1989 revisited

you know, for me, it’s always you

me, spiritually, back in 2014: JUDAS! (image source)

Red made me a Taylor Swift fan. If you were around me when that album was new, I talked your ear off about it. 1989 made me an ex–Taylor Swift fan. I hated it and probably talked your ear off about that, too. It was, to me, an album with no personality, designed for licensing deals. It was made to slip into the background of a commercial or one of those New York taxi cab videos or a direct-to-streaming romantic comedy (not that that particular genre really existed at the time). I dipped in at the beginning of reputation to see if she was continuing in this particular pop direction, and she was, so I checked out.¹ We’d always have Red.

Eventually my boyfriend talked me into giving reputation another shot and now it’s probably a top three Taylor album for me.² If I wrote a 33 1/3 about a Taylor album, it would be reputation. But I’ve never warmed to 1989. It has always felt like a thin, generic album that anybody could have made, with som…