In the spirit of Taylor Swift rerecording her early discography, I’ve resurrected my take on “1989,” originally published in 2014, with updates in italics.
Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, so here goes we go again.
Taylor Swift’s “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” — an antiseptic pop album scrubbed of any greasy country music fingerprints — qualifies as is a re-creation of a rare and exquisite dud that ate the entire planet back in 2014. When it’s triumphant, it’s like that Super Bowl Sunday when your team is up 42 points at the half. (Go Chiefs!) When it’s bland, it’s like noshing on empty calories in a dream you won’t remember. Sometimes, somehow, it’s both.
But above all, it’s shrewd. The album’s first single, “Shake It Off,” preemptively shushes any criticism Swift may have shouldered for officially renouncing Nashville will receive for the rest of her life — and she does it with a cascading refrain that’s pure pop. “Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate,” she chirps. “Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake — shake it off.”
She sure still sounds comfy inside that armor. Which is really weird, right? One of The most powerful entertainers on the planet shouldn’t have to sing in a defensive crouch. But in addition to penning real-talk megahits about breakups, makeups, flame-outs and happily-ever-afters, Swift is always honing the illusion that she’s an underdog — a global superstar earnestly beseeching our sympathies, our ears and our dollars while simultaneously making the notion of overexposure feel utterly obsolete.
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“1989 (Taylor’s Version)” makes that multilayered illusion seem more ridiculous than ever. Named after the year she was born, the 24-year-old’s fifth album 33-year-old’s latest rerecorded album has all the pomp and razzmatazz of a big career pivot an unseemly victory lap. But as a pop record, it’s ultimately a declaration of conformity: Swift wants to sound like everybody else. And she wants to be the best at it, too. Acquiesce or else!
In a society that seeks constant validation through social media, “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” serves as a conformist power fantasy that might resonate more than we’d like to admit — because it’s also a big, dull gesture we’re expected to applaud no matter what. Clap a little louder Take the Swiftie blood oath or be excommunicated to the valley of the haters. Those are your options in this ludicrous world.
Sonically, the world Swift curates on “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” couldn’t sound more familiar sounds both louder and smoother than the original. She’s assembled an arsenal of weapons-grade radio pop, largely originally with the help of Max Martin, the Swedish producer who knows how to make Swift’s hooks sound like reincarnated new-wave hits. Drum machines and synthesizers good; acoustic guitars and decorative mandolins bad.
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These new reanimated environs feel light-years away from old Nashville and they invite force Swift to twist her adult voice in new childish ways. Unfortunately, her mild vocal acrobatics frequently expose the clunkiness of her lyrics. “Darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream,” she talk-sings with an awkward wave of the finger on “Blank Space,” a buzzy song that rightfully bites back at the bogus, boy-crazy media image the tabloids have been burnishing of Swift in recent years that haunted Swift early in her career.
Meantime, her worst lyrics lurk in the album’s bookended odes to life in her new home of New York City. The chorus of “Welcome to New York” rings out like a desperate and over-caffeinated tourism jingle (“Welcome to New York — It’s been waiting for you!”), while the hook of “New Romantics,” a feisty bonus track the original album’s seventh hit single, registers somewhere between moldy emo and the back pages of a high school literary magazine. (“Heartbreak is the national anthem/We sing it proudly.”)
End of carouselShe’s gone from describing adolescence like an adult to describing adulthood like an adolescent (and now she’s tasked herself with reenacting it all as a 30-something billionaire) — all of which begins to undermine the long-running Swiftian myth that there’s a secret power in being profoundly uncool. On “Now That We Don’t Talk,” one of the five just-okay “vault” songs tacked onto this redux, Swift sings, “I don’t have to pretend I like acid rock.” Yeesh. Where is was Taylor taking us on this grand odyssey of uncoolness? To a rom-com fairy-tale Manhattan that doesn’t actually exist? To a new wave ’80s she never got to live through? To contemporary pop music’s most tame and mundane center?
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For a hint, flash back to 2008, when Swift was memorializing the battle for some forgotten boy’s heart on “You Belong With Me,” a masterful song about the misfit life: “She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts/ She’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers.” In light of “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” that second line is the prophetic one. Young Swift wasn’t off doing whip-its behind the Wawa or reading Kafka at Starbucks. She was on the sidelines, wishing she fit in, standing by. That supreme patience and singular discipline has paid unfathomable dividends. Swift currently has the highest grossing tour in history, a No. 1 movie at the box office (“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour”) and — like a prophecy foretold — she’s currently dating an NFL star.
And now here she is, She’s been ruling over all of popland ever since “1989,” projecting the dim aura of unimpeachability a pristine image of indomitability. Because yes, Swift is a woman thriving at the summit of a pop culture largely shaped by men. And yes, she’s a truth-telling songwriter who’s done some truly brilliant work. And yes, she’s only 24 33 and her future remains bright and unwritten. All of those things are true and good.
But is it wrong to wish that Swift — at this point oh my God, all these years later, still! — was just the itty-bittiest bit cooler? Is it wrong to wish “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” didn’t sound so anonymous? Is it wrong to demand our leaders not make follower music? Is it wrong to feel disoriented depleted and disheartened defeated by the effusion obscene perpetuity of suck-uppy articles dutifully praising a superstardom made permanent by these unimaginative songs? Is it wrong to squirm fall into a coma knowing that those same songs will likely undoubtedly saturate our public spaces for years decades — or maybe even and most certainly for the rest of our lives?
Asking these questions doesn’t make you a hater. It makes you a listener tired.
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