New CD review: Taylor Swift's "1989"

Taylor Swift, "1989" (Big Machine)

For almost a decade, Swift has been waging, and winning, a war. Country music was a natural enemy for her: hidebound, slow moving, lousy with machismo. She could break the rules and make people nervous simply by showing up. And yet country was also a hospitable host body. She faced almost no direct competition there, and, most important, country gave Swift context.

That she would abandon country has long been clear. "1989," her fifth album and the first that doesn't at all bother with country, manages to find a new foe. Swift takes on the rest of mainstream pop, with which the breezily effective "1989" has almost nothing in common. Modern pop stars — white pop stars, that is — mainly get there by emulating black music. Swift, though, is having none of that. Her idea of pop music harks back to a period — the mid-1980s — when pop was less overtly hybrid. That choice allows her to stake out popular turf without having to keep up with the latest microtrends, and without being accused of cultural appropriation.

The era of pop she channels here was a collision of sleaze and romanticism, of the human and the digital. But there's barely any loucheness in Swift's voice. Her take on that sound is sandpapered flat and polished to a sheen. The album, named for the year she was born, finds her writing mostly with popmeisters Max Martin and his fellow Swede, Shellback. What's notable here is their restraint.

"1989" is largely filled with upbeat, tense songs on which the singer stomps out what's left of her youthful innocence. The Taylor Swift of this album is savage, wry and pointed. The high mark is "Style," which recalls something from the "Miami Vice" soundtrack, all warm synths and damp vocals. Swift has often sung in a talky manner, emphasizing intimacy over power and nuance, but on "1989" she uses her voice — processed more than ever — in different ways than before: the way she sweetly drags out the long E in "beat" on "Welcome to New York"; or the bratty background chorus chants on "All You Had to Do Was Stay."

Swift's songwriting isn't as microdetailed as it has been, instead approaching heartbreak with a wider lens. And while there are certainly references to some of her high-profile relationships, the album feels less diaristic than her previous work.

"Blank Space," a metanarrative about her reputation as a dating disaster, is Swift at her peak. It's funny and knowing, and serves to assert both her power and her primness. By contrast, the songs where she sounds the least jaded — "How You Get the Girl," "Welcome to New York" — are among the least effective.

By making pop with almost no contemporary references, Swift is aiming for a mode of timelessness that few pop stars — aside from, say, Adele — even bother aspiring to. Everyone else striving to sound like now will have to shift gears once the now sound changes. But not Swift, who's waging, and winning, a new war, one she'd never admit to fighting.

Jon Caramanica, New York Times