Taylor Swift 1989 (Taylor’s Version) Review: A Poptimist Through Line

Taylor Swift’s least convincing lyric to date remains “I make the rules up as I go/And that’s what they don’t know,” from 1989’s “Shake It Off.” Now, four albums into her Taylor’s Version re-recordings, she has the good sense to sing that line with a hint of a smirk.

As with each of the previous Taylor’s Version releases, 1989 invites a degree of studiousness, of finding those slight changes in inflection and phrasing that play into both Swift’s fans’ devotion to the most minute details of her work and critics’ need to assess her output in a post-poptimist discourse. To that end, 1989 is perhaps the least noteworthy of her re-recordings so far.

Ultimately, that’s partly because the original 1989 has a lower ceiling for improvement than Swift’s first four albums. It was the first of her albums that captured truly great artistry without qualification or caveat. The bones of 1989 are so good, as it were, that even the slight changes that are noticeable as less impactful in the new versions are of little consequence. Not even Ryan Adams’s self-conscious indie cover album could screw it up.

Here, the clicking noise on “Blank Space” sounds less like the spring action of a ballpoint pen, the “ah-ah-ah” vocal hook on “New Romantics” is delivered with a more staccato phrasing, and there’s even more reverb on the vocal tracks of “Out of the Woods.” Those changes don’t make for new versions that are appreciably worse in any way. The altered guitar tone on “Style” is a distraction, but the fundamentals of that song are such perfect pop songcraft that, had this been the version recorded first, no one would be griping about tone quality like a bunch of Joe Bonamassa fanboys on Reddit.

That’s not to say there aren’t some differences that elevate these new iterations. Swift’s voice soars with greater power and control on “Clean” and “I Know Places,” while Jack Antonoff’s production packs even greater heft on “I Wish You Would” and “How You Get the Girl.” The album’s first half remains stronger overall, but it’s the latter half that more fully justifies the re-recording.

The five new “From the Vault” tracks are all solid, though they don’t function as a true thematic and aesthetic extension of the album in the way that the additions to Red (Taylor’s Version) did. If anything, they sound more of a piece with last year’s Midnights than the songs that Swift wrote and recorded almost a decade ago. But saying that “Is It Over” and “Now That We Don’t Talk” would make for excellent follow-up singles to “Anti-Hero” and “Karma” isn’t necessarily a slight. In fact, that’s the way this album draws the clearest through line between Swift’s pop breakthrough and her current world-conquering form.