Taylor Swift’s 1989: The Birth of a Pop Star
Taylor Swift was only alive for 18 days in the 80s nevertheless, she was able to master the mega-hit era’s synth essence with her full transition to pop; her Grammy Award-winning multi-platinum fifth studio album, 1989.
Taylor Swift’s 1989: The Birth of a Pop Star
Between the media, traitorous friends, and failed relationships, 24-year-old Taylor managed to sketch and execute a full era dedicated to detachment, growing up, and true love and living. And from the polaroids, her signature blonde bob, evoking synths, and the millennial living in a big city aesthetics, we made her era our own.
Party like it’s Taylor Swift’s 1989
Bared from her old country persona are new sounds and looks, but Taylor never lost the soul of her artistry. Her signature cutting lyricism, vivid storytelling, and relatability are still present in 1989, just dressed in a red lip classic and bouncy bops.
When her first four studio albums lean on diaristic confessionals of a naive teenager such as cult classics Love Story, Teardrops on My Guitar, and All Too Well, the 13 tracks from 1989 are more of blondie reclaiming her narrative, an ode to a big city, a more mature look on failed relationships, and her new-found meaning of true love.
Opening with Welcome to New York, she stayed true to a vengeful promise she made on Speak Now’s Mean. Then singing “Someday I’ll be living in a big old city,” she now readily took her broken heart and put it in a drawer.
The dreamy Wildest Dreams, and edgy Out of the Woods both reminisce on past relationships but on different soundscapes. In a sultry and atmospheric production, the former expresses a goodbye and acceptance between broken lovers, while the latter incites anxiety and dread for a fragile bond. And, as a fitting closer, Clean serves as an oath of moving on from the ache of affecting experiences. It is the most experimental-sounding track concluding the album, and welcoming Tay’s new bold pop persona.
From the universal experience of a dreadful transition to adulthood, indifferent feelings, to recovering and moving on, and first experiences of true love, Taylor Swift 1989’s boppy soundtrack resonated with most of us. The synths made everybody dance and bop their heads, but the lyrics stayed with us thereafter.
Taylor Swift’s 2016
1989 saw Taylor’s biggest and most commercially successful album before Midnights. It is one of her three Album of the Year Grammys, showing her bold choice of committing to pop paid off. But reaching a new level of fame, Taylor was far from scrutiny and public set-ups like most pop stars.
The lead single Shake it Off plays on criticisms that she can’t dance, and haters; she just shook them off. While the remarkable hit single Blank Space features a satirical long list of her ex-lovers in response to the media’s portrayal of her as a “serial dater”. To this day, it is still one of her smartest lyricism paired up with an ultimately catchy tune.
What came with the successful years of her career yet, are the piling backlash and the worst attempt to sabotage her stardom. Her infamous “model squad,” the continuous accusations playing the victim narratives, and the recorded phone call scandal perpetrated by then-husband-and-wife Kim Kardashian and Kanye West that birthed #TaylorIsOverParty.
When all of it became too much for her to handle, after 2016, she disappeared and no one saw her for over a year. Her social break resulted in the production of her next album, and a new era of redemption, Reputation.
Birth and rebirth
1989 was the year Miss Americana was born. Taylor herself confirmed in a live stream, that the inspiration for the album title and overall soundscape was the late-80s pop.
“It was apparently a time of limitless potential, the idea you could do what you want be what you want … the idea of endless possibility was kind of a theme in the last two years of my life.”
Evidently, Taylor really did adore and worshipped 80’s pop, an era of “bright colors, bold chances, rebellion,” as she described. Tinges and touches of tunes from the late-80s are present in the entirety of the album. From Madonna, and Annie Lenox to Roxette, and even Billy Joel, all of whom birthed and collapsed an inspirational era.
Taking this essence of daring choices, Taylor traded her cowboy boots and acoustic guitar for vintage synths and dance beats. She was nowhere near an underdog prior to this, having debuted both Speak Now and Red with 1 million copies sold in its first week. But 1989 has served as her initiation to the pop star circle. The birth of the pop giant as we know her now.
