MUSIC
TAYLOR SWIFT
1989
A
nyone interested in the craft of pop music would do well to study the new album 1989
by Taylor Swift. Packed with melodic, lyrical and instrumental hooks that you cannot
help but remember even after the first listen, this most recent effort is the hallmark of today’s
pop market.
1989 brings the intentional craft of manufactured pop-hit production to the level of perfection. The album displays excellent songwriting structure where verses, pre-choruses and
choruses flow into each other with a refined balance between expected anticipation and
refreshing surprise. It hits you in just that ever so sweet spot of memorability and fluff that
drives hordes of frenzied teenagers to shows, screaming in anthemic delirium to be part of
the shimmer that this music delivers in spades.
The concern with this incredibly well produced album is the lack of depth to it beyond its
shimmer. Like a Cinderella fantasy, the lyrical content is built of stuff that dreams are made
of: narration about the singer’s longing for, feeling jilted by or righteous indignation at, and
occasional delight in encounters with, some elusive, ephemeral prince. Yet the narration
seems empty, without heart or honest presence. Listening to the album is like looking at a
piece of perfectly polished, transparent glass inside a calculated, pristine frame.
1989 is ultimately not art so much as it is a well-crafted product driven by a clever corporation whose goal is reach and profit. It is lacking in the human presence that would allow music lovers to truly engage with it. Within its slick environment, there is nothing to grab onto,
no emotional conversation, no empathy, no point of connection.
Even Swift’s inclusion of raw song sketches in the album, that she says she creates on
her phone to send to her producers, does not communicate the true vulnerable inten-