I was worried about the album when Shake It Off was first released, but now that the album's out and I've bought it and heard the songs, I'm so relieved. The worst song on it is Shake It Off, ironically (also the opening track sucks too lol).
But literally every freaking song on this album except Shake It Off and Welcome To New York are awesome.
All these songs still sound like Taylor. She might be saying "I wanted to go into a new direction", but really the material isn't that much different from Red or heck even Speak Now, just the instrumentation is different, and her songwriting is less personal this time around. You could easily take a song from 1989, throw in some acoustic guitar, and then it could be mistaken for a Red song.
Interesting to note, Nathan Chapman, the country producer who produced Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, and most of Red, still made it to 1989 despite Taylor saying this will be a pop album. He produced the song This Love, and while it's not my favorite Taylor Swift ballad, it was still really nice to hear a "Red-ish" song on the album with Nathan Chapman even producing! I'm not a huge fan of Max Martin or Shellback as producers, but I still enjoyed the rest of 1989 simply because of Taylor's songwriting, and I'm glad Nathan Chapman produced a song on the album, as I was expecting he wouldn't appear at all.
I haven't listened to this album enough times to really decide if it's my favorite album or not, but as of right now, Speak Now and Red are tied as my favorite Swift albums, with 1989 coming in a close 2nd. I like some songs from Fearless and Taylor Swift, but I can't really enjoy them as albums because her voice didn't really fully mature until Speak Now.
