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Taylor Swift · S6 E2
Shake It Off
Written in two hours. The most-streamed song of 2014. The backlash that arrives before the song does.
A Stockholm studio, early 2014. Taylor Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback write what will become the biggest pop song of the year in a single session, finished before anyone has eaten lunch.
You Need to Calm Down, Taylor Swift (2019). Five years after Shake It Off, Taylor is still delivering the same message to critics, just louder. The star-packed video is the spiritual sequel to the song that started everything.
The Hit Factory
Max Martin has written more number-one hits than almost anyone alive. Taylor flies to Stockholm specifically to work with him, knowing that if she's going to convince the world she belongs in pop, she needs the person who built hits for Britney Spears, *NSYNC, and Katy Perry. They build "Shake It Off" on a marching-band drum pattern and a brass riff that sounds like it belongs at a high school pep rally.
Sources
John Seabrook, The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, 2015
TAP TO REVEAL: What makes the bridge of Shake It Off so unusual for a pop lead single?
“We wrote it in, like, a day. I remember leaving the studio and just knowing: that's the one. That's the first single.”
— Taylor Swift, on writing "Shake It Off," Good Morning America, August 2014
The Backlash and the Billboard
When "Shake It Off" drops on August 18, 2014, music critics call it too simple, too cheerful, beneath the songwriter who gave the world "All Too Well." The charts disagree: it debuts at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, sells over five million digital copies in the U.S. alone, and its music video eventually crosses three billion YouTube views.
Shake It Off by the Numbers
I Wish You Would, Taylor Swift
Jack Antonoff co-wrote this with Taylor before the world knew him as pop's most in-demand producer. It runs on distorted guitars and a beat that never lets up, proof that 1989 had teeth beyond its radio singles. This is where a partnership that would shape Taylor's next decade begins.
I Wish You Would, Taylor Swift (2014)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Taylor is stuck in a loop, replaying a relationship's final moments, wishing she could rewind. The production matches that restless energy, never settling, always building.
Which production duo co-wrote and produced "Shake It Off" with Taylor Swift?
Behind the confetti of Shake It Off, a friendship with another pop star is quietly falling apart, and the fallout will produce one of music's most talked-about feuds. Next: Bad Blood.
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