1989 was Taylor Swift’s riskiest era ever because not only did she go against what her record label wanted out of her, but she went against what the general public wanted out of her, who had known her as this picture perfect country star. So, here is how she pulled off this whole new era.
We’re going to talk about the whole 1989 era. We’re going to talk about where Taylor Swift was at this point in her career. We’re going to get into the marketing and the rollout of the album. We’re even going to talk a little bit about her relationships that she was in. And yeah, I’m so excited because 1989 is one of my favorite albums ever.
And as you can see, I am wearing the 1989 merch. This is the shirt that Taylor Swift was wearing on the original cover for the album that she sold as merch. And I got it because I, if you tuned into the last episode, you know that I recreated Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream cover art. And I also wanted to recreate 1989. So, I got this for that photo shoot.
And I thought, might as well wear it for this episode to just get into the 1989 spirit. So, if you’re new here, welcome. Thank you so much for deciding to tune in to the Bop Bible podcast. I am your host, Adam Barerr, also known as Adam the Flop. And if you’re not new and you joined the last episode, thank you for deciding to tune in again.
So, like I mentioned before, I think it’s important that we talk a little bit about where Taylor Swift was at this point in her career because there was a lot that led into the creation of 1989, including what happened at the 2014 Grammys. So, by the time Taylor Swift released 1989, she had released three full-on country albums, which were her debut album, Fearless, and Speak Now.
All these albums were produced by Nathan Chapman, who at that point was Taylor Swift’s main collaborator, and she had known him ever since she began working on her debut album. Not only did she decide to work with pop producers, she decided to work with some of the biggest pop producers in the music industry for her album Red, which were Max Martin and Shellback.
Max Martin and Shelback were known for their huge pop hits with artists like Katie Perry, Aver Lavine, Pink, and Britney Spears. So, Taylor deciding to work with these two producers for her album Red was a huge deal because it showed that she was switching up what she was doing sonically and she was ready to explore more of a pop sound.
Even though Red was definitely a risky era, she still saw a lot of success with the more pople leaning songs on the album like We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, which was her first ever number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and songs like 22 and I Knew You Were Trouble were also big crossover hits into pop.
Another way Taylor definitely played it safe during the Red era was by labeling the album a country album. And this was definitely confusing. Like I remember being a little confused when she released We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together as the lead single for the album because that song is a pop song, but it was labeled on iTunes as country.
And I mean, I still bought it because it’s a bop. How can you not like that song? But it was definitely Yeah, it was just confusing for her fans who knew her as a country artist and saw that song labeled as country because it definitely just wasn’t a country song. But looking back, it makes sense why she did that because she was definitely trying to keep her country fans satisfied while also keeping her label satisfied because her record label, Big Machine Records, was and is a country record label.
So, the fact that she was kind of entering this more pop sound was risky for the label, too, because they’re investing in all this music. So looking back, yeah, it was probably her label pushing her and being like, “You need to label this a country song and a country album so we can at least maybe get some plays at country radio.
” Uh, which she definitely still did with these crossover hits on the album. They were still played at country radio, which is crazy because, yeah, they were pop songs, but still bops nonetheless. kind of going off on that, during the Red era, there was a lot of criticism Taylor Swift faced on whether or not she was a country artist because this album was just full of her experimenting with different sounds and a lot of those sounds weren’t country at all.
In fact, a music media outlet called Keep It Country Kids called Red, an excellent pop song and not so great of a country song. And they asked in their review, “Is she the country girl we fell in love with or a pop princess?” And this was a common question that the general public had of her at the time.
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Was she still the country girl that we knew and loved or was she a pop girl? But Taylor did defend her decision to make Red more experimental and genre bending. She told the Wall Street Journal, “I leave the genre labeling to other people. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively.” Which is so true because you have to think at this point in Taylor’s career, she had put out three albums, was on her fourth album, and was ready to experiment, which should be normal for artists, especially artists who have put out
multiple albums before under one genre. So, I think the whole creation of Red and Taylor deciding to experiment was really cool because I mean it gave us the pop girl that we know and love today. But at the end of the Red era, there was one moment that led to her deciding to not continue genre hopping on her next album, which was the 2014 Grammy Awards.
I’m gonna be referring to a sitdown chat Taylor Swift did with the Grammys back in 2014 because she talked a lot about how this moment in particular led into the creation of 1989. She mentioned that a lot of people were coming up to her telling her, “You got this. You’re going to win this Grammy for Red.” And when the winner was announced, they said the album of the year goes to Random Access Memories by Da Punk.
So you could see in Taylor Swift’s reaction when they really dragged out the that she and her team thought Red was going to win. I was actually so sad cuz they started to get like so hype and so excited and then they found out the album of the year was going to Daft Punk, which congrats to Da Punk, but I still think Red should have won.
But honestly, good thing it didn’t because that moment led into 1989. Taylor Swift said in that sitdown chat that she went home and cried. She ate in and out. She cried because she really wanted to win album of the year. And she said that she woke up in the middle of the night and had this epiphany. She said, “I’m going to make a full synth pop album.
Not going to label as country. I’m calling it 1989 and that’s done. Not going to let my label tell me that I can’t do it. I am becoming a pop girl.” And I woke up at 4 in the morning. I’m like, it’s called 1989. I’ve been making 80s synth pop. I’m just going to do that. I’m calling it a pop record.
I am not listening to anyone at my record label. I’m starting tomorrow. She decided to embark on this full pop star journey of 1989. This was definitely going completely against what her record label wanted. I mean, like I said before, Big Machine Records is a country music record label. So, her genre hopping on Red was one thing. I mean, there were still some country songs, but her deciding to go full pop girl on 1989, like her record label was probably like, “What are you doing, girl?” Taylor even said in that sit down chat that she got probably a dozen
sitdowns from people at her label trying to steer her away from deciding to do that. Record labels are obsessed with Grammy awards. So, I’m sure Taylor not winning that Grammy for Red made her label think she needs to go back to making a full country album, but no, she decided to go fullon pop for 1989.
A big reason Taylor believed that Red didn’t win that Grammy was that it wasn’t a sonically cohesive album. So, for 1989, she decided to make a sonically cohesive album, but pop. I mentioned how Taylor had been working a little bit with Max Martin and Shellback for Red, but still very much working with Nathan Chapman, the producer of her first three albums.
And for 1989, she decided to approach the whole production and creation of this album completely differently. For 1989, she decided to have Max Martin fully executive produce the album, which was a huge deal because sure, she had experimented with working with him a bit during Red, but now she was saying, “I’m ready to have him work on the entire body of work.
” For this album, she still worked with Nathan Chapman, but there was only one song on the album produced by him, which was This Love. She also worked with a few other pop producers on 1989, Ryan Tedar and Jack Antonoff, which as we know, the start of her working with Jack Antinoff in 1989 led into a long creative partnership with him that is still going on today, which we’re going to get into.
So, now let’s talk about the first single of 1989. For the lead single of 1989, Taylor decided to take a huge risk and make it a song that she knew would piss people off, which was Shake It Off. to announce Shake It Off and the 1989 album. Taylor did a live stream with Yahoo in 2014. And she said at the live stream, “It was our number one priority to make a song that sounded like nothing I had done.
” And that’s exactly what she had done with Shake It Off. Because like I mentioned before, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together was labeled as a country song on iTunes, which didn’t really make sense, but made sense, I guess, for Taylor Swift’s image at the time. Shake it Off, however, was a song that absolutely could not be labeled as country or be played on country radio at all.
This also marked a turning point in Taylor’s career because at the time she wasn’t really known for responding to the media and what they would say about her, but Shake It Off was a direct response to the media. 1989 actually had a lot of songs that were like this, which we’re going to get into. But one thing the media criticized Taylor a lot about was her relationships.
At the time we had known Taylor Swift was in a variety of public relationships with people like Joe Jonas, John Mayer, Harry Styles. And so the media was definitely portraying her to be some sort of serial dater which is weird because they never portrayed any of the men to be like that.
They only portrayed Taylor to be like it. And so Taylor was over it. She was like, “You know what? I’m going to make a song responding to the media with Shake It Off.” She told Rolling Stone, “I’ve had every part of my life dissected.” When you live under that kind of scrutiny, you can either let it break you or you can get really good at dodging punches and when one lands, you know how to deal with it.
And I guess the way that I deal with it is to shake it off, which is the perfect response to the media and all the haters that Taylor Swift had. I mean, the players going to play play, the haters going to hate hate hate hate. iconic. The music video also just matched the vibe of the song perfectly. Like Taylor Swift dancing with all the professionally trained dancers.
Like she really did not care at this point about what people had to say about her or any of the hate that she would get. But yeah, her making this the lead single of the era was a really bold move because this was a song that people who only liked her for her country music were not going to like. And she knew that.
I mean, she was aiming to get a whole new audience with this song, an audience of people who enjoyed pop and could appreciate her as a pop star. And it definitely worked because this song debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and to this day remains one of her biggest hits. At this point, Taylor Swift’s fans knew exactly what she was doing because at that live stream when she premiered Shake It Off, she announced 1989 as a full pop album.
So, it was clear the direction that she was heading in. Shake It Off was the perfect song to start the era because it really just got people talking about Taylor, but it wasn’t like the rest of the album at all. Shake It Off was actually the only official single Taylor released before the release of 1989 in October of 2014.
She had released two promotional singles which were Out of the Woods and Welcome to New York. And that definitely gave people more of a feel of where she was going with this era. But Shake It Off was the only song we got with a music video before the release of the album. I want to talk about the marketing Taylor did before the release of the full album because she used Instagram as a huge part of this pre-release campaign.
Shout out to the Instagram account, The Old Taylor Swift Insta, because this is how I found literally all of her old Instagram posts that she posted before deleting all of them at the start of the Reputation era. But she would post multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day. Like we felt like we were her friends on her private story the way that she would post on Instagram. She would post memes.
She would post pictures with her friends like Lord and would also just use the app to tease 1989. I wish she would still post like how she did during the 1989 era because it made fans feel so much more connected to her. I mean, she was just being a silly girl, showing her personality on the internet, and it was genuinely so cute.
But Instagram was a huge part of the promo for the album. I mean, she had already given us the cover art, which was the iconic Polaroid image. And so on Instagram, she would tease lyrics of the album by posting these different Polaroids of her and her friends, which was such a good marketing move to get people excited for the album.
She genuinely treated her fans like they were her friends. I mean, she would post pictures of her secret sessions that she was doing where fans heard the album before it actually came out. And yeah, it was just such a great way for the Swifties to just feel connected to her. And this wasn’t only on Instagram. I mean, she was also on Twitter tweeting whatever the hell she wanted to tweet.
I found an example of a tweet she had in 2014 that I feel like kind of sums up her social media presence at the time. After the VMAs, she tweeted, “Thoughts. I’m glad everyone’s discovering Jesse Jay. met Iggy in an elevator and she was super nice. Every time I see Blue Ivy, I cry. I just love that tweet because it just perfectly describes what she was doing on social media at the time.
But yeah, I think Taylor’s social media presence was key for getting people interested in this new sound that she was exploring with 1989. Another marketing tactic she did involving the Polaroid theme was including photo packets in the physical albums. and she had 13 Polaroids in each pack, but each album had different Polaroids and bonus tracks for the album.
So, it really made people want to buy multiple physical copies of the album. So, she released the full album in October of 2014. And according to Vox Media, industry experts predicted that this album would sell 700,000 copies in its first week, which was 500,000 copies less than Red sold in its first week. This was largely because of the fact that album sales were down 14% in 2014.
So, people really didn’t think that Taylor Swift would be able to sell over a million copies in the first week of 1989. We weren’t in the full streaming era yet, but streaming was definitely becoming more popular. And so Taylor had to kind of think of ways that she can get people to buy the album.
And one of those ways was including those different photo packets in physical versions of the album at Target. And those Target exclusive copies with those Polaroids really helped her because according to Neielson, 400,000 copies sold of 1989 came from Target. So Taylor deciding to have those exclusive versions really helped her debut at number one, selling over 1.
2 million copies in the first week of 1989. 1989 became Taylor’s third consecutive album to sell over a million copies in its first week. And so this was a sign that people were liking this new pop star image that Taylor had. Okay guys, if you’re watching the video version, obviously I am not wearing the 1989 shirt anymore.
I definitely got a few sizes too small and I tried to just last the whole episode wearing it, but just got uncomfortable. So, I just feel so much more free now. And yeah, let’s just get back into the album. So, as we get into the next singles from 1989, we’re going to talk about the big pop culture moments that were going on in Taylor Swift’s life that were making these singles smash even harder.
So, we’re going to get into a little more of her relationship with the media, her relationship with Harry Styles, her friendship with Carly Claus, so the Gayla rumors, as well as her Girl Squad, and her feud with Katy Perry. There’s a lot to talk about because this era, there was just so much going on during this time.
So, that leads me into the second official single from 1989, which was Blank Space. and Blank Space kind of went off of that vibe that Shake It Off had where Taylor decided, you know what, the media has been saying these things about me, and I don’t care that they’re saying these about me, but I’m going to play along with it and directly respond to them.
So, with Blank Space, she went along with the idea that the media again was portraying her as some sort of serial dator. And I wanted to read you guys some headlines that I found of media outlets during this time. So, the New York Post has a headline that reads, “Taylor Swift is the ultimate player.” A headline says that.
The Lynfield Review has a headline that says, “Taylor Swift continues to be a serial dater.” Again, a headline of a news article says that crazy. Tina Fey even commented on Taylor Swift’s dating life. And for that reason, I will never stand Tina Fay. So Tina Fay was hosting the Golden Globes, one of the biggest award shows on television, and decided to make a joke about Taylor Swift’s dating life.
So actor Sam Michael Fox was in attendance, the son of Michael J. Fox, and Tina Fay said during her opening monologue, you know what, Taylor Swift, you stay away from Michael J. Fox’s son or go for it. No, she needs some me time to learn about herself. It’s getting sloppy in here, everybody.
You know what, Taylor Swift? You stay away from Michael J. Fox’s son. Tina Fay said this while hosting the Golden Globes. Imagine being Taylor Swift. Imagine being Taylor Swift and just like tuning into the Golden Globes, okay? And then seeing that Tina Fey just decides to comment on your dating life as if you’re some serial dater who wants to date every handsome famous man.
Like this is just crazy because the media did not care about the men in these situations. They only cared about what Taylor Swift was doing and who she was seeing. And they weren’t just commenting on her dating life. Like they were portraying it in such a negative way. You know, they were just having this idea that Taylor Swift would just date whoever whenever.
But the song did inspire the iconic Blank Space. In fact, Taylor told ABC News that she wrote this song about how the media portrayed her to be a serial dater. The song is flirty and fun and it’s just so clever. Like the line, “Got a long list of ex-lovers. They’ll tell you I’m insane, but I got a blank space, baby, and I’ll write your name.
” One of the most iconic, clever lines in pop music history. Yeah. Looking back, it was just such a cool thing that Taylor decided to play into this idea that the media was portraying her as a serial dater and not just be upset by it. I mean, of course, she was upset by it, but not just be upset by it and not say anything.
Like, this was her direct response to it. The music video also went along with the song perfectly. Taylor plays a character who is in a happy relationship. She and her man live in a mansion. They’re dancing. They love each other. But then she sees that he is texting another girl. So this causes some erratic behavior like throwing things around the house, kind of going, you know, a little insane.
But it just perfectly portrayed the song. It perfectly portrayed the line, “Darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.” Because that’s what it was. like she was portraying herself as a nightmare but looked so elegant and looked like she was living a happy life but she wasn’t. I also wanted to touch on a marketing strategy that went along with this music video.
So Taylor partnered with American Express and they developed an app where you get a 360 view of the mansion from the music video and you kind of go around the mansion and see different rooms. And I just thought this was such a cool idea and just a great way to get Swifties more engaged and feel like they’re involved within the music video.
Blank Space actually replaced Shake It Off from number one and spent seven weeks at the top, becoming the second smash hit from the era. So at this point, Taylor had two singles from 1989 that were more of a response to the media. And so for the third single, she decided to make it a song about Harry Styles. Harry and Taylor allegedly dated very briefly from the end of 2012 to early 2013.
A lot of people believe that the relationship was PR because whenever they were spotted out together, they just seemed very awkward. They didn’t really seem like they were in a relationship. Whether or not they were together, I mean, I don’t I don’t know. I feel like maybe they were just hanging out and knew that they were two of the most famous people in the music industry, so they decided to just, I don’t know, play into that a bit more.
But who knows? I mean, whether or not they were together, the relationship definitely caused a big PR moment for the both of them. And Taylor knew this when including the song Style on 1989 and making it the next single. I mean, the song is called Style. So, of course, Sans will be like Harry Styles, Style.
There’s a connection there. The song is about the secrecy of a relationship. I mean, the opening lines are midnight, you come and pick me up, no headlights. As in, there’s some sort of secrecy element of a relationship. And so, of course, people connected that to Harry as well because they’re two of the most famous people and they’re in a relationship.
So, trying to have a relationship while also having, you know, some sort of privacy with that. It also just described Harry Styles style at the time. I mean, long hair, slick back, white t-shirt. That was literally Harry Styles in 2014. This song remains one of Taylor Swift’s most timeless songs.
In fact, it’s literally charting right now on global Spotify over a decade later. She actually told iHeart Radio back in 2014 that she played the song for her friend Ella, aka Lord, while driving out the PCH. as in Lord was one of the first people to hear this iconic intro and she heard that intro and she was like yes my friend Ella Lord I played her style when we were driving down the PCH um and we were going to lunch in Malibu and I was like hey I just finished this thing can I play it for you and I remember when that like when that beat drops in in the intro of
the song she was just like yeah yeah can you imagine being Lord driving down the PCH with Taylor and hearing style for the first time I cannot imagine how magical that felt. Style became the third smash hit from 1989, peeking at number six on the Hot 100. So, at this point, Taylor had three top 10 hits for the era, which was massive.
And she decided to continue that momentum by releasing another single from the album that was this time inspired by her feud with Katy Perry. There were rumors circulating that Bad Blood was about Katy Perry because Taylor Swift told Rolling Stone in September of 2014 that the song was about a female musician who tried to sabotage an entire arena tour.
And so one of Katie Perry’s dancers, Lockheart Brownley, told Examiner that three dancers left Taylor Swift’s Red Tour to join Katie’s Prismatic tour. And he said that in December of 2013. So everything was aligning that this song was about Katie Perry. The song like its title suggests is about having bad blood with someone who you used to be friends with.
I mean Taylor and Katie at one point early on in both of their careers were cool. They were spotted at award shows together taking photos together and then all of a sudden they weren’t. And yeah, it was because some of Taylor’s dancers left her tour to join Katie’s tour, which I would have been kind of upset, too, if I were Taylor because she rehearsed with these dancers for such a long time for the Red Tour, then all of a sudden they leave to join Katie’s Prismatic Tour.
I would have been salty too about that. But also, why would the dancers do that? Like, you’re dancing with Taylor Swift for RAD tour, which is one of the biggest tours at the time. I would have kept that job to be honest. But I guess Katie was also having a big moment at the time, too. So, I mean, either way, those dancers were employed.
This feud was such a huge topic. Like, everybody was talking about it because it was just so obvious that it was going on, and Taylor decided to play into that idea of having a feud with another woman in the Bad Blood music video. Taylor got her entire girl squad at the time to appear in this video, which that alone, her girl squad was a whole other PR moment for this era because Taylor Swift was hanging out with all the ITG girl celebrities.
She was hanging out with Zenaia, Selena Gomez, Gigi and Bella Hadid, Carly Claus. So, it was just all these IT girls together that Taylor was always spotted with and she decided to incorporate them in her next music video for Bad Blood. So Taylor made the remix of Bad Blood featuring Kendrick Lamar, the next single with a big budget music video.
And the music video actually broke Vivo’s record at the time, getting 20.1 million views in its first day. Everybody was tuned in. We all know where we were when we watched the Babla music video for the first time. I also think it’s iconic that Taylor had Selena Gomez play the evil villain character in this music video that she feuds with because Taylor and Selena have been besties since like 2009.
And so everybody was just obsessed with them together. I feel like everybody still is obsessed with them together. Whenever I see pictures of Taylor and Selena together, I just fang girl so hard because I love them both. But yeah, them two being the main leads of this music video definitely just made it even bigger.
Even though the song is probably the weakest song lyrically from 1989, it was just such a massive pop culture moment that it turned into one of the songs of the summer of 2015. Taylor and Katie’s feud lasted a long time. It lasted up until May of 2018 when Katie sent Taylor and Olive Branch with a cute note. And I remember seeing this and being like, “Wow, this is actually crazy.” Because they hated each other.
And so the fact that the feud was ending was just a huge moment in pop culture. And then Taylor also included Katie in the music video for You Need to Calm Down when Katie was dressed as a burger, Taylor was dressed as a fries. They hugged it out and it was just so cute. But yeah, this feud was one of the most public feuds ever in pop culture.
So at this point, summer 2015 was ending. Bad bloods reign as one of the songs of the summer was kind of going down and Taylor was ready to have another smash hit from the IT Girl era that was 1989. For this next single, I want to touch on Taylor’s friendship or was it a relationship with Carly Clauss? The Gayla rumors were massive, and they still are massive within the Swifty community, but they actually started during the 1989 era when Taylor Swift and Carly Clauss were spotted literally everywhere together.
Taylor and Carly were hanging out all the time. And it wasn’t only paparazzi photos, like they were posting each other on their Instagrams all the time. They actually did the cover of Vogue together, which is insane because I feel like Taylor wouldn’t even do that with Travis Kelce now.
So, the fact that she was doing it with Karly Clauss was crazy. But a lot of people saw this and were like, hm, is this a friendship or is this a relationship? And yeah, it wasn’t only Swifties that speculated this. The media of course was too. And Taylor actually tweeted in 2014, “As my 25th birthday present from the media, I’d like for you to stop accusing all my friends of dating me.
” So, this seemed like a response to what people were thinking was a relationship between Taylor and Carly Claus. In my opinion, Taylor Swift is a straight woman. Like, I look at Taylor Swift and I’m like, straight 100%. But I will not be a hater to all the gaylers out there. I mean, some of them definitely go a little too intense with the rumors, but I genuinely do think Taylor and Carly were just really close friends and Taylor was enjoying the fact that she had a lot of famous itgirl model friends and yeah, I think she and Carly were just super
close at the time. But that leads me into the next single which was Wildest Dreams and also the song I Know Places which I want to touch on a bit too. But in Wildest Dreams, Taylor sings about a relationship she knows will end but wants the other person to remember her. So yeah, there were definitely rumors that this song was about Harry Styles, but there were gaylers seeing these rumors with Taylor and Carly Claus thinking that this song was about Carly.
Whoever it’s about though, I am so glad that she made this the fifth single from 1989 because this is literally my favorite Taylor Swift song ever. Fun fact about me and this song. I do not take off on an airplane without listening to Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift. If you guys feel any sort of like flight anxiety, then Wildst Dreams by Taylor Swift definitely helps.
Like I have been doing this for years and it’s just my song that calms me down on an airplane. I just love it so much. It’s just so magical. It was the perfect song at the time because after all these really big pop songs, Wildest Dreams was more of a power pop slower ballad that definitely gave more of a Lana Del Rey vibe which people loved.
Even if you didn’t like, you know, the big pop songs of 1989, there was no way you couldn’t enjoy Wildstream by Taylor, you know. In fact, I feel like it was a good choice for people who preferred Taylor’s older songs because, yeah, it wasn’t super pop. The song was just put together perfectly by Taylor, Max Martin, and Shellback.
In fact, it literally included Taylor Swift’s Heartbeat, which was genius. I feel like this song is really the glue that holds 1989 together because it’s kind of in the middle of the album after a bunch of big pop songs. And so this song comes on and it’s just more of a different vibe. You know, it’s definitely more vulnerable and sonically different from the rest of the songs we heard before.
This song and style are two of Taylor Swift’s best vocal performances ever. I mean, the bridge comes on and Taylor does the O’s kind of like in style when she does just take me home in the bridge. It kind of gives off that same energy and really is just like the climax of the song. Yeah. As I said, I want to touch on the song I Know Places, which is also on the second half of this album, because many people believe this song is also about Carly Clauss.
In I Know Places, Taylor sings about again a secret relationship that is kind of hard to keep private, but Taylor saying, “Oh, I know places that we can hide that will just make it seem, you know, a little more secret than it is.” So, of course, people also took this idea of a song about the secrecy of a relationship and associated that with Karly Clauss as well.
So, I feel like the two songs in 1989 that Gaylers really went the hardest for with these rumors were Wildest Dreams and I Know Places. Again, I just think these songs are about Taylor’s relationships in general because most of them were very public relationships with other famous people and so it could literally be about anybody, but the gaylers heard these and they were like, “Yep, she’s gay.
” After a while, the streams peaked at number five. Though, Taylor was ready to have another hit song from the era. I mean, she had all these hit singles, top 10 hit singles already from 1989, and at this point, it was her biggest era yet. So, I know we’ve been talking a lot about Taylor’s relationships because they were a big reason for these songs becoming so massive, but again, I want to touch on her relationship with Harry Styles because Out of the Woods is without a doubt about Harry Styles.
In Out of the Woods, Taylor sings about a rocky relationship in which she contemplates at what point should I feel safe about a breakup happening? It’s kind of similar to Wildest Dreams in the sense that the breakup is inevitable, but it’s just, you know, at what point should I expect that to happen? There are many lyrics that indicate that this song is about Harry Styles, such as your necklace hanging from my neck and two paper airplanes flying.
Harry Styles at this point was wearing a paper airplane necklace everywhere he went. You know, every one of his fans knew that he just loved that paper airplane necklace. And at one point, Taylor Swift was spotted wearing that same exact necklace. So this lyric seemed like a direct reference to that. Another lyric that indicates the song is about him is in the bridge when she sings remember when you hit the brakes too soon 20 stitches in the hospital room.
And fans believed that this lyric was about Harry because Taylor told Rolling Stone at the time that the song was inspired by a snowmobile ride with an ex who lost control so badly that she saw her life flash before her eyes. and Taylor went on a ski trip with Harry, Justin Bieber, and Selena Gomez. And so there were a bunch of paparazzi photos that came out from this trip.
And so yeah, after knowing that this happened and then Taylor saying this to Rolling Stones, fans were like, “Okay, this is clearly about Harry.” This song is very special in Taylor’s discoraphy because it was actually her first single she released with Jack Antinoff, which as we know, her creative partnership with Jack Antinoff went on and on and still is going on today.
And so, yeah, to think back to this song and thinking about how it kind of just launched that partnership between Taylor and Jack really makes it so much more of a special song. This song was actually the first single from 1989 to not crack the top 10 on Billboard, peeking at number 18, which is a crime because sure the chorus is repetitive and everything, but that bridge is so good.
One of Taylor’s best bridges in her discoraphy for sure and absolutely should have been a top 10 single. So, because Out of the Woods didn’t reach the top 10 and become the hit that Taylor probably wanted it to, it was a sign that the era was coming to an end, which was so sad because experiencing this era as a fan of Taylor was just so fun and she was just dominating during this time.
And yeah, I look back to this era and just think how lucky I am to have been a fan during this time. But even though the era was coming to an end, Taylor wanted to give her fans a gift of a seventh single, which was New Romantics in February of 2016. I feel like New Romantics is a song that Swifties in general agree should have been on the standard edition of 1989 because it is such pop perfection, but it was on the deluxe version of the album.
I feel like this song was so important for Taylor to include on the album and for her to end the era with because it really represented all the themes of 1989. You know, like living in a big city, navigating relationships throughout your 20s and accepting heartbreak. These are all themes of the album and perfectly described where Taylor Swift was.
I mean, we knew that she had multiple failed relationships and this song was her just accepting that and moving forward with that. This song sounds like such a fun pop song and it is, but I feel like it genuinely came from such a vulnerable place that Taylor was in at the time as she was in her mid20s. My one critique about New Romantics is that we did not get an official music video for this song.
Taylor made it a single along with the release of a tour music video, which was cute, but I feel like a New Romantics video would have eight. Something I’ll never understand about New Romantics is that it only peaked at number 46 on the Hot 100, which is crazy because even though Out of the Woods didn’t reach the top 10, it still reached the top 20.
And so, I feel like New Romantics is a better song than Out of the Woods. absolutely should have been in the top 20, but also it was the seventh single from the album, so it makes sense why it didn’t chart super high, but it definitely should have been higher. So, after seven singles, Taylor was ready to officially close out the 1989 era, which remains her biggest era yet.
Like I mentioned at the start of this episode, Taylor’s goal was to win album of the year at the Grammys because her not winning that award for Red is what inspired the creation of this album. And she got what she wanted. She won album of the year at the 2016 Grammys. I remember being so excited when this was airing on TV and it was just one of my favorite Grammy moments ever because you can just see the excitement on Taylor’s face.
Jack Antonov’s face, all of the producers faces because yeah, like even though like not everything is about awards and everything, Taylor Swift loves her awards and so just being a fan of hers, knowing how much a Grammy for this album meant for her and seeing her win that was just such a special moment.
The 2016 Grammys were also big for her because she won best pop vocal album and best music video for Bad Blood. So she left the Grammy Awards in 2016 with three new Grammys. Taylor became the first woman to win album of the year twice. The first time being when she won for her album Fearless.
The difference with 1989 is that it was her first pop album. So this was massive for Taylor because pursuing pop was such a risk for her. But clearly it was paying off. I mean she had multiple smash it singles from the era and was winning the biggest award in the music industry. So for 1989, I feel like a huge reason this album was so massive was that Taylor decided to take the risk of working with new producers for a whole body of work.
She not only worked with new producers, but she worked with the best pop producers in the music industry. I mean, Max Martin, Shellback, Ryan Tedar, they were all massive. And even Jack Antonov, he wasn’t as wellknown then as he is now, but was clearly talented and Taylor had an ear for that.
I mean, Out of the Woods is one of the best pop songs ever. Marketing and PR definitely played a huge role in this album success, too. I mean, Taylor definitely utilized social media to her advantage. Like I wish she would still post the same way today like she did back then, but she clearly knew how to connect with her fans on social media during a time when social media, especially Instagram, was relatively new and was a new thing that artists were using in their album rollouts.
And she definitely knew that there would be a huge PR moment with this album. I mean, she and Harry Styles were in a brief but definitely public relationship for a while and her deciding to have these songs in the album that were clearly about him. I mean, she knew that fans would go crazy and just make these songs even bigger. 1989 is the perfect pop album because there are so many radio friendly songs on the album and so many songs that could be singles.
And I mean that’s why there were seven singles from the album. There are just so many great upbeat pop songs that also have depth. I mean they’re easily digestible, but Taylor was still the songwriter that we fell in love with for sure. Even though she was changing her sound, she really approached her first pop era with the confidence of a pop star, which was really key to the era success.
you made it to the end of this episode. Thank you so much for deciding to tune in to the second episode of the Bop Bible. I really appreciate it. And if you could rate this podcast five stars and write a positive review on whatever platform you’re listening on, I would appreciate that so so much.
Also, if you share it onto your Instagram story, I will get so excited and reshare it onto mine. But yeah, that’s just another great way to spread the word of this podcast. [Music]
