


It’s for the rest of the world, where an imagined life in The City is all bright lights and “helluva town!” gossamer sheen, scrubbed clean of its rats, roaches, and endless parade of human suffering. 1989, Swift is saying, will be about celebrating her feelings, reactions be damned.Īnd here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter that those of us who actually live in New York City without a trust fund or Subway-Pepsi endorsement cash can’t actually listen to 1989 opener “Welcome to New York”, lest we risk cerebral hemorrhage. The track opens the record because it’s a manifesto, not an overture. Fortunately, Taylor Swift is much, much smarter than “Welcome to New York” and a much, much better songwriter. It’s easy to imagine Swift releasing an entire album of “Welcome to New York’s”, utilitarian pop songs with zero personality and hooks that bludgeon you into submission rather than coax you into symbiotic bliss. It offers the paradox of a tuneful, undeniably catchy song that also happens to be completely unlistenable. Opener “Welcome to New York” is an immaculately produced, relentlessly peppy, synth-driven single as uncannily smooth as a hot dog soaking in a pail of cloudy water.
Taylor swift oops face 1989 free#
By twisting free of the final touches of genre constraint clinging onto Red’s moments of twang, Swift sends her nearly unparalleled gift for melody soaring into the stratosphere.ġ989 begins with a what-might’ve-been glimpse into an second-Earth dystopia worthy of Back to the Future II (1989, natch). True, the only echo of country music present in all of 1989 is the way Swift sings “chance” in the stunning “Out of the Woods”, but is it really news to music critics that she’s had her sights set on world domination? Did “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” only exist in my dreams? It makes your review a bit harder to write, but call 1989 what it is: the final step in a progression that, once completed, feels quietly revolutionary in its own context. The line on 1989, shaped by Swift’s pre-album statements and eagerly guzzled by critics, is that it represents Swift’s final rejection of her pop-country roots in favor of radio-decimating pure pop hits.

The white steeds of Central Park trail behind her in procession Woody Allen and Lena Dunham and Jerry Seinfeld lead a racially mixed, apolitical group of New Yorkers from every borough except Staten Island in a Rockettes kick-line. A 40-foot Taylor Swift stomps through Manhattan in chelsea boots and a pencil skirt, bodegas and halal carts crumbling under her heels, waving one enormous pinky finger to Jay and Beyoncé as they cower in their Tribeca penthouse.
