Taylor Swift's 1989: The return of a pop music masterpiece

With the announcement this week of Taylor Swift's 1989 (Taylor's Version), Rob Freeman revisits the moment that changed the artist's career forever.
On Wednesday, Taylor Swift announced that the re-recorded version of her 2014 album 1989 was set to be released in October. Since 2021, pop music fans have been excitedly consuming these re-recorded albums, dubbed "Taylor's versions", which have been streamed more than 1 billion times – far outstripping the originals.
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In 2019, music executive Scooter Braun acquired Swift's previous record label Big Machine, taking ownership of her back catalogue before selling the Master tapes to an investment fund for a reported $300m. Embroiled for several years in a subsequent dispute, Swift decided to take back control by embarking on the project to re-record her entire back catalogue. Having worked through 2008's Fearless and 2010's Speak Now, and with the release in 2022 of 2012's Red, her fans are revisiting this integral moment of Taylor Swift's career – which saw the emergence of her "pop era", and the reinvention of herself.
In a controversial move, Swift had chosen to step away from her country roots towards a more "alt-pop" direction on 2012's Red. She brought in Swedish pop mega-producer Max Martin as collaborator, and singles I Knew You Were Trouble and We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together combined her traditional guitar sound with a more diverse set of influences, from EDM to dubstep. When the album was released, she faced a Dylan-esque backlash from her core, US country fanbase, but the move also found her an entirely new audience, in scores of pop music fans around the world.

But it wasn't until her next album that Swift found the full expression of her new pop direction. 1989 was met with enthusiastic reviews the first time around in 2014: Billboard called it "a sophisticated tour-de-force", while Rolling Stone said "it sounds like nothing she's ever tried before". And it's fitting that Swift's retrofuturist masterpiece should be returning to the mainstream nearly a decade after its first release. It is an album out of time, shuffling its influences and eras both musically and lyrically, through proleptic narratives of memory and loss, looking simultaneously backwards and forwards.
A message of hope
Created alongside friend, collaborator and Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff, at the beginning of his own super-producer ascendency, 1989 is a pitch-perfect exercise in musicianship and album structure, with diaristic lyrics accompanied by lush synths and vocal percussion. From the liberal sprinkling of glossy '80s synths throughout, to the washed-out Polaroid cover, the album is nostalgic, while brimful of anticipation about the future.
Opener Welcome To New York is on the surface about arriving in an overwhelming city with "a kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats", but underneath is about starting again, perhaps after a failed relationship, dreaming of a new beginning. Album highlight Out of the Woods features a woman in the present ing a relationship in the past, and looking forward to the future. "I thinking – are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods? Are we out of the woods, yet? Are we out of the woods">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });