Take Back Thursday - Revisiting Taylor Swift’s “1989”

Taylor Swift’s fifth studio album 1989 was released on Oct. 27, 2014. Named after the star’s birth year, the album would go on to be one of the most successful pop albums of all time and lay the foundation for Swift’s voyage into pop music which is still evolving to this day.

In 1989, Swift took her storytelling to New York City. After keeping her focus on Nashville’s country scene throughout her early career, her 2012 album RED (specifically “I Knew You Were Trouble”) would shed some insight into the direction that its successor would gear towards. Enlisting massive pop producers like Max Martin and Shellback, and her first work with her now-frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, Swift went full-blown pop for the first time ever.

“Welcome To New York” creates the sound for the record. Loud solo synth beats and claps open Swift’s newfound admiration for the titular city. “It’s a new soundtrack, I could dance to this beat forevermore / The lights are so bright but they never blind me,” she sings starry-eyed. “Blank Space” is a satirical take on the media’s portrayal of Swift’s dating life. With a now-very recognizable opening supported by a classic 808 beat, she writes herself as this supposed “serial dater” that everyone said she was. “Got a long list of ex lovers / They’ll tell you I’m insane / ‘Cause you know I love the players / And you love the game,” she exclaims. Perhaps among the best of Swift’s pop cuts in her entire catalog, “Style” was an instant classic. While it didn’t reach the success that other 1989 singles did, it was surely one of the best. Between that classic guitar riff, the buildup past the second chorus and the “Take me home!”’s, it is utmostly one of the best pop songs of the 2010s.  

Now onto Swift’s best single from the album and one of my favorite songs of hers of all time. “Out Of The Woods” was her first collaboration with now-famed pop producer Jack Antonoff. The opening echoes ring in over a distorted drum track. “Looking at it now, it all seemed so simple / We were lying on your couch, I remember,” she sings as she sets the scene (fun fact: The “I remember” from this verse would be sampled in Swift’s song “Question…?” off of her 2022 Midnights record). The song would have been great with a mediocre bridge. Thank God this is not the case. The production style of the choruses is amped up as Swift sings, “Remember when you hit the brakes too soon? / Twenty stitches in a hospital room.” This theme of remembering lingers across all of 1989, as she captures intimate snapshots (or polaroids, if you will) from her life. Fifth track “All You Had To Do Was Stay” sees Swift pushing back on an ex looking for a second chance. “You were all I wanted / But not like this,” she yells on the bridge’s ending. The song takes the place of the fifth song on this album that Swift dubs the most emotional on every album. While sounding immensely poppy, the lyrics are very much…not. 

The song that everybody knows and either loves or loathes: “Shake It Off.” It has become one of Swift’s biggest songs, if not her most well-known of all time. Perhaps the most playful she gets on the album, like on the spoken tongue-in-cheek bridge, the song is a classic and was so popular for a reason. I will die on the hill that seventh track “I Wish You Would” will always be this album’s most underrated song. With vivid lines (“It’s 2 a.m. in my room / Headlights pass the window pane / I think of you”), another incredible guitar riff and the most eclectic sound that any track has, this song is just perfection. “Bad Blood” has one of my favorite bridges on this album and was further elevated with its star-studded music video and feature courtesy of Kendrick Lamar. “Bandaids don’t fix bullet holes” was very serious to me in 2014. “Wildest Dreams,” the ninth track on the album and the first to be re-recorded for 1989 (Taylor’s Version), opens with a beat that is based around Swift’s own heartbeat. Her vocals are airy and stun throughout but especially after the bridge, where the production dims down and her voice is the star of the show.

“How You Get The Girl,” is another underrated pop gem. Sounding straight out of a romantic comedy, this song is so insanely catchy and upbeat that it should probably be illegal to not like it. “Remind her how it used to be / With pictures in frames of kisses on cheeks,” Swift sings. Eleventh track “This Love” is the slowest song on the album and started out as a poem in her diary. This song just feels like if a breezy, dark beach night was made into a song in the best way possible. “Clear blue water, high tide came and brought you in / And I could go on and on, on and on and I will,” Swift laments. “I Know Places” touches on a theme that she would touch on in her later work: how to protect a love that is constantly under surveillance. She compares her and her lover to “foxes” and the public eye to “hunters.” The closing and most devastating track on this album is called “Clean.” This song is co-written with Imogen Heap who also provides background vocals. The song reflects on trying to escape from every aspect of a past love to feel “clean” of it. “Ten months sober, I must admit / Just because you’re clean don’t mean you don’t miss it,” Swift sings. 

1989 was the first pop album that I listened to that made me realize just how amazing the genre could be. Something that I have always loved about it is how most of the lyrics on it sound like fun pop songs but when on paper, they read like poems. Swift never sacrificed her songwriting for a hit- she rather finds ways to write songs that are utmostly her while remaining fully capable to smash records and be stuck in your head for days on end. For someone who had never made an entirely “pop” album, Swift did it flawlessly on her first try.