Taylor Swift

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taylor via instagram.

taylorswift: Track 12 #1989lyrics #TS1989 #5DaysTil1989

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taylor via tumblr.

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Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’ Carries High Hopes but No Country Music

One of the few certainties in the music business these days is that if Taylor Swift puts out a new album, it will sell by the truckload.

Her last two records, “Red” and “Speak Now,” each sold more than one million copies in its first week out, an increasingly rare feat as music sales weaken, and listening habits shift to online streaming services like Spotify and YouTube. Two years ago, “Red” started with 1.2 million sales, the biggest opening in a decade and the last time that any album has crossed the million mark in one week.

But the fate of Ms. Swift’s newest release, “1989,” which comes out Monday, has been the subject of nervous speculation in the industry for months, given not only the poor sales climate over all but also Ms. Swift’s decision to break from country radio, a vital source of support since the beginning of her career.

This year, no new title has cracked the one-million sales mark — a crucial symbolic milestone — and album sales over all are down 14 percent from the same period last year. According to Billboard magazine, “1989” is projected to sell at least 800,000 copies in its debut week.

In August, Ms. Swift, who was born in 1989, announced the release of “1989” through a fan gathering at the Empire State Building that was streamed live by Yahoo, the first volley in a steady and aggressive marketing campaign. She called the release her “very first documented, official pop album.”

It was the culmination of a long transition in her music toward pop and came as little surprise to her fans or the industry at large. But the break with country was definitive. The first single, “Shake It Off,” was a hit on Top 40 radio and went straight to No. 1, yet it was largely ignored by country programmers. While Ms. Swift’s record company, Big Machine, had sent country stations special remixes of some of her earlier pop-leaning songs, no such effort was made with “Shake It Off.”

“A lot of folks wished that she would have done some songs that would be more compatible with country radio, but she hasn’t,” said Joel Raab, a longtime consultant to country radio stations.

In the small world that is the Nashville music business, little outright negativity about Ms. Swift has been voiced publicly. A more prevailing sentiment is wistful pride.

“Taylor is one of us, one of our children,” said Mark Razz, the music director at WXTU-FM, a country station in Philadelphia. “You’re there for them along the way, and then they need to go to what they are going to do. She’s gotten to where she is through country music, and if she goes on to be the next pop sensation around the world, we are behind her 100 percent.”

Less support from country stations — now the most popular music format on radio — may hurt Ms. Swift’s sales. But her marketing campaign is intended to promote her as widely as possible, through brand tie-ins and a barrage on social media. Her Diet Coke commercial, for example, ends with a pitch for the album, and on Tuesday, Ms. Swift introduced a new song, “Never Go Out of Style,” through a Target ad. Her Instagram feed has been a constant drumbeat of lyrics, images and hints related to the album.

The biggest hurdle for the success of “1989” may simply be the slumping world of music retail, with downloads now joining CDs as a declining format. Spotify and other streaming services, while growing in popularity, are not tracked in the same way as sales, and so far, the revenue those outlets generate has not made up for the drop in the number of albums sold.

Even if “1989” sells only 800,000 copies in its first week, that would more than double the next-biggest showing of the year, when Coldplay sold 383,000 copies of “Ghost Stories” in May. Big albums are expected later this year by One Direction, Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar, but Ms. Swift’s release is expected to be the most popular by far.

“It’s just very difficult to convince people to buy music,” said Keith Caulfield, an associate director of charts at Billboard. But if anyone can exceed expectations, Mr. Caulfield said, it is Ms. Swift.

“Forecasts are forecasts,” he added. “The weather changes.”

Source: www.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/business/media/taylor-swifts-1989-carries-high-hopes-but-no-country-music.html

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The Voice - Season 7 "Knockout Reality"

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Heading to a studio on October 22, 2014 in Los Angeles, California.

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taylorswift: The full track list. #TS1989

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Scans from the November 2014 Issue of Cleo Magazine

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[More] Arriving at LAX Airport on October 21, 2014 in Los Angeles, California.

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Performing on The X Factor UK Results Show on October 13, 2014.

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Spotted at Brent Street Studios rehearsing for her 'The X Factor' performance on October 18, 2014 in Australia.

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Taylor Swift’s Deepest Fear

Taylor Swift Knows Adam Levine’s Weakness

Taylor Swift Talks '1989'

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"Jimmy Kimmel Live" arrival, Hollywood, Oct 23 '14

 

 

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Rehearsing for her appearance on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' on October 23, 2014 in Hollywood, California.

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New photo from Taylor's 1989 Photoshoot

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Rehearsing for her appearance on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' on October 23, 2014 in Hollywood, California.

 

 

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Performing on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' on October 23, 2014 in Hollywood, California.

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[Undo It]

One of my absolute favorites singers. She has looks talent and class in spades and style wise she's able to walk that line of looking sexy yet classy but never slutty like few others. Thx for all the updates! :wub2:

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Any Nashville insider will tell you that Taylor Swift started breaking up with country music long before she first stepped out with hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback for three pop-leaning songs on 2012's blockbuster Red. But if her new single, "Shake It Off," was the official breakup letter, 1989 is the coming-out party, because it makes Red sound like Reba McEntire. Executive-produced by Swift and Martin, two of the all-time biggest hitmakers, the LP could have been an overstuffed Frankenstein of battling ideas. But instead it's Swift's best work -- a sophisticated pop tour de force that deserves to be as popular commercially as with Robyn-worshipping blog--gers; an album that finds Swift meeting Katy and Miley and Pink on their home turf and staring them down.

What's so different? Plenty. Sonically, 1989 is far more electronic than her previous work, driven by Martin's trademark drum programming and synthesizers, pulsating bass and processed backing vocals. The guitars, when they're there at all, deliver mostly texture; an acoustic is audible on just one song. The mandolins and violins were left back in Nashville, and there might not be a single live drum on the album.

The songwriting is still unmistakably Swift, with her polysyllabic melodies and playful/-provocative lyrics. But Martin and other key collaborators (including Shellback, Ryan Tedder and fun.'s Jack Antonoff) have helped hone her songs, which are more seasoned and subtle, less bubbly and bratty, than in the past.

The self-referential change-of-scenery theme is set with the opening "Welcome to New York." Its new-wave hook and innocent lyrics -- "The lights are so bright, but they never blind me" -- make it the ideal anthem for an Anne Hathaway film, or any 24-year-old moving to the big city, as Swift recently has (albeit into a $20 million Tribeca penthouse).

From there, in signature Swift style, it's almost all love -- or at least relationship-based -- songs. Swift says she has hardly dated since splitting with One Direction's Harry Styles early in 2013, and the songs' musical styles follow the character types she plays on the album: train wreck waiting to happen ("Blank Space"), committed partner ("I Know Places," "This Love"), penitent breaker-upper ("I Wish You Would"), spurned break-upee ("All You Had to Do Was Stay"). Lyrical references to him are all over the album: There are several vehicular-mishap analogies (the pair were in a snowmobile accident in 2013) and even a song called "Style." But Swift has said the LP's most bitter song, "Bad Blood," a simplistic anthem of betrayal that sounds reminiscent of Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl," is directed not at an ex-lover but a shade-throwing female peer (consensus points to Katy Perry).

Surprisingly, the famous figure who gets the most elaborate attention is Lana Del Rey: Swift flat-out mimics her on "Wildest Dreams," flitting between a fluttery soprano and deadpan alto, flipping lyrics so Lana -- "His hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room" -- that it's hard to tell if the song is homage or parody.

Swift saves the most unexpected pairing for the last, show-stopping cut on the album's standard edition (the Target version includes three bonus tracks, along with fascinating work-in-progress phone recordings of three songs). "Clean" is an aching, bittersweet team-up with esoteric British alt-popper Imogen Heap where Swift surrenders more to her collaborator than on any other song on the album. Its melody has more air and fewer syllables, and Heap's influence is obvious in the warm electronic setting and the lyrics, heavy on metaphors of drowning and addiction, and lines like "You're still all over me like a wine-stained dress I can't wear anymore." Swift's growing up, alright.

A clean break with the core audience is a risky move for any artist: At worst, it's like ill-advised plastic surgery, a blandifying of the distinctive qualities and quirks that made the person interesting in the first place. But Swift avoided that fate entirely with this album, making her rare ability to write for multiple audiences and ages even more universal. With 1989, she expertly sets up the next chapter of what is now even more likely to be a very long career.

Source: Billboard