Nine new songs, featuring the hit single "Shake It Off"

"...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 ... an album that finds Swift meeting Katy and Miley and Pink on their home turf and staring them down." — Billboard, October 2014

"...it's the expertly crafted sound of 1989 that marks her most impressive slight of hand yet — shifting the focus away from her past and onto her music, which is as smart and confident as it's ever been. Who are these songs about? When they sound this good, who cares?" — Time, October 2014

Multi-Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Taylor Swift goes for an entirely pop album on her fifth full-length studio release, 1989, her follow-up to the 2012 release Red. Swift teamed up with songwriter Max Martin and producer Shellback ( One Direction, Maroon Five ), as well OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder and Fun. guitarist Jack Antonoff, in an album inspired by late-'80s pop. The debut single "Shake It Off" was an immediate success, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

In the seven years since the release of her self-titled debut, Swift has sold 26 million albums. Sales of Taylor Swift song downloads have topped 75 million; according to the Recording Industry Association of America, she is the No. 1 digital singles artist of all time. Since 2006, she has placed 43 songs in the Top 40 of Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart as the lead performer, more than any other artist in that period. She's had 31 Top 40 country singles, including thirteen No. 1's.

Rolling Stone writes that the scale and scope of Swift's success is startling. "In an age of catastrophic music-industry contraction, Swift stands apart; sometimes she has seemed like a one-woman bulwark against the collapse of the traditional record business." On 1989, Swift indulges her crush on '80s synth-pop full blast — spending most of the album trying to turn herself into the Pet Shop Boys, says Rolling Stone reviewer Rob Sheffield. "... only a couple of tracks feature her trademark tear-stained guitar. But she's still Taylor Swift, which means she's dreaming biggger and oversharing louder than anyone else in the game." 

Billboard reviewer Jem Aswad says that if Swift's new single "Shake It Off" was her official breakup letter to country music, 1989 is the coming-out party, "because it makes Red sound like Reba McEntire." Sonically, 1989 is far more electronic than her previous work, driven by Max 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."