When she announced
1989 a few months prior to its October 2014 release,
Taylor Swift called her sixth record her first "documented, official" pop album, explicitly severing herself from her country roots. Truth be told,
Swift already made the leap from country to pop with 2012's
Red, a nominally country LP distinguished by three songs co-written and produced by
Max Martin and
Shellback, a team that returns for twice that number on
1989 (
Martin has one additional non-
Shellback co-write with
Swift).
Taylor is rarely without co-writers here: only "This Love" belongs to her alone, with the other major collaborators being
OneRepublic's
Ryan Tedder,
fun.'s
Jack Antonoff, and
Imogen Heap. This busy kitchen is typical of modern pop albums, as is the incessant gleam of
1989's steely productions, every element of which blinds when caught in the sun.
Swift claims she patterned the album's sound after the MTV-ready sound of the year 1989, and while some cuts are conceivably anchored in the era of
Debbie Gibson and
George Michael -- "Shake It Off" is giddy on the momentum of its own pom-poms, the bonus track "New Romantics" effectively conjures the ghost of 1983 new wave, "Out of the Woods" veers into territory previously pioneered by one-video wonder T'Pau (their big hit "Heart and Soul" arrived in 1987, two years before
Taylor's year zero) -- this is a modern album through and through. The heavy presence of
Martin, who wound up producing all the vocals along with half the record, is something of a feint.
Swift tailored
1989 after
Tedder's patterns, constructing nearly every one of the album's 13 tracks as an imposing skyscraper that deliberately casts its shadow upon on its predecessor. Considering that this album begins with the fanfare of "Welcome to New York," that progressive escalation in size is something to behold.
1989 emphasizes its reflective surfaces, the hyperactive rhythm tracks -- dance by definition but rarely danceable in practice (the effervescent "How You Get the Girl" is an exception) -- functioning as an aural accent to the surging synthesizers and vocals. Underneath the digital clatter lie some sturdy songs because, at her core,
Swift is a canny songsmith, but
1989 isn't a record about songs, it's all about sonic style. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine