he two cliches used to describe the new release by a major star are that it’s long-awaited and eagerly anticipated. You could hardly describe’s 11th studio album as long-awaited – it’s barely 18 months since her last album, Midnights, a blink of an eye in the release schedule of a pop superstar. She’s also put out another three hours of music in the interim, in the shape of bonus track-packed re-recordings of 2010’s Speak Now and 2014’s 1989.
The latter point is highlighted by the fact that the album patently isn’t designed to be the kind of all-conquering victory lap you might expect from an artist in Swift’s position. Its sound, co-produced byand the National’s Aaron Dessner, splits the difference between the glossy 80s-influenced pop-rock of 1989 and the small-hours understatement of, softening the former’s neon hues.
The latter contains one of the album’s scant handful of big choruses, powered by thumping drums and blasts of synth. More often, Swift deals in subtle details, or songs that don’t go where you expect them to. Fresh Out the Slammer’s rhythm unexpectedly lurches into a heartbeat-like pulse midway through. So Long, London sets out its stall with a pacy four-four house beat, but it builds to a climax that never actually comes, mirroring the arc of the doomed relationship it describes.
Which brings us to the lyrics. Less cluttered and more conversational than those on Midnights, they return Swift to what you might call her safe space, letting a well-known ex have it in no uncertain terms.
She can do it because she’s an exceptionally talented writer: there’s a depth and maturity to this album that makes her competitors look a little wan by comparison. Clearly, the monocultural ubiquity she’s achieved isn’t terribly healthy for anything other than her bank balance – The Tortured Poets Department seems to concur – but if we have to have a single artist dominating pop, we could have picked worse.
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