few changes in the song are in the lyric “’Cause, darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream” where it goes from an angry tone to a joking more upbeat tone.
Style is the next song which is suspected to be about her ex-boyfriend Harry Styles. It talks about an unstable relationship comparing it to current fashion trends. But the song has the metaphor that “we never go out of style” to this unstable relationship never ending and it being on and off. When talking to Joey, a Taylor Swift fan on campus he said, “Her voice is a lot more clear in this one.”
The song I was most excited about is “Out Of The Woods” which was written about a toxic relationship. It talks about her journey from this toxic relationship to a journey of learning how to live by herself and being able to love herself rather than relying on someone else to love her. My favorite part of this song was how clear the guitar became and how the chorus is now more sped up.
Her hit song “Shake It Off” is also a commentary about how judgmental society is towards Taylor Swift and how she is expected to just “Shake It Off” in regards to all of the bad media she received. This is also shown in the lyrics “Baby, I’m just gonna shake x4 I shake it off, I shake it off, heartbreakers gonna break, fakers gonna fake, I’m just gonna shake I shake it off.” Like the previous songs the instrumental is much stronger in this song and the vocals are more synthesized.
What many Taylor Swift fans were excited about were the unreleased vault tracks that were released with the album. Vault tracks include “Slut!” “Say Don’t Go,” “Now That We Don’t Talk,” “Suburban Legends,” “Is It Over Now?”
The vault track “Now That We Don’t Talk” is one of the shorter songs only being around two and a half minutes while all the other tracks are three to four minutes. Like the rest of the tracks, it has heavier and louder instrumentals it also has lyrics that talk about a broken friendship or a relationship and also causing no-contact. It refers to how Taylor Swift would hear things about what her ex-boyfriends were doing now that they were broken up.
The last vault track titled “Is It Over Now” talks about a past relationship where both parties go see someone else. It alludes to cheating on partners through the lyrics “At least I had the decency
To keep my nights out of sight” as well as “Let’s fast forward to three hundred awkward blind dates later.” This is the ending song and closes out the 1989 Taylor’s Version.
When talking to Joey about the album as a whole he said, “The album was pretty good while there wasn’t a large change, all of the vault tracks were good. Generally, I thought it was a good rerecord but I wouldn’t say it stands out like Red did. My favorite song is “This Love” and my favorite vault track is “Suburban Legend.”
With 1989 now being recorded she now owns “Red,” “Fearless,” and “Speak Now.” The last two albums that she is re-recording are Reputation and Debut. Taylor Swift fans refer to this as her now needing to take back her “reputation and name.” 1989 marked her transition in the music industry from a primarily country singer to a pop-singer and then into a pop-rock artist. While we don’t know when these two albums will be released it is predicted that Reputation will come unexpectedly because of her famous quote “There will be no explanation. There will just be reputation” but there is no official date.
