She and Jack Antonoff travel back in time nine years with the bonus material, but also stay in the groove they established on their last brand new album.
It was a very good year, 1989. And by 1989, of course, we mean 2014. That year, Taylor Swift released her biggest and most transformative album, and ensures that for the rest of our lives, every mention of “1989” will be on the minds of almost everyone in the world immediately makes you think about “Shake It Off” and “Bad Blood,” not “My Prerogative” or “Wind Beneath My Wings” or any of the music that actually came out the year Swift was born.
Now “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” is here, complete with never-before-heard Vault tracks and the 16 re-recorded numbers from the original album, as is usual with these “TVs”. And which calendar year do you think these five completely new (to us) titles conjure up? Not in 1989, of course, but not in 2014 either. They may have been written in the same era as “Blank Space” and “Welcome to New York,” but in terms of their production and arrangement, there’s no exact fidelity to the style of before nine years. They’re all about the Swift sound of 2023.
Or, to be a little more technically correct, the sound of 2022. Because they sound less like leftovers from the cut room floor of “1989” and more like an additional set of five bonus tracks from last year’s “Midnights”. That’s perfectly fine for those of us who loved the piercing mid-tempo sounds and rhythms of their latest original album. She’s on such good terms with co-producer Jack Antonoff that it’s no surprise she’s sticking around, even if she’s using some older compositions they wrote together around 2014. Antonoff helped her produce some of the “Vault” tracks for the other “Taylor’s Version,” but this is the first time she’s gotten around to re-recording one of the albums he was originally involved with (although to a lesser extent than later). And it seems to have given her the freedom to really imagine what the material from that time period would have sounded like if it had been a current Swift/Antonoff project – not on the re-recordings, of course, because she doesn’t want to mess with that, though for the duration of this particular vault breach.
The cynic might ask: If this newly unearthed material sounds so much like Midnights, how do we know they aren’t just brand new songs she and Antonoff wrote together being passed off as discarded oldies? Well, this is very cynical, but there is one clear clue that reveals almost the exact origin of these compositions: the lyrics. The Taylor Swift of 2014 found herself at a particular juncture in her attitude and concerns that wasn’t all that close to what she had written before or what she would turn to years later. It’s a Swift shedding her last vestiges of romantic naivety and becoming wiser, if not nearly as cocky and self-assured as the seasoned soul who wrote an album as lyrically clever as Midnights. You still get a good bit of her groundbreaking earnestness in these pieces, but there’s a lot more of the woman who knew someone was in trouble when she walked in and went for it anyway.
Simply put, in the Vault tracks of “1989,” she falls in love with a higher class of villain. And just a little less to grieve for them when things don’t work out. None of the heartbreaking agony of “All Too Well” here (10-minute version or five-minute version). Even though she still feels the pain of separation, there is also a feeling in some of these old/new tunes that there is no great loss. “I call my mother / She says it was for the best / Remind me the more I’ve given, the less you want me,” she sings on “Now That We Don’t Talk,” the sharpest and Possibly the best song of the five Vault tracks. “I don’t have to pretend that I like acid rock / Or that I like being on a mega yacht / With important men voicing important thoughts / I guess maybe I’m feeling better / Now that we don’t talk.” She even predicts, in a sense, the defensive retreat of the coming “Reputation” era when she adds: “And the only way back to my dignity was to turn myself into a veiled mystery / Just as I had been when you pursued me.” “ The benefits of silent treatment have never been better expressed.
Anyone looking for clues as to who these songs might be about IRL may fail here, although there is at least one interesting detail in the closing song “Is It Over Now?”: the line “When you lose control / Red Blood, ” “White Snow” seems to mark this number as at least a cousin to “Out of the Woods” with its unforgettable snowmobile accident. She has a few wise comments for this guy, whoever he was or not: “You dream of my mouth before he called you ‘a lying traitor’ / You look for something bigger in every model’s bed, baby.” (Man senses she’s inserting the “baby” because sometimes a rhyme that’s too precise doesn’t sound quite conversational enough.) “At least I had the decency to keep my nights out of sight,” she adds, poking the bear further for making him the talk of the town for his indiscretions…even though she admits her own elsewhere in the song.
These more quotable lines may sound a bit derogatory on the page. But actually, the bonus tracks here show a Swift who has become much more confident about love and its whims than one of the New Romantics. There’s a practical aspect to dating life that wouldn’t have been possible earlier in her writing career. The song here, with the most provocative title, “‘Slut!'” (exclamation points and extra quotation marks mark everything of hers), is also strangely the most content-sounding of these numbers – with Swift handling well a kind of fast-paced thrill-seeking romance that seems to have planned obsolescence built into it. “Got love hitted, went right to my head / Got love sick all over my bed,” she sings, sounding as if she suddenly doesn’t care as much about how her dating life might affect her image: “But if it was me all dressed up / They might as well look at us / When they call me a “bitch!” / You know it might be worth it once.” (She ironically emphasizes the word “bitch” with that gang vocal sound that has become a trademark in the vocally haunting passages of songs like “Cruel Summer.”)
Why weren’t these songs included on the original album “1989”? Well, aside from the fact that she’s already had 16 hits, you can see a few areas of lyrical or thematic overlap that are probably best avoided. For example, listen to “Say Don’t Go” – which is the closest thing to a pure ballad here and is the only song not co-written with Antonoff, but instead with Diane Warren. (Who knew they’d once worked together? Now we do.) “I’d stay forever if you said, ‘Stay, don’t go,'” she sings. Well, she already had a definitive “stay” song on the album – “All You Had to Do Was Stay”, and as has become increasingly her habit, she opted for the weirder song.
That none of these songs come across as total tragedies is partly due to the somewhat measured nature of her lyricism at the time – although she was still capable of belting out all-or-nothing lines like “You kiss me in a way that will me.” forever.” But it’s also because the music she and Antonoff devised in the here and now for these songs has a mid-paced throb that’s more focused on pleasure than bitter sadness. “Is It Over Now” sounds like nothing more than “Bejeweled,” the happiest – and brightest – Midnights track. “Now That We Don’t Talk” has the slight pop-suspense feel that characterized last album’s “Mastermind.” When you watch the lyric video for “‘Slut!'” with its background images of champagne and palm trees, you might think of a summer that doesn’t feel so cruel after all.
It turns out that there are no songs in the “1989” vault that were obvious singles, like “I Can See You” from the reissue of “Speak Now” that was released just a few months ago. Or if there are leftover pieces of Max Martin/Shellback somewhere in the can, she has decided to leave them there for now to emphasize what she plans to do with Antonoff now. In my opinion, it’s a good decision to make the first Vault section sound somewhat like a piece, and a modern piece at that. She knows what never goes out of style, even if that means she has to adapt some of her older lyrics here to make it seem like they’re set just before midnight.