Swift is shaking it all up
ALBUM
Taylor Swift
1989
Big Machine Records/Universal
REVIEW SIMON COLLINS
Four stars
Born in 1989, Taylor Swift moved to Nashville in 2003 to crack the country music scene but 2014 is the year of her rebirth as fully fledged pop artist.
Dolly Parton did it in the 70s and still successfully straddles country and pop. In the 1990s, Shania Twain kept just enough down-home twang in her pop hits to never really leave Nashville.
Swift isn't bothering to keep even a stiletto heel in the country capital with her fifth album - a bright, shiny collection reflecting 80s synth-pop, the golden age of CD mega-sales.
"In the past, I've always tried to make sure that I was maintaining a stronghold on two different genres," Swift recently told US Billboard magazine. "This time I just had to think about one, which was creatively a relief. It was nice to be honest about what I was making."
The gestation began in earnest on her previous album, 2012's Red. Three tracks, including the dubstep-infused hit I Knew You Were Trouble, were concocted with Swedish evil geniuses Max Martin and Shellback. The former one- man hit machine, whose resume reads like a So Fresh compilation, gets his paws on nine tracks here, co-writing seven with Swift.
While Red's title track had a banjo, albeit heavily processed, you barely hear an acoustic instrument anywhere on 1989.
When the sound of a strummed guitar arrives 10 tracks deep during the excellent How You Get the Girl, it comes as a shock.
Delirious first single Shake It Off made Swift's intentions loud and clear. Surprisingly, this year's Hey Ya! - a pop hit so irresistible you'll hate yourself for dancing to it at weddings for years - is only her second No. 1 in Australia after 2008's Love Story.
The song and accompanying video heralded that the 24-year-old songstress was approaching this new chapter with unshakeable optimism.
The key to 1989's success is that, despite the presence of Martin, Shellback, Greg Kurstin and other production bigwigs, Swift remains front and centre. The album bursts with hairbrush anthems featuring strong vocals and gossip-spawning lyrics that are basically a diary of the star's past two years.
Love-struck ballad Wildest Dreams and the Miami Vice soundtrack sound-alike, Style, refer to her recent beau, One Direction's Harry Styles. Surging second single Out of the Woods, written with Fun's Jack Antonoff, mentions a snowmobile crash the couple had - and somehow kept out of the media.
Then there's Bad Blood, a barely disguised bitch-slap apparently aimed at rival Katy Perry. This spoonful of bilious bombast is a rare weak moment.
Besides Antonoff - the BF of Swift's BFF, Girls creator Lena Dunham - 1989 features songs penned with English folktronica artist Imogen Heap (closing abstinence ballad Clean) and star songwriter Ryan Tedder, who co-writes the relatively dark I Know Places, which explores the superstar's lack of privacy, and euphoric opening track Welcome to New York.
The polished synth stabs of the latter lets fans know they're not in Nashville anymore, let alone Kansas. Swift declares this is "the new soundtrack, I could dance to this beat forever" as she pays tribute to New York, where so many people have reinvented themselves and her home since March.
At its best, 1989 is a treat fizzing with hallmarks of its titular decade. All You Had to Do Was Stay recalls (or maybe even samples) Annie Lennox, while I Wish You Would blends early Madonna with light guitar motifs based on INXS and U2.
Cynics might suggest the seven-time Grammy Award winner has always gunned for top of the pops but previous outings always had something for country radio to play. There's nothing for them here, but every track on 1989 could be a single, which perhaps isn't saying that much given eight seconds of static her label accidently uploaded to iTunes topped the Canadian chart last week.
This once-in-a-generation star has taken her fans with her, creating regular social media frenzies and making the release of an album - that poor, dumb dodo of today's popular culture - once again feel like an event.
This 13-track collection of perfectly polished pop is the closest thing in years to Michael Jackson's Thriller, and that's thrilling.
The album bursts with hairbrush anthems featuring strong vocals and gossip-spawning lyrics that are basically a diary of the star's past two years.
