1989

Description

If theres one thingTaylor Swiftwants you to know about her, it is that she once felt deeply uncool.

Even as a superstar with best-selling albums, stadium tours, and high-profile friends, shesaid in 2014that she had never felt edgy, cool, or sexy. Her first four albums hinge on that feeling, full of vivid, sprawling documents of failed romances that left her gasping for air, wondering how to be someone her lovers would miss. She was almost always the one who was in pain, the outsider, the underdog.

That changed with1989. Its predecessor,Red, was the pinnacle of diaristic specificity, an album that blew up the tiny intimate details of her romances into public eulogies. The media surrounding that album critiqued Swift asclingy,boy-obsessed, andvindictive.1989is in part Swifts response to the negative, often sexist, press shed received. On the album, Swift loses her navet, dons a sense of unfazed nonchalance, and learns to navigate a world that underappreciated her lyricism and shamed her for dating too many men. Shehas saidthat she would work in marketing if she didnt work in music but, really, she has already been doing both simultaneously and spectacularly.

Pitchfork