Taylor Swift - ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ - review
Taylor Swift - 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (HIVE)
Taylor Swift. The name that is quite literally on everybody’s lips right now, from movie theatregoers that find themselves in the middle of a queue of tweens seeing the Eras Tour Concert Movie, to football fans who find their beloved game infiltrated by Swifites wearing bright red Kansas City Chiefs jerseys.
The next offering of her re-recording campaign shifts up a few gears with her career defining album ‘1989’, a record that saw everyone become a Swiftie whether they liked it or not. The original version served as her magnum-opus upon its release in 2014 and turned Swift into a global superstar. The general public were finally able to take Swift more seriously as an artist and not just as a musician that was at the butt of every single joke about failed relationships. She had ditched the label as a country radio icon and instead began to cement her place as pop royalty. It changed absolutely everything for Swift, but also for her listeners.
The album is a love story to the first few years of adulthood, documenting what is the most turbulent period of most listeners’ lives. It tells tales of heartbreak and infatuation and wraps them up into the neat package of a well-produced pop album, finishing it off with a pastel pink bow and a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses. These themes weave themselves throughout the entire album and are integral to the tracks we didn’t get to hear. Of all the ‘from the vault’ tracks we have been treated to so far on this re-recording campaign, these are among the best. ‘Is It Over Now?’ is a production highlight, imitating the driving synths and drum pads that are found throughout the album. It wouldn’t be amiss on 2022’s Midnights, an album that follows much the same formula as 1989. These five ‘from the vault’ tracks add so much more depth to what was originally just a foray into pop music.
‘Slut!’ is unlike anyone anticipated. Whilst many expected a feminist anthem hitting back at the years of abuse Swift has faced in the media, what we instead got was a dreamy track about being so deeply in love that you don’t care if you’re slut-shamed and ridiculed for it. It’s a word that appeared so much more frequently on the internet at the album’s initial release, yet Swift is reclaiming it with the use of shimmering synths and heartbreaking lyrics.
It's great to hear the album again and be excited for such a release, but it falls short in some places. Tracks like ‘Style’ that drip with nostalgia and conjure images of headlights flashing by on a long drive at night instead fall a little flat now, feeling lackluster and without the same passion in the vocals. The guitar intro now packs less of a punch and seems thinner, taking the wistfulness and dreamlike memories it conjured with it. This is an anomaly though - ‘Out of the Woods’ and ‘Clean’ are huge in comparison to their predecessors, packed with reverb and layered vocals that help Swift impact listeners with a sense of urgency that the originals don’t hold. The original closing track ‘Clean’ is so thick with co-writer Imogen Heap’s vocals that it feels more like a collaboration between the two.
For many, ‘1989’ is the album that made them fall in love with Taylor Swift. This release saw her completely ditch the innocent country girl image that we all came to know and saw her take on a more mature persona. Red helped bridge the gap between country and pop, giving Swift the basis she needed to release this life-changing record. There was no mistaking the path she wanted to take with this record, trading in the acoustic guitar and cowboy boots for pulsing synths and bright red lipstick.
Nearly a decade after its release, the world is excited for pop music again – an entirely different reality from the one we were living in nine years ago. Pop wasn’t seen as ‘real’ music and the industry was elitest, with some publications choosing not to even review ‘1989’ until Ryan Adams cover was released four years later, regardless of the fact that the album earned her a second Album of the Year Grammy Award. Nine years to the day since the release of its original, ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ is finally accepted as the pinnacle of modern pop. With two rereleases left in her catalogue, there is no telling what comes next for Taylor Swift.
Rating: 4/5
