A Nightmare Dressed Like a Daydream
A review of "1989 (Taylor's Version)"
(Part ten in my ongoing and apparently endless series on the music of Taylor Swift—see parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine)
1989 was where it all began for me.
This album was truly a gateway drug, the first step on my slow but inexorable journey deep into the world and music of Taylor Swift. While it’s since been superseded in my own personal Swift canon by albums like Red and folklore and evermore, I’ll always look fondly on 1989 as the record that first introduced me to her and her work. You listen to “Shake It Off” one time in late 2014, and the next thing you know you’re screaming out the lyrics to some of Swift’s most obscure songs in a stadium alongside 70,000 of your newest best friends…
And I know exactly how it happened: beneath 1989’s neon-bright pop glare, Swift’s lyrics slowly but surely seep into your bones and burrow into your soul—and you’re hooked before you even have a chance to realize it. The album’s catchy hooks and synth-heavy arrangements made it easy for casual listeners to overlook Swift’s artistry even as we found ourselves sucked deeper and deeper into it; only when I watched video of her solo performances of “Blank Space” and “Wildest Dreams” some time later on did it truly dawn on me what was going on.
That’s even more apparent on 1989 (Taylor’s Version), the fourth entry in Swift’s ongoing campaign to re-record and reclaim ownership of her first six albums. The re-recorded version of the record hews much closer to Swift’s original vision, offering a fuller and more complete realization of her ambitions and intentions—“big 80s synths” and “sky high choruses,” as she puts it in her written prologue—for the record. Sharper sound does indeed do wonders here, allowing 1989 (Taylor’s Version) to somehow shine even brighter than on the original recording. The record has been allowed to breathe and expand, with individual synth lines and background instruments remaining distinct and discernible even as they coalesce to produce a dramatic, deep soundscape.
The end result is a larger-than-life pop odyssey that’s much more than a throwback to its synth-driven, late 80s musical inspirations. Listening to it fresh, it’s a far more coherent, intentional, and structured record than I remembered—an album about new beginnings and the hard realities of self-reinvention. For her part, Swift chooses to remain more economical with her lyrics on this record, painting vivid and impressionistic pictures in “screaming color.” She’s also having fun on her version of 1989 as well, and her enthusiasm for “this album I love so dearly” comes through loud and clear.
It’s a journey that starts with “Welcome to New York,” a song that conveys the wide-eyed optimism of moving to a new city and starting fresh—though as Swift observes, “like any true love it drives you crazy.” From there, though, the record immediately turns moody and pensive with “Blank Space.” This song shows Swift at her most cutting and clever as she begins toying with her wildly distorted public image in her own music for the first time. (She’ll broach similar themes more seriously later on this album in “I Know Places.”) While it’s a sly and playful satire, in her comments about the song over the years Swift has made clear it also conceals real pain. But it’s a testament to Swift herself that while she straightforwardly expresses her thoughts and feelings in her music and in-depth interviews, she rarely complains or wallows in self-pity.
There’s something equally masterful about “Style” and the way Swift sets its slick, romantic chorus against its more apprehensive, circumspect verses about an on-again, off-again relationship that has no real future. It just doesn’t work despite its obvious attractions, but she can’t stop going back to something she fully realizes is bound to fail: “I should just tell you to leave 'cause I know exactly where it leads.” “Out of the Woods” hits a similar theme; as Swift puts it, “we built to fall apart and fall back together.” But it’s clear this relationship will never be out of the woods; indeed, it’s one of those questions that you probably already know the answer to if you have to ask it.
For all of its bright neon trappings and pop stylings, however, 1989 is at heart a brooding and angst-ridden record—one that dwells extensively on romantic uncertainty and sees Swift dancing on the tightrope of relationships she knows will not last. Almost immediately, she finds the sort of self-reinvention she seeks so earnestly on “Welcome to New York” to be more difficult to achieve than she imagines. Unbounded optimism gives way to a precarious atmosphere that pervades the album, a sense that Swift and her listeners stand on shaky ground that may give way at any moment. Swift puts her skill as a songwriter on full display here, combining thematic and lyrical contrasts with such ease on songs like “Style” that we don’t even hear them unless we pay close attention.
But on “All You Had To Do Was Stay” she’s done with uncertainty. If her significant other can’t stick around, she doesn’t want to be with him.“Why'd you have to go and lock me out when I let you in?” she wonders. Swift explores the flipside of this scenario in “I Wish You Would,” where she pines for her former romantic partner and wishes she’d “never hung up the phone like I did.” She later womansplains at her best on “How You Get The Girl,” telling men that they need to tell the objects of their affection what they really want and fully commit.
“Shake It Off” remains the undisputed high point of 1989 (Taylor’s Version). The greater sonic depth of this new version allows the song to expand and very nearly approach the crescendo it reaches in Swift’s euphoric live performances. Given its ubiquity, however, people rarely if ever listen to the song—and as a result it’s to dismiss as light-and-fluffy pop, a mere earworm designed to entertain for three-plus minutes and nothing more. On the contrary, it’s quite a philosophical song: Swift makes the basic point that we can’t allow our own emotional pain or external commentary to keep us from enjoying life. Instead of “getting down and out about liars and dirty, dirty cheats of the world,” she reminds us that we “could’ve been getting down to this sick beat.” We need to know what’s actually under our control and focus on that while disregarding the unfounded criticisms of others—a skill that’s as hard to put into practice as it is easy to describe.
The album proper concludes with “Clean,” a song that represents the end of the odyssey and Swift’s final acceptance that the volatile relationship threaded throughout the record is finally and truly over—and that it’s for the best. It also marks the last stage of an individual starting over somewhere new, with Swift offering us a wiser and more sober sort of optimism than the giddy excitement she expressed on “Welcome to New York.” Self-reinvention and pulling up stakes to live somewhere new can be hard and painful, she reminds us, but we can come through it all just fine: “The rain came pouring down/When I was drowning that’s when I could finally breathe.” The song ends on a hopeful note, with Swift proclaiming herself “finally clean” and ready to move on.
Beyond the main album itself, the three additional tracks originally released on the deluxe version of 1989 back in 2014 remain some of Swift’s finest songs. While these three tracks very much align with the album’s themes and motifs, it’s easy to understand why she ultimately left them off the original record. They just don’t quite fit into the original album, and Swift deliberately makes albums rather than simple compilations of singles.
Take “Wonderland,” a song full of razor-sharp lyrics set amidst sprawling synth riffs. Swift again picks up the motif of a superficially seductive and enjoyable but ultimately unworkable and doomed relationship; she and the object of her desire were “too in love to think straight” and “in the end in wonderland we both went mad.” Meanwhile, “You Are In Love” stands as a comparatively quiet testament to the central thematic preoccupation of Swift’s life and work: intimacy and human connection. Over a delicate synth line, she explains that it’s something she’s “spent my whole life trying to put it into words.”
But the energetic “New Romantics” remains the highlight here; it’s one of Swift’s best songs, complete with sweeping synths, a pulsing beat, and one stellar lyric after another. It’s also a spiritual sibling of both “Blank Space” and “Shake It Off,” with Swift raising the specter of distorted personal reputations and the need to live life even amidst its inherent pains and difficulties. “We show off our different scarlet letters,” she declares, “Trust me, mine is better.” While Swift “could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me,” she and her compatriots are “too busy dancing to get knocked off our feet” by the vicissitudes of life.
The newly-released “from the vault” tracks on 1989 (Taylor’s Version) have a noticeably darker edge to than the rest of the album, but they nonetheless tread the same thematic ground. “‘Slut!’” deals directly with Swift’s public image as a “psycho serial dater girl” and the need to disregard baseless gossip, for instance, while “Is It Over Now?” deals with the demise and aftermath of an inherently incompatible if initially promising and alluring relationship. “Say Don’t Go” is the clear standout here, however, with Swift expressing a subdued sense of desperation as a valued relationship slowly but surely decays due to one-sided neglect: “And I’m yours but you’re not mine,” she mournfully acknowledges. “I’m trying to see the cards you won’t show/I’m about to fold unless you say ‘don’t go.’”
It's part of theundercurrent of anxiety and uncertainty that courses through much of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), one that’s always present when we strike out for something new—and even when we don’t. Like it or not, we’re always on a particularly precarious tightrope and we’ve got to find a way to walk it without falling. But the good news, Swift reminds us beneath her majestic synth riffs and bombastic beats, is that we can in fact face this and come out stronger on the other side—especially if we can find a way to, yes, just shake it off.