With '1989,' Taylor Swift Perfected the Pop Crossover Album

The global unveiling of “Shake It Off”—the lead single from Taylor Swift’s fifth studio album, 1989, released five years ago Sunday—doubled as an uncomfortable public break-up. The song, a thumping dance number that brings to mind Gwen Stefani, the Black Eyed Peas, and “Party in the U.S.A.”-era Miley Cyrus, marked a notable shift for a country singer-songwriter who rose to fame with a wistful track literally named “Tim McGraw,” and, upon hearing it, the Country Music Association didn’t seem sure how to react. “Good luck on your new venture @taylorswift13!” it tweeted, as if photos from an ex’s spectacular destination wedding had just bubbled up to the top of its timeline. “We’ve LOVED watching you grow!”

As documented by The New Yorker's Kelefa Sanneh, CMA deleted its tweet in the hours that followed, and issued a clean-up statement asserting that its “best intentions” had been “misinterpreted,” and it remained “fully supportive of Taylor as she expands her reach as an international superstar.” Yet this was the exact source of tension that fans perceived: Swift had signaled a shift to pop before, particularly on Red in 2012, when “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” topped both the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs charts. But in the lead-up to 1989’s release, she had enthusiastically billed it as her “first documented, official pop album”—the final step in a transformation from acoustic teenage balladeer to an artist whose tours would require extensive choreography and a troupe of backup dancers. As Sanneh put it at the time, to many, that “Good luck” wish came off as “the spiteful cry of a genre scorned.”

“Shake It Off,” with its cringeworthy rapped bridge and allegations of clumsy cultural appropriation that stemmed from the video’s depictions of twerking, was a somewhat inauspicious start to this new era, and created genuine uncertainty among dedicated Swifties and CMA social media managers alike as to what, exactly, her pivot away from country tropes and princess iconography would look like. The promotional release of “Welcome to New York,” her synthy ode to the carefree joys of being a (young, rich) newcomer to a rapidly-gentrifying city, did not help.

Upon the album’s release, though, fans were relieved to discover that the bulk of it was wildly good pop music, held together by a distinctively 1980s electronic sound that Swift said was inspired by artists like British rocker Peter Gabriel and former Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox. This was as much a savvy rollout strategy as it was a matter of nostalgic fondness: Since most of her then-competitors were borrowing heavily from modern hip-hop, centering her foray into pop on a unique sound from another era helped prevent Swift from blending in. The result is an ambitious album that somehow felt classic the moment it was released. Its highlight is “Style,” a fatalistic, vaguely noir-ish account of young love in turmoil that features production from dependable hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback and makes the wide-eyed teenage optimism of “Sparks Fly” feel like it was created on another planet.

Three years later, when Swift released her follow-up, reputation, she did so in the aftermath of a high-profile feud with longtime frenemy Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West. Briefly, West rapped in a 2016 lyric that he and Swift “might still have sex”; after Swift publicly objected, Kardashian West released a video of a phone call in which Kanye asked Swift for her blessing, which the singer appears to have granted. Swift, for the record, countered that West never told her he would refer to her after the aforementioned “still have sex” line as “that bitch.” But fighting the extended Kardashian social media universe is a fruitless endeavor, and after Kardashian West labeled Swift a “snake” on Twitter, Swift’s social media handles were inundated with snake emoji-laden replies from observers who saw her objections as self-serving and duplicitous.

The controversy took a personal toll on Swift— “I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly,” she told Vogue earlier this year—and it showed on the sprawling reputation, which featured 1989’s same slick packaging but none of the intricately-plotted thematic cohesiveness. Instead, it embraced many of the generic pop trappings that 1989 (mostly) eschewed, and as Vox noted, it includes zero songs on which she is the only credited writer.

Although a commercial success, reputation’s sound was ultimately harder to distinguish from, say, that of contemporaneous fellow chart-topper and longtime rival Katy Perry. (“...Ready For It” is basically an “E.T.” tribute song.) The lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” unironically transformed the hook to Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” into a surreal whisper-rapped vow of revenge. If you consider 1989 to be the critically-acclaimed debut album in a new era in Swift’s career, reputation felt like a textbook example of the sophomore slump.

Fortunately, at some point in the two years that elapsed between reputation and her latest effort, Lover, Swift appears to have rediscovered some of that 1989 magic. The strongest evidence for this is that large chunks of of Lover—and I mean this in the most complimentary way possible—are, more or less, reprisals of 1989’s highlights. On Lover’s “Cruel Summer,” Swift and Jack Antonoff deploy the same haunting, ethereal aesthetic that backs 1989’s “Out of the Woods.” Lover’s “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” is a simple three-act romance in the tradition of 1989’s “How You Get the Girl”—or if you’re listening to the deluxe version, “You Are in Love,” too. The requisite angsty relationship postmortem on 1989, “All You Had to Do Was Stay,” reappears on Lover as the standout “Death By a Thousand Cuts.”

Even “ME!”—Lover’s first single and a soaring hymn to the merits of individuality—features the same carefree screw-the-haters ethos and Big Back-to-School Target Ad Energy of “Shake It Off.” (For all of Taylor Swift’s strengths as an artist, based on her last three album rollouts, “choosing good lead singles” might not be foremost among them.)

None of this is to suggest that Lover is some sort of paint-by-numbers 1989 retread. Parts of it build in meaningful ways on Swift’s earlier, non-1989 portfolio: “Paper Rings,” for example, is a new-and-improved version of Red’s “Stay Stay Stay,” updated for the adult relationships with which many of her longtime fans now more readily identify. Others don’t sound quite like anything she’s done before, which is a genuinely impressive accomplishment for someone who has been making music for more than half her life. The lilting, waltz-like title track is the best love story the singer of “Love Story” has ever produced, and a lock to be the first dance soundtrack at every wedding you attend for the next 18 months.

1989 is Lover’s clearest influence, though, and of Swift’s seven studio releases, it remains the fullest realization of her prodigious talents. Few artists get to make one album like 1989 in their careers; Swift, it seems, has more of them to come.