Taylor Swift’s Newest Album Is Great Success, Say Critics

Taylor Swift’s long-awaited 1989 album is out.

The singer announced that the album booklet will include secret messages, and as it turns out, they are a short story.

1. “Welcome to New York”: We begin our story in New York.
2. “Blank Space”: There once was a girl known by everyone and no one.
3. “Style”: Her heart belonged to someone who couldn’t stay.
4. “Out of the Woods”: They loved each other recklessly.
5. “All You Had to Do Was Stay”: They paid the price.
6. “Shake It Off”: She danced to forget him.
7. “I Wish You Would”: He drove past her street each night.
8. “Bad Blood”: She made friends and enemies.
9. “Wildest Dreams”: He only saw her in his dreams.
10. “How You Get the Girl”: Then one day he came back.
11. “This Love”: Timing is a funny thing.
12. “I Know Places”: And everyone was watching.
13. “Clean”: She lost him but she found herself and somehow that was everything.

People worried if she’d be able to pull the musical transition off. She was able to pull off “Shake It Off,” and great reviews started pouring.

Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield writes Taylor is extreme, but in a good way.

“Deeply weird, feverishly emotional, wildly enthusiastic, 1989 sounds exactly like Taylor Swift, even when it sounds like nothing she’s ever tried before. And yes, she takes it to extremes. Are you surprised? This is Taylor Swift, remember? Extremes are where she starts out.”

Last week, Taylor talked to E! News about her inspiration for the change.

“I was gravitating towards those pop sensibilities with my last album. And when people would ask me, what’s your favorite song off of Red…I’d always say, ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ was my favorite. And I started kind of thinking about that and going, ‘All right. I learned a lot when I was making Red. I collaborated with a lot of people. And I kind of learned who I wanted to go back to, and those collaborations were all with the pop producers and writers that I had been working with.

I was just kind of following a natural inclination as a songwriter, and as I got further in, I just realized this isn’t gonna be something where I have a few pop songs on this album. This is a full pop album. It’s sonically cohesive. It has its own sound and I couldn’t be happier about it.”

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