While
Taylor Swift transitioned cautiously from country to pop on 2012's
Red, she became the face of mainstream pop music with the monumental synth-driven hit parade of her next album,
1989. Released in October of 2014, the album was named after
Swift's birth year as well as the era of synth pop radio hits that provided partial inspiration for the dancy, hyper-produced material.
1989 [Taylor's Version] continues
Swift's series of re-recording her albums for purposes related to licensing rights, and more than any of the revised versions that preceded it, illuminates the moment when she became a timeless songwriter. At the time of its original release,
1989 was a grand slam, moving platinum numbers, producing seven hit singles (three of which were number ones), and remaining in the charts internationally for more than a year. Returning to this material exactly nine years later, one would expect songs played to death on the radio for nearly a decade to feel a little dated, or for the
Jack Antonoff or
{|Max Martin|} and
{|Shellback|} co-written tunes to sound especially formulaic in hindsight. Instead, the re-recorded versions (like all of Taylor's Versions, aiming for faithful re-creation of the originals more than artistic updating) sound fresh and vital, perhaps even more powerful in light of
{|Swift|}'s often-shifting artistic progress since. Songs that may have come across shallow or substanceless in 2014 (the cheerleader-y bounce of "Shake It Off" or
{|Swift|}'s PG-rated
{|Lana Del Rey|} mirroring on "Wildest Dreams") now make more sense as part of the unfettered celebration of pop -- in all its self-indulgence and escapism -- that
{|1989|} was intended as. The album's homage to the gated reverb and MIDI keyboard tones of late-'80s radio comes into full view on the five additional tracks that were kept in the vault from the time the album was initially made. There are echoes of
{|the Outfield|}'s 1986 hit "Your Love" in the verses of "Say Don't Go" before a decidedly 2010s chorus washes up on a cascade of bubbly synth notes, and both "Suburban Legends" and the magnetic hooks of "Slut!" offer a more subdued counterpoint to the overenthusiastic electro-pop exclamation
{|Swift|} got into on "New Romantics." Fleshed out by these extra tracks,
{|1989 [Taylor's Version]|} confirms the lasting strength that
{|Swift|}'s songwriting was achieving in this one of many blooms, and serves as a lovely reminder of when she officially stepped into her place in the pop culture continuum. ~ Fred Thomas
