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Swift's change in style unnecessary yet polished
Swift’s change in style unnecessary yet polished
Photo by Al Powers/Powers Imagery/Invision/APFILE — In this Sept. 19, 2014 file photo, Taylor Swift performs at the iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Swift is releasing her fifth album, ‘1989,’ on Monday, Oct. 27, 2014. It is the Grammy winner’s first full-length pop album and features the hit song, ‘Shake It Off.’
Posted: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 7:30 pm
Swift’s change in style unnecessary yet polished
You’ve likely heard that Taylor Swift released a new album this week. The promotional storm buffeting “1989” into the marketplace was impossible to escape unless you retreated to a doomsday bunker with no access to social media or the Internet, TV and all print publications.
And given the former country singer’s tenacious ability to stay on message, I’m guessing if you know nothing else about her new music, you know that this is, officially, her first pure “pop” album.
Of course, suddenly declaring yourself a pop star is obviously a question of semantics when you’re: 1. arguably the biggest force in popular music on the planet (Beyonce is the only one who could quibble), 2. have lodged numerous singles in the upper reaches of the Hot 100, and 3. included a single on your previous album that dabbled in dubstep produced by Max Martin, the No. 1 producer of pop music for the last 15 years. Still, this is Taylor Swift’s narrative, and like an ex-boyfriend unlucky enough to find himself the subject of one of her songs, we’re powerless to change it.
The question of what this new direction gains her, however, is less clear because “1989,” named after the year she was born and (sort-of) indicative of the sonic territory where, for the time being, her sound resides, is indeed a departure.
Structurally, Swift’s songs always have been pop in the sense that they strive for universal appeal with an emphasis on hooks and distinct melodies, but here, she almost completely jettisons acoustic instruments for programmed beats and synths. This is defiantly un-country, even in an era when country radio is playing rap and EDM hybrids.
Taylor Swift’s previous album — the sprawling, big-hearted, omnivorous crowd pleaser, “Red” — was one of the highlights of 2012 and the most populist album the decade has produced. It showcased her dexterity as a songwriter as she flitted effortlessly between a multitude of styles, from U2-size stadium shakers to corny country-radio ballads and even some twee. A multi-platinum seller, “Red” was also ambitious, accessible and like nothing else in the marketplace.
So why change? Why try to fix a formula that isn’t broken?
Because behind that pristine beautiful dork angel Swift presents to the world lies a pitiless maw that will not (and cannot) be satiated until it drinks fully the blood of every pretender to the throne, its black sandpapery tongue lapping every crevice of popular music’s sordid vistas. Like a cross between a sentient Pinterest board and Littlefinger, she smiles and offers you a plate of her special homemade pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies arrayed on a fall doily she crocheted herself and only later, as you watch the head of Katy Perry roll bodiless through the keep, do you realize that by accepting them you’re now complicit in Swift’s long game to secure for all time the platinum throne as well as all the power and prestige it entails.
I imagine Swift, cannier and more ruthlessly careerist than any of her peers, falls asleep every night with the rumbling voice of the void inside her intoning, “Evolve or die! Evolve or die! Evolve or die!”
There is only one other artist today whose hunger and ambition radiates at the same fevered pitch as Swift’s, and he once famously interrupted her acceptance of a Video Music Award.
Kanye West and Taylor Swift are more alike than not, though his metrics of success have recently changed. The follow-up to his own world-conquering pop masterpiece, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” was “Yeezus,” a brilliantly pitch-black industrial noise-rap hybrid with zero radio or crossover appeal, a left turn that makes “1989” look like the predictable baby step it is. But I guarantee West lies awake at night plotting ways he could overthrow Drake, even if he ultimately decides he’s no longer interested in doing so.
What “1989” sounds most like is a transition, the album that signals Swift is moving in a new direction without necessarily signalling what she might sound like in the future. Not that “1989” can’t stand on its own — it’s the most slick and polished pop album of 2014, and it benefits from Swift’s surefooted instincts and knack for the making personal details universal. But with almost all the production handled by the omnipresent Martin, it also sounds like a lot of Swift’s contemporaries, despite it supposedly hearkening back to the ’80s
Still, Swift strikes me as the type of person with a meticulously plotted 10-year plan, and given that she’s now five albums into her career without a single dud and she’s only 24, I can only assume everything is going exactly as she predicted. Personally, I would love it if she took the heartland rock of “Holy Ground” from “Red” — which sounds like a new The War on Drugs album polished up for Top 40 radio — and explore that mid-’80s period when Springsteen, Tom Petty and even Bob Dylan were writing fist-pumping synth-rock songs for middle America.
Not that any of us have a say in what Taylor does next, obviously. It’s her world. We’re just lucky she lets us live here.
Here are my favorite songs of “1989” in order of preference:
• “Style”: the most instantly sublime song on the album and the one that sounds like it could be on “The Drive” soundtrack.
• “Out of the Woods”: sweet goth-pop written with Jack Antonoff of Fun and Bleachers, and the one song that genuinely sounds like nothing else out right now.
• “Blank Space”: lyrically, the best song on the album — self-aware, romantic and funny.
• “Clean”: moody, ruminative bedroom pop with sumptuous backup vocals courtesy of Imogen Heap.
• “I Know Places”: the one that would have been most at home on the new Lorde-curated “Hunger Games” soundtrack.
You’ve probably heard all the Taylor Swift you can stand. Last week’s collection of synth-pop and goth is perfect for Halloween, so keep the music going with the Joplin Globe Jukebox, on joplinglobe.com.
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Wednesday, October 29, 2014 7:30 pm.
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