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Taylor Swift · S6 E1
The Announcement
Telling Nashville she's leaving country — from the CMA stage, in front of everyone who built her career.
Early 2014. Taylor Swift plays Scott Borchetta a laptop full of demos at Big Machine Records, and not one of them contains a banjo, a fiddle, or a steel guitar.
This Love, Taylor Swift, live on the 1989 World Tour. One of the few songs on the album that Taylor wrote completely alone, performed here in front of tens of thousands of fans who followed her from country to pop without hesitation.
This Love, Taylor Swift (2014)
Taylor wrote "This Love" entirely by herself, a rarity on an album built with Max Martin and Shellback. The production swaps Nashville's acoustic guitars for layered synths and reversed vocal samples, landing somewhere between a late-night confession and a waking dream. Listen for how her voice floats above the arrangement instead of driving it.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Scott Borchetta ask Taylor to do when she played him the 1989 demos?
Writing in Secret
During the Red Tour in 2013, Taylor starts writing songs in hotel rooms that sound nothing like her catalog. She flies to Stockholm between tour dates to work with Max Martin and Shellback, building tracks on synthesizers instead of acoustic guitars. By the time the Red Tour ends in June 2014, she has a nearly finished pop album, and nobody in Nashville knows it exists.
Sources
Josh Eells, "The Reinvention of Taylor Swift," Rolling Stone, September 2014
“This album is a rebirth for me. I'd been wanting to make a sonically cohesive pop album for two years, and I just went for it.”
— Taylor Swift, Yahoo livestream announcing 1989, August 18, 2014
1989 by the Numbers
Welcome to New York, Taylor Swift
The opening track of 1989 doubles as a mission statement. Co-written with Ryan Tedder, it announces Taylor's new life in Manhattan and her new identity as a pop artist in one bright, synth-driven burst. You have just heard the quiet side of 1989 with "This Love." This is the loud one.
Welcome to New York, Taylor Swift (2014)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Taylor describes arriving in a city where nobody knows her past, and the freedom of reinventing yourself from scratch. Every line reads like someone who just burned a bridge and feels great about it.
How did Taylor Swift publicly announce the 1989 album to the world?
Taylor has told Nashville she's leaving. Now she needs to prove she belongs in pop, and the lead single will be unlike anything she has ever released. Half the internet will hate it on first listen. Next: Shake It Off.
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