★★★★★
Some albums really do capture the spirit of their age. So it was in 2014 when Taylor Swift, having built a career in Nashville since her mid-teens, hired the producer of the moment Max Martin, added plenty of hooks and Eighties pop touches, and became a massive star not just of the country world but the actual world. The difference between Swift and the divas who came before were the lessons she learnt from country. Fans like to see themselves and with 1989 Swift became the everywoman star, facing bad relationships, broken hearts and people being mean to her, just like everyone else.
It is revealing of Swift’s work ethic (and taste for vengeance) that she has gone to the length of re-recording her first six albums after the master recordings were sold against her wishes to Ariana Grande’s former manager Scooter Braun. Now 1989 comes with a faithful new rendering and a handful of unheard tracks from the vaults, which is where the interest is here. Slut! is a classic Swiftian love song, winsome but troubled and not entirely serious. “Got lovestruck, went straight to my head. Got lovesick, all over my bed,” she confesses of what sounds like an illicit liaison with a special someone — “in a world of boys, he’s a gentleman”. Fans will no doubt debate endlessly who she’s talking about. That is a sign of the song’s authenticity. It reads like a page from a diary.
Others dragged from the 1989 vault underline the album’s Eighties stylings. Say Don’t Go, a classic tearjerker (“Cos I’m yours but you’re not mine”) has a widescreen quality that makes you think of MTV videos featuring good-looking people wearing Ray-Bans, driving down highways in open-top cars. Now That We Don’t Talk is also a break-up song, although this time she seems pleased to be rid of the guy: “I don’t have to pretend I like acid rock, or that I’d like to be on a mega-yacht with important men who think important thoughts.” An unlikely pairing of things she doesn’t have to do any more, but you get her drift.
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Suburban Legends returns to a Swift perennial — dreaming of being with the cool guy at high school — and Is It Over Now?, the best of the lot, finds her poring over “your profile, and your smile on unsuspecting waiters” against big, Eighties-style gated drums; a tale of yearning, in other words. “I dream about jumping off of very tall somethings, just to see you come running,” she confesses, and it is that constant feeling of pain and dissatisfaction that is at the heart of 1989’s — and Swift’s — appeal. Coupled with familiar classics like Shake It Off (taking on the haters with one hook after another) and Blank Space (laughing at her reputation as a nightmare dressed as America’s sweetheart via catchy radio pop), it all adds up to a masterclass in mainstream songwriting. This is the album that turned Taylor Swift into the biggest singer of modern times. Nine years after it was first released, you can see why. (Republic)
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