Every Single Album - '1989' | Every Single Album: Taylor Swift

Episode Date: March 23, 2021

'1989' is here and Taylor Swift is aiming for world domination. Nathan and Nora talk about Taylor's first full pop album that contains some of her biggest songs ever like "Blank Space" and "Shake It Off," the importance of the '1989' world tour and Taylor's "squad," some of the first Jack Antonoff–produced songs, and whether or not this album was influenced by '80s music. Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ringer Dish is the place for all things celebrity, for major celebrity moments like the Met Gala and the Oscars, to the weird habits of the stars you love, to refreshers on the biggest tabloid stories from the last 20 years, Ring or Dish has all the vital details. On Tuesdays, catch jam session with Juliet Lippman and Amanda Dobbins for Royal Family Rumors, Celebrity Real Estate, and Industry Analysis. And on Fridays, listen to Tea Time with me, Kate, and Amelia, for lightning fast coverage on pressing celebrity news and gossip. Check out Ringer Dish on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to every single album, Taylor Swift. I'm Nora Prentziotti. I'm a staff writer at the Ringer. I'm joined by Nathan Hubbard. And we are here today to talk about 1989, which to me is Taylor Swift arguably at her biggest, her most world domination phase, everywhere, doing everything, bringing more and more people into the fold. all over the placeness. So Nathan, can you contextualize for me because I think it's really important just how big this album was at the time it was released. It's hard to do. There's very few of those albums that have been as sort of unifying from generation to generation as this one was.

And I mean, this is a slight exaggeration, but I think back to dancing with my massive Brady Bunch blended family of seven to the thriller album when it came out. And just how there was something in that for everyone. I'm not sure that there's something for everyone in 1989, but it's sort of universally, this album was a phenomenon, right? As we think about the albums that sold the most in 2010,

like, there's very few that were in front of her, right? It's like a couple of Ed Shearin albums, and an M&M album and two Adele albums. But this one was sort of generational in its own right. And I don't know another way to say that. It got presented at the time as Taylor has gone full pop and she's replicating the 80s. But I think now seven years in arrears,

it doesn't feel like an 80s album to me, does it to you, Nora? I don't know that I'm in the best place to make that judgment, but my experience of it... Did you just call me old? I was trying to be very polite about it, but maybe a little bit. Oh my God. I just, I think that's probably a better question for me to ask you. But what I will tell you is that my experience with it is to prove your point. It's very current because that album, as she's moving to New York on her own and hanging out with all her girls,

friends. I was in college when this came out. Like, it feels very much like growing up and becoming independent and just being so excited about all of that. So it feels very topical to the time in my life when it came out. And I think the time in a lot of her fans' lives when it came out, because you could just go dance to this album. You could just put it on and have a great time. I want you not to forget that. That is the point of this album, isn't it? This is an album that is meant to be listened in groups, right? That's how it was experienced. Shake it off, shake it off. But so many of the previous albums that we've talked about, you tell me about how each individual song has this like deep, rich meaning for you. You can sort of put it on and get in your own feelings. This album is supposed

to be played at a party, isn't it? Yes. And I don't think it's a coincidence that this album and Fearless are kind of these like Supernova album moments for her. And those are two records where they are for groups. They are for singing together and being together too. And the tour is such a big deal for this album, right? Because she calls it a 1989 world tour. She's taking over the freaking universe. Yes. And everybody's coming with her. Everybody's coming up on stage. Mary J. Blydege is there. Natalie Mainz is there. She's got Alanis. She's got Justin Timberlake. She's got Avril Levine. Like, the group is, in its best moments, at least, so wide open.

And her universe has just blown wide open. And we know what comes after that is that it actually kind of implodes, too, a little bit because she was just everywhere. She was everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. She was in Diet Coke ads. She was partnering with Keds. She was partnering with American Express. She was, in hindsight, perhaps over exposed.

Well. But she was absolutely. everywhere. It even feels a little bit silly to just quantify it with the metrics, but it debuts it number one. It's at the top of the Billboard 200 for 11 weeks. It sells over a million copies in the first week. The label didn't think it would. She did think it would. She was proven right in that. Shake it off blank space and bad blood are all number ones. The tour grosses $181.5 million. It's just, just, just massive. And yet I don't even feel like those numbers really, really get the whole thing, because it was just giant.

Well, I have news for you. The tour actually grossed over 250 million. Why did I get that wrong? Who knows? Maybe because in the U.S. it did 180. But 250. This is like, this is a old guy, you know, legacy act, you two Rolling Stones type tour dollar figure.

And as you said, when the red tour happened, if you walked outside right before or during the encore, which is a fun thing to do if you've seen an act or if you want to learn about what's happening, walk outside the doors of the arena right before it's over. Because on the Red Tour, there were scores and scores of moms who were sitting there with parked or running cars

waiting for their daughters who were inside the arena to come out and they were going to pick them up and drive them home, usually with their friends, right? on the 1989 tour, like the moms got babysitters and went, or there were couples who went. Like, it expands the demographic of her fan base in ways that we just simply hadn't seen before.

And there's some rough edges of that everybody's included thing going on. We will get to that. But at its best, that was the joy of 1989 and still is. I mean, it's hard for me. On certain days, this is my favorite Taylor album. I think on most days,

most days it's not. But it is the one that I go back to probably most often because the songs are just incredibly listenable and fun. Yes, it's an experience in it of its own right. Let's set the context for what she was trying to do here because in all of her very public commentary about this album leading up to it, she talks about this as her rebirth, right? And I think if you pull that apart just a little bit, Taylor was crushed when Red did not win the Grammy for album of the year. She cares about things like Grammys. She cares about things

like first week album sales. And we should talk about some of the things that they did to make her camp and Taylor did to make this album sell the way that it did the first week. But she definitely heard the criticism of Red, as she always does, the Tay lurking, being in the forums, having her finger on the pulse of the fan base also means she hears the shit that flows up, right? even if it's just a few voices. She's listening. And the criticism of Red was, this is a schizophrenic album.

It has a million different sounds. She worked with six, seven different producers on this thing. It wasn't a comprehensive body of work, even though some of those songs endure for as long as, you know, as long as they possibly could. So her stated objective here

is to create this sonically cohesive album. And she commits fully for the first time to go pop. Doesn't she? 1989 is her birth year. So she's basically telling people, I am being reborn here as a pop star. And she sets the scene with Welcome to New York,

which is not a song I particularly like. But she still says, which is important, it's a new soundtrack. Yes. I can dance to this beat forevermore, which is super clever and comes back around. But she's just telling you right off the bat. It's like it almost harkens to born in the USA.

it's identifying a new starting off point. Yes, yes. And one of the things that I've come to appreciate as we've gone on this journey together is that both the first single and the first song on the album should be subject to less sort of critical scrutiny around the quality of the song.

They are always these palate cleansers that are like, I know you've been tasting salt, taste this, it's going to wipe your palate clean and I'm going to give you sugar. or something else in reverse. But Welcome to New York, like you said, is not in its own right. I mean, she worked with Ryan Teter,

who, by the way, co-wrote Halo and worked with Beyonce and a million other people. Incredible catalog of work. But this song does... And also worked on one of my favorite songs in this album. I know places, but yes, was also on Welcome to New York.

Okay, we'll have a leg wrestling match about that in a few minutes. But in Welcome to New York, like it is... It's like the intro to a play. Like it sets the scene, you know, the big building, she did it on the tour, she opened with it on the tour. It just sort of sets the scene. She is a full on adult. She's immersing herself in the culture of the great American city that she was always afraid of and said she'd never moved to, right? In the liar note, she said, from the girl who said she would never cut her hair or move to New York or find happiness in a world where she is not in love. That was the last line. She said, love Taylor, right? And here she is in New York, in a new apartment. It's sort of a reset of her life.

and that is the palate cleanser for what is to come. As someone who moved around a bunch as a kid and kind of found myself in New York and felt like I did my most important growing up there, I absolutely get the impulse to want to do this song. Probably the most New York thing about it is that it's just sort of vexing and frustrating and everybody likes to complain about it.

So maybe in that way, she was really successful in it. But it is a scene setter. At this moment in time, Taylor is such a huge star that she is really setting the narrative for what 1989 is going to be. And in all of these interviews that she did, she talked about the year 1989 and how she had been listening to music from the decade. And so a lot of the initial sort of here comes Taylor's 1989 stories all say this is a heavily 80s influenced, you know, record that is going to be all about, you know, songs that. she listened to from the decade. I think that the initial reception of this album focused on,

wow, she's pulling these influences from the 80s. And what's important about this album is what you just said a little while ago. It doesn't sound like anything else, and that is what makes this album timeless. Well, when you say it doesn't sound like anything else, it also didn't sound like the music that was otherwise dominating the charts in 2014. So I think that's where some of the desires, to pin it on the 80s,

plus the title comes from. I mean, there's a couple of things, like they almost sampled a fine young cannibals song on I Wish You Would, some of the sort of propulsive face lines. Yeah, like, I know what those references are to, so I get it, but I do think that the 80s thing, it comes largely from the desire to

initially place this album within a context. Right. When in reality, maybe what she was going for was something completely, like, contextless. I think you actually nail that 100% right, because that's the end story of this album. You know, I think the New York Times actually nailed it. They had a piece called Farewell to Twang. And what they said is by making pop with almost no contemporary references, Ms. Swift is aiming somewhere even higher, a mode of timelessness that few true pop stars,

aside from, say, Adele, even bother aspiring to. And that's what matters about this album. It got dragged into she's copying the 80s, but other albums that we've talked about, we can point to songs on there and say, oh, this sounds like something we've heard before. What was fascinating about this is that she was working with Max Martin,

who had shaped most of the sounds on the pop charts in the 2000s. But the two of them together created something that really didn't sound like what was happening then or any year before. Well, they also created, and we're going to get to our categories, the biggest song on this album. And I've got a blank space, Nathan. And I'll write your name.

And I will write the song, Blank Space, into it, because it is the biggest song that Taylor has ever had. It spent seven weeks at number one. Shake It Off did four. And the best thing about this song is that Taylor takes every sexist character she'd ever been made into, and she spins it into her own delight. And it is just the best. And I absolutely love this song.

I love this music video. Plank space is totally timeless. And I will not hear an argument. To this song now. When you go, you do. You like spin it and put it on. Oh, heck yeah. Like I listen to a song with my friends.

I listen to this song when I grocery shop. I listen to it. Oh, it is just a mood, as the kids say. I mean, it was everywhere at the time. And what was so amazing about it was she just went, she had two choices. She could continue to fight against the sort of media caricatures of her relationships and so forth. Or she could just grab it and almost parody it and come out the other end by showing how silly it was, that if you actually believed everything you read, the person in the video is who you were talking about.

And there was no way she was the person in the video. So start me on the video because I know this video moved you in many ways. It's incredible. It has nearly 3 billion views on YouTube. It won a bunch of awards. She wears 21 different outfits. And that's what I'm talking about, right? When she's taking something where all of the media has just been horrible to her

and painting her as this crazy serial dater. And she turns it into not just a great song. but she turns it into a really fun experience for herself. She's got like gorgeous model man to do the video with her. They're at some like mansion in the Hamptons. She's riding a horse. There's Dobermans. There's a deer of some kind.

She gets to take the, you could critique her golf swing. She gets to take the golf club to a vintage car. She gets to stab the blood-filled cake and just tear down this house. and it just is awesome. It is just pure awesomeness. This is not the only huge video that she makes associated with this album.

Obviously, the bad blood video is, in a lot of ways, even bigger, right? But the first one... And shake it off, too. Well, so that's what I was going to say. Shake it off is the first video we see. And it has a very interesting reference in it, which is Taylor Swift in a cheerleader costume.

which if we go back to the first album that we talked about in Tim McGrath, the cheerleader was the outsider and the enemy. And she is playing the sort of uncomfortable role of wearing the cheerleader costume. But there is some self-awareness and acknowledgement that she has gone through a journey and is now, in her own way, the it girl. Right. But she's still making fun of herself. Yes.

Because what she's also doing on Shake It Off because there's the cheerleader section, there's the ballerinas section, there's the sort of modern dance thing, but then there's also the sort of hip hop dance thing. She is basically saying, ha, ha, I'm not that cool. I'm not a cool rapper. Yes, yes.

By almost putting on the affect of a rapper on this song. 100%. So she's simultaneously acknowledging her own power and her own cool, but she's still saying, yeah, okay, I'm Taylor Swift, but I can still be a little bit of a dork. That's really fun and shake it off. I do think, though, the thing about blank space, like, shake it off is sort of ridiculous and very general.

Right. Blank space has the same LOL whatever quality to it. But it is about something very real that happened to her, which was the portrayal that she was just collecting men and then discarding them because she couldn't hang on. And that's what's so exciting about it to me. Do you play Shake It Off? Less than Blank Space. Shake it off to me is a very good, very bad song. How did you receive it when you first heard it?

Oh, it ruled. It totally ruled. It didn't take you any time? I was in college. I know. I mean, this sick beat is a line and a half. Like, it just works. And it, and it like sneakily shows, she's not a rapper,

but it sneakily shows how gifted she is at layering vocal rhythms over beat. She is terrific at this, and she does it all the way from, you know, red really all the way up through Evermore, where she just understands how to rhythmically layer in lyrics over time signatures and the like. But it took a while for some people to grab this because there was nothing super substantive about the lyrics of this song. There was something substantive to the sentiment. Totally. And so I think Max Martin has said something. something like shake it off is like a perfect pop song, which I think is very funny because it's, it's, it's not in some ways. It's really empty calories. But I love the idea that these two song

crafting geniuses came together and put out this ridiculous empty calories song that was a massive hit, but still really doesn't do that much. And we're just so, so, so proud of it. Like, sometimes simple is the way to go. And I think they, I think they recognized that to great effect here. Is there no other challenger to Blank Space on this album? For you, is it just like head and shoulders above? I think it's head and shoulders above because I also think,

now this is anecdotal, I think a lot of guys came into the picture with Blank Space in terms of people who were interested in listening to her. Like, I think that song appeals to men. in a way that a lot of Taylor Swift songs don't at least on their face. Do you notice that I just trapped you into downgrading new romantics?

I didn't say the best song, I said the biggest song, Nathan Hubbard. Don't you dare. Well, so it does, it did sort of have some competition in the song Bad Blood, which, you know, the video for that

spawned a whole lot of the squad commentary. that we're going to have to talk about in parallel to 1989, which had this sort of effect of elevating her stardom and putting her in the sort of elite world of celebrity even beyond where she'd been with Red. But by the end of it also starts to have an impact and create a backlash as she begins to associate herself

with some of the highest profile models in the world, right? Yeah, I mean, look, I don't think that writing a song about another female pop star that's a negative song, an angry song is anti-feminist or bad. I think this song is not very good, which makes it less effective. But it's allegedly about... Yeah. Well, so it's allegedly about Katie Perry stealing back of dancers from her red tour and

their ensuing feud. Yeah. I do think that it might have helped this whole situation if the song was a little better. Yeah. But it did come off as slightly incongruing. with the whole sisterhood, I love my girlfriend's vibe. And Taylor had maybe started to get criticized a little bit for phoniness. A lot more of that comes later.

But there was something where she was telling her fans that she was like them and she was their friend. I mean, I remember she would say on the tour, she'd be like, hey, I'm Taylor. And she would talk about all her friends and say that her requirements for friendship were to like her and to want to spend time with her, which everyone in that audience qualified for. But then at the same time, she was presenting standards of friendship in her own life

that were unattainable to those people because pretty much all of her friends were famous, and many of them were unbelievably beautiful, skinny, largely white models. Yeah, I mean, this video has more people in it than like it's probably second only to Freedom 90, the George Michael video in terms of like

the highest profile beautiful people in the world are in this video. Now I'm calling you old. That's fine. I'm just giving you the historical context that you need to understand

this video. Thank you very much. But I don't, this is important. So I don't want to close a circle on this until we say that she's acknowledged this, that she has some regrets here

because before she turned 30, she did a piece. What are the regrets? Well, so she did a piece in L where she listed 30 things. I learned before I turned 30. And one thing she said was that she had needed to learn to rectify scars from her past. And the example she gave was, quote, never being popular as a kid was always an insecurity for me. Even as an adult, I still have recurring flashbacks of sitting at lunch tables alone or hiding in a bathroom stall or trying to make a new friend and being laughed at. And then this is the important part. She says, in my 20s, I found myself surrounded by girls who wanted to be my friend. So I shouted it from the rooftops, posted and celebrated my newfound acceptance into a sisterhood without realizing that other people might

still feel the way I did when I felt so alone. It's important to address our longstanding issues before we turn into the living embodiment of them. I remember Lana Dunham when she strutted, I think she strutted in New York or, you know, a big city with a bunch of us. And I remember reading some comments from her about how she personally felt so uncomfortable in that moment. did you feel uncomfortable with what she was doing at the time? I largely did not, though. I don't know that I'm the first person who would have necessarily, and I can see how a lot of people could have.

I think the overarching message of enjoying female friendships was a number one for me. Yeah. Yeah. But I will say in hindsight, you know, look, the company of women has, always been incredibly, incredibly important to me for my entire life. And I'm a football reporter. I work with a lot of guys. And that can be isolating and it can be lonely. And I love a lot of those dudes, but sometimes I miss my girls when I'm on the road or whatever. And usually in every football stadium, because this tour was going through pretty much every single one of them, you walk into the press box and you'll be walking through a hallway and they'll have big glossy photos

of cool things that have happened in the... stadium. And there's almost always a photo from Taylor Swift. And it's almost always from the 1989 tour. And sometimes it feels really awesome to just walk past those and be like, oh, there's my friend Taylor. Like, I kind of got a little bit of girl power here with me. But there's a subtext to how often those are the photos that we see of her. That's a little bit darker to me. because sadly and ironically, the sadness that comes from feeling like you're being asked to meet impossible, unattainable standards, that I think it was fair to say she was putting out to other people. Right. She was feeling that too.

Like she's described having some really real struggles with body image, with disordered eating. Most notably, she's talked about that in the Miss Americana doc. And this is the time frame that they're pulling clips from. When she's talking about starving herself, when she sees a paparazzi photo where she thinks she looks like puffy or something. It is always from right around this tour, this album. So that's not to say that she made exclusively good decisions during this period. But there is a context that builds women up and then when they get too high basically just wants to tear them down. I think she was victim to that.

I think she played into it in certain instances. but it wasn't all going outward. A lot of it was coming in at the same time. So sometimes when I walk past those photos now, it's a little bit bittersweet because it's like, oh yeah, that's my friend Taylor, who I don't actually know. But also, she's got this giant sparkly smile on her face. And maybe she didn't totally feel that way all the time. Well, we know that she didn't. And that's what was so great about the documentary that she put out was it really taught us what was happening behind the scenes. Her personal life had been under such scrutiny for so long.

When she puts out this album, she hasn't been in a relationship for almost two years. And so understanding the darkness of what was going on underneath the surface while she is literally hitting her apex of stardom

is something we didn't really understand at the time. But I have to not leave blank space without asking you the first time that you heard this song, did you hear Starbucks lovers? I did. Oh my gosh.

did. I heard Starbucks lovers immediately. And it took a long time. And one of the best things about Taylor Swift is the way that she will embrace those fan moments. And instead of coming out and feeling like she needed to correct everybody, I remember her posting about Starbucks lovers. Like she got it. I have no idea how they got that into mixing and out of mastering without somebody going, it kind of sounds like Starbucks lovers. But it's one of the great sort of screw-ups. Yeah, it's like when you hear a word. many times it starts to feel like it doesn't have its meaning anymore, maybe. But that carefree ethos is so important to 1989, which is a good segue into our track five, which is all you had to do

was stay. And the thing that I think is so cool about this is that the track fives have always been these like, you know, deeply caring, wounded, tortured songs. Yeah. This one isn't. And yes, it's, You know, I wish you'd stayed in some ways. But she has the line in this song, people like me are gone forever when you say goodbye. And that is consistent with what we've heard from her before. Once you, she's like a Corleone or something. Like once she is betrayed, it's over.

She's taking you out in the boat and putting a bullet in your head. You're done. It might be heart wrenching for her, but she has a line that when it gets crossed, it's over. And that's so important to express on this one. because you're right. You're actually making me think about it a little bit differently

in terms of that being a through line with so many of her songs about people who have wronged her. But I do hear more carefree independence on this track five than on a lot of other track fives. Like it doesn't seem as painful for her, which I think is very fitting.

She gives us the clue that you drove us off the road, which means this is about Harry Styles, isn't it? I think so, but save that because I have a question for you on that front later, but we'll get to it later. I have to say, this song doesn't move me.

This falls back into the, maybe we make too much of track fives and not enough of track threes, although there are some amazing track fives through the course of her albums. This one doesn't grab me as one of the all-timers on the album. I love the line and the melody on

this was what you wanted. I just love the sort of the plainness and direct confrontation of that to the listener. I just imagine the person, Harry Stiles, who this song is about sitting back and just hearing that and going, yes, I fucked up. Well, she did this song with Max Martin and Shelbeck, who are my most important collaborators for this album. And we've talked about them. We talked about them on Red. But Max Martin is the co-executive producer with Taylor on this. And I just think that partnership really flurts. on this album. And it's just this joy of having these two incredibly smart makers of music just

clearly seems so excited by the prospect of doing this whole thing together. I think some of Max Martin's work is redundant with other artists. And I don't think that's on Max Martin. I think that's on the artists and what they brought to him. And this is why we know Taylor Swift is such a great songwriter is because she came to Max Martin in two. 2013 to record this album, you know, he's now almost 15 years deep into a career where he is, I mean, he's the Beatles in terms of like the influence that he's having. I don't even know how to say it other than like he defined two generations worth of pop. But she brings him material that changes the way he produces. A lot of these songs, when you really go listen to them,

I mean, first of all, there's only four or five instrumentalists on each track, because a lot of it is, again, sounds that are built in software, but it's a much smaller circle of creators on every track. And he did not recycle a bunch of stuff that you'd heard before. I think she pushed Max Martin as much as he brought out a new facet of artistic creativity and sort of sonic component to the songs that she wrote. That's what's special about this partnership. It's really wonderful. She does widen the circle, lot on this, and this is where Jack Antonoff comes into the picture, too. I give the nod to Max certainly, but we should give Jack his flowers as well. He does Out of the Woods. I wish you would.

You are in love on this one. And I know you've got some love for Out of the Woods, which I don't as much. Tell me why you don't. Well, I mostly hate the intro because it sounds like the intro to hooked on a feeling to me. And I just, those drums, I think for some people, those drums just sound big and awesome. To me, again, they sound like Tarzan. Really? It sounds like Tarzan to you? Yeah, something like that. Or like, I don't know, maybe the Lion King or something. And then there's also, I just think he does too much on this song. There's an acoustic version of this song, or maybe she does at the piano, I think. The Grammy performance. Yeah, a performance at the Grammy Museum that I think is stunning because I think

there are incredible lyrics on the song. I think the bridge is incredible. It's cinematic. I think move the furniture so we could dance, baby like we stood a chance to paper airplanes flying is like just chills. But he does too much with the production. There's like a weird arpeggio thing happening in the background of the second part of the verse that that feels like nails on a chalkboard to me and I can't get over it. I believe that the bridge of this song that is so incredibly strong grows up into the bridge of Cruel Summer, which is where it really flourishes. But what do you like about this song? I like everything. Listen, if I think about Jack doing the like vocal part at the beginning, they're like, oh, like, if I think about him doing that with the face that he makes while playing August

in the Long Pond sessions, then it can kind of ruin it for me. But, like, look, the Grammy performance that you talk about, she plays that piano version, and there's parts of it that sounds like, I mean, I texted you this. It sounds like the Thompson twins,

if you were here from 16 candles. That sounds like the ultimate 80s movie to me. And it's a reminder that the guts of these songs are gorgeous. But there's something about this, which we know the backstory. She and Harry Styles had a snowmobile accent, he was seriously hurt, had to get stitches.

They went to an ER for some reason and somehow by nice people working in the ER, they kept it quiet and nobody found out about it. But there's this frenetic panic and disoriented desperation in the vocals that just hit me so deep. On the outro, when she sings, do you remember? It's like it really was a scary moment for all of them, I think. And the vocal here is what just sends me. I love the melody. I love the vocal.

This is also the third song that I heard. It was the first song that I heard publicly on the album. Wait, what do you mean publicly? What songs had you heard before this one? Well, I heard Shake It Off and Blank Space at a business meeting at her house in Los Angeles. What? Yeah. Nathan?

Yeah. You've been holding out on us. Yeah. I was there with Twitter, and we did a meeting with the iTunes guys. And she was there leading the meeting. And she said, I have recorded the best music that I've ever made in my life. And it's going to be a big change in direction in the next phase of my career. And I want you guys to hear it.

And she played us those two songs. And my jaw hit the floor. And that's about all I remember. So what did you, in that context, what it, like, when you heard the actual album and when you heard more, like, when you got out of the woods, what were you thinking? Were you thinking like, holy crap, she was right? Yeah, it was completely different than anything we'd heard. And Shake It Off wasn't my most favorite song that I've ever heard, but it was clearly a totally new and different direction. And the thing that I take away from that story, more than anything,

was how unbelievably certain she was that this album was going to be huge. She knew it, and she was doing everything from, you know, editing down every bit of the music. to driving all of the meetings with her most important business partners to make sure that this thing succeeded in ways that she never had before. Was she cool? Yeah, she was cool. She's a force.

Okay. She's tall. I can't believe you held out on us. She's a force of nature. Like, you can't, she's one of those people that you're just in the room with them. And, like, they just is this force field of, like, superhumanness around her. And, yeah, she's cool. I think I would have melted.

And like not to, like, I covered Tom Brady for years and was in the room with him all the time and kind of didn't give a shit. Like, that's too strong. But it just didn't feel like it was fine. It was normal. I think I would melt if I was in a room with her. She's a hugger. And I think that a lot of people feel that way that they'll melt. And she sort of compensates for it by hugging everybody.

She's just very, it's just like her natural thing, I think, is to embrace people, both in a business. meeting or obviously when she meets fans. And I think that's just her way of cutting through the, oh my God, it's Taylor Swift and being like, no, I'm a human being. Disarming everybody. That's very cool. I cannot believe you waited this long to tell that story. And now I have to segue us, but we should go back to Harry because we're going to get to most purposeful Easter egg. And I'll do mine first. It is the title of style. See, I think that that is what I had. before I got my purposeful Easter egg. I mean, style is, first of all, that is,

I love that song so much. We should note that like Out of the Woods, it was a song that sonically was mostly written without melody and words before she came to it. It had been written by some Swedish guys who were going to keep it for themselves. They were working with Max Martin. She heard the guitar part.

They were really emulating daft punk, which had won, by the way, album of the year over read. and wanted to sort of, you know, grab it for herself. But she wrote, like, when that moment when, you know, after the guitar, like, when the drum and bass comes in and you hear that sort of like rocket descending sound, there's nothing cooler than that song. Yeah, and this was the first time that she was writing to track in that way. She talked about it on the voice memo for I Wish You Would Too, which is the song that at least originally had sampled the snare from She Drives Me Crazy. The Fine and Cannibal song, yeah. it does seem like she was really excited not only to work in that way, but to tell people that she was working in that way and share that.

It just seems like she was so excited about making songs with these people. And I really, really, really love that. I do want to ask you this question. So style to me, this song just rules. It is so sort of propulsive in the undercurrent of what you're hearing in the baseline. Like, it just sounds great. and I've got to say, I don't know what the status

of her feelings about Harry are at this point. But if we take out of the woods style and I know places, would you, you, we'll take Taylor out of the equation.

If you were to enter into a relationship that you know is not going to work, but you are going to have music written about you. And those are going to be the songs. Would you say yes or no? No, I'd say yes in a heartbeat.

I'd say yes in a fucking heartbeat. Those songs rule. Yeah, they rule. I mean, style is... And he seems cool. Well, that's your problem. I mean, I think style is three chords. It's like a G, a B minor, and a D.

But they made it so incredible. Like, it becomes the soundtrack for basically a runway show, right? In the 1989 tour, they'd play this, and this is when she'd bring out the famous people to go strut the catwalk and she'd show off the sort of VIP guests who'd come up as a way to surprise the crowd

because when you get to this level of production save for one or two songs it's hard to really mix up the set list much in her world anyway, right? But yes, this song is transcendent. I do think, again, I will say, it leaves the listener. The Harry Styles experience

via Taylor Swift songs leaves the listener feeling like this guy is sort of wild and, you know, mysterious and has some darkness. But it does feel like she ends in a decent place with Harry Styles. Is that what actually happened? Well, I really don't know. Do you think so? I'm not sure. But she certainly, from a music standpoint, leaves that relationship in about the best place with some sort of longing and wistfulness.

I mean, it's hard to, I'm not sure that Clean isn't about him. I mean, she's in London, and, you know, she gets a call and she realizes she's over him. I'm not so sure that that's not about him either. The Harry Styles experience as seen through the Taylor Swift lenses is an interesting one, to be sure. I'll just be honest. I think it sounds very exciting and fun. But did, and that part of, a big part of that to me is I know places, which do I take from your earlier comment that you're not a fan? I like I know places. It's the Tettor song. No, it is not on my list of things that I would cut for this album, which we're going to get to in a second. I dig the Tettor production. I think there's some bigness to her vocal. This song slots in not as one that I go back to and need to listen to over and over and over again, but thematically it just works with the album. It certainly doesn't feel like filler or a skip. Can I just come back to the Easter egg because I appreciate it. I appreciate that. I'm just

that she put out style, and that is what I had in my notes until I realized that the best Easter egg was actually, no, it's Becky. You have a shirt that says, no, it's Becky, you just want to bring that up. The know it's Becky shirt,

which, for those who don't know, there was a Tumblr post by some person who posted a picture of a girl at a high school prom who is Taylor Swift at saying something like, what, she, like, tried marijuana and died.

And somebody else comes in as like, dude, I'm pretty sure that's Taylor Swift. And the poster's response is no, comma, it's Becky. Like, just insisting that it's this person, Becky. And Taylor Swift stepped out in New York City and a yellow shirt with the words, no, it's Becky on it. And that just about melted the entire internet. Probably the peak for Taylor-King.

Yeah. Is the acknowledgement and a sartorial choice with that t-shirt. The brilliance of that, to understand that her fans are going to see it, to understand that the cameras are going to be on her, and that if just one of those pictures makes its way into, you know, us weekly or onto the homepage of TMZ, that the fans are going to know,

she is paying attention. She is in these deep, dark corners of the Internet where you're talking about her, reading the things that you have to say. And again, that is the blessing and the curse of being Taylor Swift, because she is doing all of the consumer research, and she knows her customer and her fan inside and out, and she therefore makes incredible business decisions

and creative decisions based on that. But she's also reading the stuff, as we now know, that is darker and that is more hurtful. And she absorbs that in the same way that she absorbs the good stuff. That's absolutely true. I let you circle back on the Easter egg. I need you to let me circle back so I can help you fall in love with I know places,

which is one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs. It is absolutely in my top 10. It is probably in my top five. What? I listen to this song all, all, all of the time. It is one of my most listened. And I'll tell you why. The actual song is playing hard to get with you.

Because you get all of those minor chords in the verse and it is just not giving you what you want. And then all of a sudden she goes to the C major on the chorus and it is like holy fucking serotonin Rush Batman. And that not giving you what you want until that moment and then taking it away. again because she goes back to the verse and you're like, holy, I'm so thirsty for this all of a sudden. And doing that over and over again is exactly what that song is about. And she does it in the music. And then the other bullet point in this is just the scream on Wii Run. So good. I love that song so much. Have I convinced you? Well, what do we think? So in the deluxe edition, she put the iPhone recording that she made for Ryan Tetter that she sent to him the night before they did the session. So you can hear it

in a very stripped-down way, and she's just playing octave notes to go through the sort of four-cord, you know, chorus. How did you feel hearing that? Does that make you love the song more? Did it, like, because this is something she starts to do now, it's important, is give us insight into the origins of these songs. She's one of the only artists that I can think of who records the entire creative process from the time she's sitting at the piano, banging her head against it, trying to figure something out to the finality of the, you know, recording that's on the album. How did that affect the way that you think about the song? So I've listened to that, this is sort of funny, I've listened

to that I know Places voice memo an unbelievable number of times because it comes, because it comes right after New Romantics on the Deluxe version. Oh gosh. So because I listen to New Romantic so much, it just goes into it. I've done that so many times. It gets on my Spotify wrapped playlist. Wow. So this brings up a really interesting point because I know that you love new romantics and I'm going to give you the floor to talk about it. I'm going to let you finish. But I came into this conversation, prepared to make the point that this may be her best album from start to finish, but that I'm not sure you would sort of individually pick out a ton of the songs to play on their own. Like this album is a mood. It is a home run. It is just a monster. But you wouldn't pick them out. But what I'm hearing from you

is that two of your most favorite Taylor Swift songs live on 1989. Do you think that most of the fan base feels that way? See? That's what I think. I think a lot of the fan base... I really do think that this does have something to do with the time in your life when you heard it. Right.

Because if I'd been a little younger when this came out, I probably would have been longing for some of the more diaristic elements of it. Okay. That do... I mean, despite the Easter eggs, Despite calling a song style, a lot of them do disappear here. But you're absolutely right that that is how I hear this album.

I mean, blank space style, wildest dreams, I know places, new romantics are all songs I listen to an awful lot and have really stuck with me. And my experience listening to this album now, more starts from a place of those are some of my favorite Taylor Swift songs. and then I'll go back and I'll go, this thing top to bottom is a fun listen. I almost discount some of the other songs because I'll go relative to those ones, they're filler, but then I'll go back and go,

oh, no, these aren't filler. These are really good songs. Yeah, that's how I feel about I know places and I may be wrong about that. But there are just some songs that like, most songs like you get sick of. Like your ear gets sore from listening to it. It's like if you trace your arm for long enough,

your skin gets sore. Like if you hear most songs too many times, you just can't take it. But there are, through the course of history, some songs that every time I hear them, I am excited and it feels great. And style is one of those for me, for sure, that just transcends. Well, we still have to cut at least something. Oh, I'm prepared. What are you cutting? I'm going to go first, because I bet I think we might be on the same thing. I'm cutting bad blood. Wow. Wow. This song is not good. I know we just talked about how most things on this album are great.

This song is not good. The lyrics are terrible. I don't really care about this fight. The Kendrick Lamar version is good, but the fact that Kendrick Lamar could only make this song like, meh, okay, speaks to the fact that it's a miss. Still, all my life, I got money and buy, and you gotta live with the bad blood now.

Is it crazy that she goes on to win the Grammy over him, but had him on this track? So really, you cut bad blood. I feel like you read a lot of critical panning of this song and you went there. Explain why you throw up bad blood, but you keep how you get the girl. So I don't. That's my other one to cut. I do think that it has a nice combination of some of the stuff that does sound very 80s derivative

and some more modern sounds in the production. It has that like, that the thing going, which is kind of funny to me but no, that's my other one that I can part with.

And you are jealously guarding all you had to do was stay? Yeah. You're dying on that hill? No, I'm not dying on it. But I'll have a spirited debate

on the hill for it. Okay. Okay. I mean, my thing on songs you'd cut on this one, this is the first album where I wish they had just put,

they'd kept the album as is, but they could have added the three bonus tracks. And that's not to fully concede that New Romantics is the song. But like Wonderland is great. You Are in Love is great, even though it sounds like Streets of Philadelphia

by Bruce Springsteen. I walk the avenue till my legs feel like stone. Voices of friends vanished and gone. Small talk, heat drives, coffee the light

reflects the chain. on your neck. But I think this is one of those situations in which she really was a great editor and in thinking so hard about how do I create end to end an experience where you push play and from start to finish, it's a journey.

This is the best that she's done to date. She did what she wanted to do with this album. The Springsteen reference is fine to me because again, she's trying to harken to the 80s at least a little bit, at least notionally. And that brings us to the album title. 1989 totally works for me.

Less because of the 80s thing, more because of the rebirth idea. I think it's pretty perfect. And she's so obsessed with numbers and her birthday at 13 and all these things. She needed an album that had numbers in it. All right. If we're both satisfied with that,

can I give you some Taylor tidbits from the depths of the internet? What are we learning? Are you ready to receive them? I really only have one. one that I like a lot from this. But a week before this album came out, there was a glitch on iTunes Canada. And it led to a Taylor Swift track. Oh, this is the nine seconds of static, right?

Yeah, eight seconds of static. But this track that's just labeled Track 3 is accidentally released. And the fans almost immediately sent it to number one, which put it above, shake it off and welcome to New York. But it was not a song. It was just an accident. Well, that is fine. You certainly wouldn't call that your peak Taylor moment, though.

So what is in the 1989 era your peak Taylor moment? My peak Taylor moment for this is, and actually I love that we're talking about this right now after talking about the idea of her like rebirth as an artist, because it is the tour mashup of Wildest Dreams and Enchanted, which is like eight minutes long. It's so, so, so good. Because it combines the idealized excitement of meeting someone and having a crush that you get from Enchanted with the ability to look back comfortably on a relationship, even though it's over on Wildest Dreams. And I love putting those two things together. But really, what's most important about this tour version is that she acts out her rebirth because she does the Lizzie McGuire movie move.

What is that? pulling off the skirt of the, oh, don't act like you don't know. She pulls off the skirt from the ball gown and then struts down the runway and the sparkly cat suit because she starts and she's doing enchanted. She's at the piano and she's wearing like 900 pounds of tool. Right. And then all of a sudden she's like Miss Modern Pop Star and it's very, very, very cool. That's my Peak Taylor.

Well, for me, the Peak Taylor moment was the listening parties that she had leading up to 1989 in all of her houses from from L.A. to New York to Nashville to Rhode Island. And I think these played a huge role in the virality of this record because we started to get these YouTube videos of fans not knowing where they were going, getting on a bus. She had handpicked them from the corners of the internet

and brought them into her actual home and then posting these videos of, you know, 200 people dancing in her living room and kitchen and family room to shake it off. It just looked like an album for us, for people to be together and play. And it just sent this album, this sort of buzz that was created by bringing in your most passionate fans and giving them this experience of inviting them into your home. It just showed all of the marketing and business genius that she has, as well as, you know, keeping her grounded in that one-to-one

connection with her fans. Bringing them into your living room is an unbelievable sign of faith and trust. I mean, who knows? You got to believe somebody walked off with a souvenir off of one of her console tables or something, but maybe there was enough security to keep that from happening. But it just showed... Well, she'd probably just give it to them if they asked. Yeah, but it just showed this unbelievable trust where I'm sure she had some moments of security needing to step in, but they were, they honored the gesture that she'd made, they were of her house, and they just went in a living room and kind of like the We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together video. They just danced and they were silly, but they posted it at the

internet for everybody to see. That to me felt like a moment in which she was one of the biggest stars in the world, if not the biggest star in the world at the time, but still able to create a perception of her being small enough to bring you into her living room. Really. And it shows how well she understood both what her fans wanted. and how they would react to something like that, whether or not she could trust them in that way. And that's a good segue into our Tom Hiddleston Award for showing the work here because she won a battle in understanding what her music was going to do

and how appealing it was going to be to people. Because my choice for this is that she fucking told us that she was mad at her label. And maybe it was hard to read into at the time. But she was Billboard's Women of the Year in 2014. and let me share with you a couple things she said in that interview. She said, one, everyone in and out of the music business kept telling me that my opinion and my viewpoint was naive and overly optimistic, even my own label. And here what she's talking about is betting that this album could do a million sales in the first week. Yes.

But then, this is her again. But then when we got those first day numbers in, all of a sudden, I didn't look so naive anymore. She also says, when I knew the album had hit its stride, I went to Scott Borchetta and said, I have to be honest with you, I did not make a country album. I did not make any semblance of a country album. And of course,

he went into a state of semi-panic and went through all the stages of grief, the pleading the denial. Can you give me three country songs? Can we put a fiddle on, shake it off? And all of my answers were a very firm no, because it felt disingenuous to try to exploit two genres

when your album falls into one. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, she says a lot of people are smarter than marketing professionals give them credit for. And then, and this is the last one, She's asked about advice for women wanting to get into songwriting. And she says you're going to have thousands of decisions to make that will shape the public's perception of you.

Let those decisions be your decisions. Don't let them be some man-in-a-suit's decisions. She told us. Do you think it is a coincidence that at the same moment in time, a investment banking booklet, shopping, big machine, which would have included the rights to Taylor's Masters, is circulating all over the place. say all over the place, it was being looked at by Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat among many,

many others. And that was the signal to the business world that all was not right. Because if you did more than 30 seconds of diligence, you saw, wow, Taylor Swift has one more album to deliver. She hasn't re-signed. What would you do if you had an asset that you thought was as valuable right now as it's ever going to be, you'd try to sell it, and that is a red flag. And so all across the board, from her pre-album comments to the way that the label and Scott Bershetta are working, to, you know, I mean, you can see it. There is a rift here. She is moving away from the music that her label was familiar with. But there is also that thing when, you know, a basketball team wins a championship and, you know, the Warriors at some point, they kept winning and winning and wing, and then it became about credit.

And that's what's happening here, too, because Taylor Swift is the CEO, chief strategy officer, chief marketing officer of Taylor Swift, Inc. And I think there were some people who were on the inner circle who started to feel threatened or unappreciated by that, maybe, I think unfairly, probably. It was Taylor who made Taylor big. And so suggestions to the contrary probably weren't received very well. And it's important because her business is going to change dramatically over the next couple of years.

And we should talk about the re-release of Wildest Dreams, which came through a movie trailer that we saw on TV just this past week. It is a movie about animated horses and trains and Jake Gyllenhaal

is in it, says producer Kaya. Your mother's spirit. Talk to me, Nora. There is truly the proverbial lot to unpack here. Okay. So, we know Taylor's re-recording her stuff. We've heard Love Story, Taylor's version, and then all of a sudden,

here is Wildest Dreams Taylor's version, or at least a little snippet of it, appearing in the trailer for Spirit Untamed, which is a Dreamworks animated movie about, I think, magical horses, And then, yes, as producer Kaya so astutely pointed out, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. What the fuck is going on? Yeah, I don't know the answer to that.

There's a lot going on in a song, right? Because it's hard to tell from the little snippet that we got what is actually the new version of the song versus... Yeah, the horse hooves and train noises and people yelling. And they always screw up songs. They always like sort of remix them a bit for trailers to make them, work. I mean, we hear, here's what we do here. We hear a lot of background vocals in the forefront. Yeah. So, it was, I'll just say that the way that I think of Wildest Dreams, it's kind of like a, I think it's a pretty hot song. It's kind of a sexy time song. Oh, boy. It was a little bit weird

for it to be in a kid's movie, sort of my little pony-esque kids movie for me. Although now that I know that Jake Gyllenhaal is in the movie. Kind of a power move, right? Because that song is about, like, looking back on a past relationship from this very secure point of view, which is part of what's cool about it. I will say, because those background vocals, as you pointed out, are so much closer to the forefront, they seemed. And we don't really know, right, because we haven't heard the actual version of the song.

And it might just be that there was so much stomping going on that it did a little bit of this. But the original version of that song, one of the reasons that I think it is kind of a sexy song, is that her vocal is very airy and breathy, and there's a lot of like this sort of trembling lift in it. I did not hear that much of that on the new one because it is,

it gets sort of thrown into the river of the background vocals in a way that I think the original one doesn't. It was more distinctly different from the original than Love Story Taylor's version. was from original love story. But it might have been the horses. It might have been the horses in the train. We don't know.

What we do know is that if somebody doesn't record Jake Gyllenhaal's agent calling him to tell him that the movie that he signed up for is going to have a Taylor Swift song in it, something's wrong with the world. You just imagine him hang up the phone and going, God, damn it. It's just such a great move.

She just finds ways to like never go away. It's such a power move. God, I love her. But it is important that she like sends this sort of shot across the bout right for 1989. Because if she is doing this in part as a leverage play while she's re-recording her masters, saying that she is done or at least partway through this album, which was as huge as it was and late in her discography, especially in terms of the albums that she doesn't own and is re-recording, like, that's a big signal, right? That's exactly right. She is in a staring contest with Shamrock, who owns her masters now, and the signal that she is flaring up is, guys, I'm almost finished with all this stuff.

And if you want to come to the table and negotiate with me for a way for us to partner on this back catalog going forward, it is now or never, because you've heard that Fearless is done, You might think that if I'm going sequentially and I'm releasing stuff from 1989, that all that's left for me to do is reputation. And I may have already started on that. So this is a very shrewd and very public negotiating move to say, if we're going to partner on this catalog, it's got to happen now. But the seeds of why she's doing all this re-recording start in the separation between her and her label,

which is coming out into public view in 1989. This is also the album that has just come out when she takes her music off of Spotify because of its free platform. She'd written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal where she said music is art and art should be paid for. It's my opinion that music should not be free. And my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album's price point is. It's a year before she writes the Apple Music letter, but she is planting her flag in fighting for her rights as an artist. and artist rights in general. And so my banner

over all of this is that she told us. She told us where this was all going to go. And she told us right then and there. No doubt. And 1989 is the moment that propels her into such a position of leverage that the largest companies in the world, like Apple, are changing their policies

so as not to piss off Taylor Swift. Hell yeah. On that note, are you ready to fight? Are you ready to throw down? Well, it depends on the question. question, but yes, I am. I came prepared for battle. We got bad blood? What? Well, it's time to do the belatedly best song from this album. And my choice is Neuromantics, which is a great, great, great song

that you don't like very much. And I want to know why. It just doesn't sit up there for me in the pantheon of songs. I think it's fine. I enjoy it. But it's not a skip for me. It's, don't get me wrong. I just, look, here's my counter. It's the only single from this album not to get multi-platinum certification. It did not resonate. But it's also the last single. Well, still, there are plenty of her last single. Hours was the biggest song off of, you know, off of that album. So I would just say that this is a good song. I'm not going to fight you on, is it a good song? That's not the debate. The debate is just, is this like my favorite Taylor Swift song? And I I like the ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

Like, I love the chorus. It's terrific. But the rushed baby with the new romantics for me doesn't totally, it doesn't sync with what I think she's so great with, as we talked about earlier, which is structuring lyrics over beats and melodies in really sonically pleasing ways. I've always taken the fact that this ended up as a single. And maybe this isn't right. And you would actually be in a better position to explain this than I would. But I always took that as they didn't even put this freaking thing on the album. And then people loved it.

Well, let's give it a little something. Let's at least make it a single. Like, I don't feel like this song was given a fair runway, but I will defend it to the death. I'll tell you what I like about it is, one, the irony in the first two lines were all bored. We're all so tired of everything. Like Taylor Swift just ever felt that for a second in her entire life and you can just hear it. And it's wonderful. And then the other thing is this.

This is the best recorded sigh of her discography. It's poker. He can't see it in my face, but I'm about to play my ace. Like, we'll drive it in. It's so, so, so good. And my girl is just fresh out of fucks to give and living her life. And this song to me feels more like that.

It actually feels more like that just sort of freedom, excitement, I want to go have fun feeling of being like, you know, 21 or 24 or whatever. Right. Then even blank space, because it's just purely joyful. This is the only artist in the world that I can think of who we are talking about songs like New Romantics from 1989 and hours from Speak Now, where songs that didn't make the album, or by the way, a Better Man from Red, where songs that didn't make the album are as good or better than anything that did.

It's just a fascinating study into what a songwriter she really is. We know that she's going to become infinitely more fascinating, even, after 1989, although in maybe less purely wonderful or at least more complicated ways. So I'm curious to hear what your next album Appetizer is from this one, because the next album is reputation. I didn't see for the first time a signal of what was to come. I think she poured so much of herself and her focus and energy into nailing this from the first track to the last, that she wasn't sort of thinking about, I have to make the journey.

This for her was the destination that she had been thinking about certainly since fearless, maybe since the beginning. And she's here. And so it doesn't feel like there's a teaser of what's next to come. I mean, if there's anything that's next to come, it's the Ryan Adams version of 1989 that we need to talk about in hindsight. So it's going to be forever. But it's going to go down in things.

You can tell me when it's over if the house would look at be. I know, which at the time she celebrated and thought, wow, you completely, you know, sort of reworked this and she celebrated. And of course, in hindsight, that's a horrible take given what came out about the artist who did it. I hated that in the moment, by the way. Did you? Not, it wasn't necessarily that I, I get why people liked how his cover sounded. What I hated about it was that here was this dude who, to my knowledge, did not asked permission to do this. And I know she gets a check too, like, whatever. But he took her work and just made all of it his own. And Pitchfork reviewed his version and wouldn't review hers. And there was so much just grossness associated with how seriously his version of her work was treated.

And I didn't love that she was so excited about it in the moment. It kind of brought me out because here she is fighting for artists to have ownership of their work and be and identifying with that so strongly. And this dude was just kind of like, I'm going to redo your album and get a whole bunch of credit for it. And she celebrated that. And it kind of made me like just a little annoyed and more annoyed now. I think we have to get comfortable with a whole bunch of artists covering her stuff because she is a great songwriter at the and we've breadcrumbed the different ways in which artists have already started to take her songs and rewrite them. I love Taylor Swift covers. I just...

This felt like inserting yourself into the narrative. Yeah, well, and it was also just how much credit he got for doing it. Yeah. All of a sudden, oh, wow, this is serious music because Ryan Adams covered it. But part of the reason it got that much credit is because she blessed it so publicly. She was moved by the music and, you know, it was from her perspective, like a sort of indie rock guy covering it was great. In hindsight, it's cringier and darker than the Al City guy re-recording her stuff and posting it to the internet. I'm saying a lot. Yeah. Well, so I hear what you're saying. And I agree that it is tough to figure out what the through line to reputation is from here. But what did you see? Well, so I'll call

I don't want to use bad blood for it, although I think that would be a lot of people's choice just because we're going to get to this, but I don't want to identify the dark grading qualities of reputation as defining that album because I feel like they don't or at least they shouldn't.

The one that I think is sits more comfortably with me, she talks about sex. I said no one has to know what we do. What? So, like, Wildest Dreams to me, or just that sigh,

some of the content of I know places, too, where, yeah, she's acknowledging his hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room. Like, that was pretty new for Taylor Swift.

And that was a step ahead of all too well with the, you know, scarf at Maggie's or, you know, mine where my stuff is it, your place. This was like a progression of, hey, I'm staying at somebody's place, but that's all the detail I'm giving you. Then it's like, hey, we're close enough that I'm leaving some clothes at your sister's house, and now it's my clothes are on the floor. Is that the progression? Yeah. And that's

going to tee up reputation. Only bought this dress, so dot, dot, dot. Hmm. Speaking of lyrics, What is your single best one from 1989? So, for me, it's Starbucks lovers. No, mine comes from clean. And it's the lyric, 10 months sober, I must admit, just because you're clean, don't mean you don't miss it. I love that song. I love the song. It's Imogen Heep produced.

The vocal was done like right away in one or two takes. And there's just something, it is one of my favorite songs on the album. and that lyric to speak to how hard it is to get over somebody. And what happens when you separate yourself is just a beautiful line. What about you? Well, I just want to say on Clean, she used that song at least on one occasion in the tour to kind of signify the experience of going through the sexual assault trial.

And I always liked that song, but when I heard her, I think it's in the tour video, When I heard her do that, it hit me so much more. Like, that song has taken on kind of a second life to me post her identifying that connection with it. And I think it's really powerful. That opening line, the drought was the very worst, just sets the tone for the whole thing. It is awesome. My favorite lyric has a completely different tone, which is, because we're young and we're reckless.

We'll take this way too far. Okay. Okay. you can't argue with that. I also will say this is not the single best lyric, but the single most used in Instagram captions lyric

is darling, I'm a nightmare dress like a daydream. Yes, for sure. I really underestimated how much you were going to bring the blank space love to this episode. I support it, but I really, I didn't think that that's how deep

you were going to be in the bag for blank space. I'm so in the bag for blank space. It rules. But don't, you're trying to knock me off the scent because it's time to give this album a grade. And I actually think we're going to be closer on this than I thought because I will tell you exactly what I have written down in my notes

next to final album grade, which is, fuck you, Nathan, it's an A. What did you think I was going to say? I thought you were going to say that there's a lot of filler on this album. We really missed each other. This album is an A. It's her best collection of songs. It doesn't have my favorite songs, but front to back, I think it's the best work that she's done. It's a. It's my favorite Taylor Swift album, even more in hindsight, knowing what was going on for her personally underneath the stage,

as she was sort of making her way through the scaffolding and coming up, like what was going on for her. I mean, look, right as she becomes the first woman to win album of the year twice, right? That puts her into the pantheon of artists. the week before that, Kanye releases the song Famous and reignites the bullshit. And, you know, she gives this acceptance speech

that's hailed as feminist. To all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame but if you just focus on the work and you don't let those people sidetrack you

someday when you get where you're going you'll look around and you will know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there. And so a week before, Kanye inserted himself back into the narrative in a moment when we should be hailing now an iconic artist

that transcends generations. The only woman to win this award twice. She's got to address this bull shit again. And by the end of the 1989 cycle, Taylor Swift is smart enough to know she is right on the edge of overexposure. She says it on the Kanye tape. That's one thing we can all agree about from the Kanye tape. The doctored video comes out. The internet tries to destroy her and she disappears. We are headed for one of the darkest moments of her career. And so for that reason, I absolutely adore this album. We'll get to all of that that's to come.

when we talk about reputation, which is what we're going to do next. But until then, I'm going to go dance. This has been every single album, Taylor Swift. For Nathan Hubbard, I'm Nora Preciati. Join us again on Thursday for our next episode where we'll move on to reputation.