1989 would have been just as impressive thirty years ago, against much fiercer competition. It’s also proof that an expert songwriter, one who happens to sing and dance (somewhat less expertly), can rule our dreary charts.
Whether she’s poking fun at herself, touching on more risqué topics ..., or just going about her business singing about breakups because that’s what she wants to do, 1989 is an album that shows growth straight across the board.
By twisting free of the final touches of genre constraint clinging onto Red’s moments of twang, Swift sends her nearly unparalleled gift for melody soaring into the stratosphere.
There's evolution with purpose in every fibre of 1989, and far from jettisoning her integrity in this drastic lunge, she's proved in her bold, risky decision that she's got courage in her convictions to pull it off and faith in her fans to accept the new direction.
Swift’s never going to be as bleak as Del Rey or as sexually frank as Madonna, but, on 1989, she’s figured out how to be an adult once and for all.
Deeply weird, feverishly emotional, wildly enthusiastic, 1989 sounds exactly like Taylor Swift, even when it sounds like nothing she's ever tried before.
‘1989’ is less of a reinvention, more the sound of a winning formula being ruthlessly refined.
While not completely successful in showcasing in her transition into pure pop, 1989 is a great listen for those refuse to believe both the hype and the haters.
It's Swift's best work -- a sophisticated pop tour de force that deserves to be as popular commercially as with Robyn-worshipping blog--gers; an album that finds Swift meeting Katy and Miley and Pink on their home turf and staring them down.
On 1989 the reasons she’s afforded the kind of respect denied to her peers are abundantly obvious.
Swift’s fifth record is a bold, gossipy confection that plays to her strengths – strengths which pretty much define modern pop.
The big ol’ city was imaginary; but on 1989, Swift writes and inhabits a fully-realized fantasy of self-reliance, confidence, and ensuing pleasure. Her music was no longer just a diary entry. You can almost hear her winking on every track.
Her metropolitan butterflies aside, Swift’s songwriting is as consistently razor-sharp as it’s ever been.
Too often on 1989 she’s trying to win at somebody else’s game, whittling her words down to generic love stuff over flowy synthesizers.
A cold, somewhat distant celebration of all the transient transparencies of modern pop, undercut by its own desperate desire to be nothing but a sparkling soundtrack to an aspirational lifestyle.
‘1989’ is Taylor Swift’s radical reinvention: one to finally alienate her country audience and plant her flag firmly in pop soil.
Swift’s self-empowerment is so irrepressible that you can actually hear her kiss off the haters with the help of a brass backing section.
No longer writing love stories that naively set out to rival Romeo and Juliet, the Swift on 1989 is very aware of the transience and the fun of everything she’s writing about – but she’s also aware that that doesn’t mean it can’t sound larger than life.
1989’s standout tracks retain the narrative detail and clever metaphor-building that distinguished Swift’s early country songs, even amid the diversions wrought by the aggressive studio production on display throughout.
1989 is a testament to Swift's transition as a woman, and it's admirable to anyone embarking on the difficult journey of finding themselves.
It has moments of magic, passages that gleam so perfectly. But then it stalls. And it splutters. And it parks itself, enticing first impressions undermined by an unreliable core, as Just Another Pop Record.
The little personal details she inserts into otherwise fluffy songs are what make tracks like Out Of The Woods so resonant. If anything, 1989 proves that those skills, and not the marketing campaign, are the source of her success.
1989 is a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.
#1 | / | Billboard |
#1 | / | Cosmopolitan |
#2 | / | Digital Spy |
#3 | / | Drowned in Sound |
#4 | / | American Songwriter |
#4 | / | TIME |
#5 | / | The Telegraph |
#7 | / | Pazz & Jop |
#8 | / | Complex |
#10 | / | Rolling Stone |