‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ Review: Taylor Made

metroweekly.com:

1989 is a watershed. It gave us some of her most enduringly popular tracks and marked a major stylistic pivot that began with Red, away from the world of country towards a noticeably more adventurous synth-pop sound.

People who had written her off were brought on board, her fans were vindicated, and most critics eventually came around, sometimes grudgingly, to the idea that her fifth studio album was something really special.Now that her ambitious re-release project has finally reached 1989, we get to hear a fresh take on the album that practically invented the swiftie.

She has done some interesting things with her previous works, but 1989 (Taylor’s Version) immediately sounds different. To some extent, this is because the original’s varied instrumentation and pop influence made it more technically complex than the pop country efforts that preceded it.Many of the songs end up sounding fairly similar to their original counterparts, something that is impressive in itself given the relative sophistication of the 1989‘s production.

Jack Antonoff and several members of the production team returned for this one, a no-brainer given his influence on the ’80s-inflected sound of the original.Still, as faithful as the songs are to the originals, it is hard to ignore how much Swift has matured as an artist in the years since the original’s release.