Taylor Swift review, 1989 (Taylor’s Version): A pop classic is re-recorded to diminishing returns

The maximalist pop epic 1989 was released into a very different time in Taylor Swiftlandia. It was 2014. Rumours were swirling that she and Katy Perry had become arch-rivals over a sabotaged tour. Spotify was the first international corporation to feel Swift’s wrath, as she pulled her catalogue from the service over its stance on music royalties. An incident in the woods with her then recent ex Harry Styles was the most A-list snow-related accident until Jeremy Renner ran himself over last winter. And 1989 itself – housing smash hits including “Blank Space” and “Shake It Off” – transformed Swift from a very good pop-country crossover artist into an industry unto herself.

The sheer reach of 1989, along with its exceptional production by Swedish pop savant Max Martin (of “... Baby One More Time” fame), means it was always going to be the trickiest Swift album to replicate. 1989 is the fourth of six early albums Swift is in the process of re-recording and re-releasing, following a dispute over the selling of her masters in 2019. Notably, however, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is missing Martin. Presumably even newfound billionaire Swift was unable to cough up the GDP of a small island required to get him back in the studio.

His absence means that 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is more immediately different from its original incarnation. This time around, production is handled almost entirely by Swift’s regular collaborators Christopher Rowe and Jack Antonoff, and the Martin-backed tracks struggle to take off without him. “Style”, a relentless headrush that feels like speeding down a highway at night, sounds punishingly compressed here, as though the mastering is off. “New Romantics” and the surging “All You Had to Do Was Stay”, both fan favourites, are rendered similarly deflated.

Appropriately, the handful of tracks not produced by Martin on the original 1989 fare better blown out and enhanced. “Out of the Woods”, a cacophony of reverb and vocal urgency inspired by the aforementioned snowmobile accident, feels even more staggering in its new, beefed-up form, while the polarising album opener “Welcome to New York”, a bit of geographic joy that’s always fallen on the right side of Swiftian cringe, goes harder with its synths. It just feels bigger. “Clean”, a gorgeous ode to post-breakup survival that Swift wrote and produced with Imogen Heap, has even more of the latter’s vocals folded into its production – it’s practically a duet between the pair now.

One unusual drawback to much of the album, though, is in Swift’s vocals. Past re-recordings have benefited from the bittersweetness of hearing a woman in her thirties revisiting songs she’d written in adolescence and her earliest years of adulthood – tracks such as Red’s “All Too Well”, or “Fifteen” from Fearless, became, in their re-records, wistful and nostalgic, like flicking through old diaries. Here, though, Swift’s overall improvements as a vocalist in recent years dent 1989’s power. Gone is the raw mania she embodies on the original “Blank Space” – an incredible bit of self-satire on the reporting of her dating life that almost shifted the axis of her career single-handed. Similarly, “I Know Places” – best known for its shocking mid-track yell of “We run!” – is annoyingly muted. There’s a polish to the vocals that is technically better, but it lacks the yearning strain of those original outings.

Accompanying the re-recordings are five new tracks, lifted from the original 1989 sessions. All are undeniably mid-tier Swift, but there are some nuggets of gold. The arrestingly titled “Slut!” isn’t quite the angsty riot grrl tribute one might assume, but it’s still nicely gentle and airy. “Is It Over Now?”, with its echoey reverb and further snowmobile references, feels a bit like the sleepier cousin of “Out of the Woods”; its lyrics – “I think about jumping off of very tall somethings/ Just to see you come running” – are classic bits of Swift melodrama.

It’s doubtful that anyone outside of Swift’s most dedicated acolytes will abandon the original 1989 out of anything but sheer loyalty, but this revamp does at least serve as a reminder of the album’s untouchable greatness. This is some of the best pop of the 21st century. Potentially some of the best pop ever made. A few bits of middling production, or some slightly-too-good vocals, won’t change that.

‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ is out now via Republic Records