Album Review: Taylor Swift - 1989 (Taylor's Version)

The uncanny valley can be thought of like that moment on the highway when your car passes the crest of a small hill, and you can feel your body being pulled down by the seat-belt. We describe that as if our stomach is rising up in our chest, and what we're actually dealing with is a figment of gravity's distortion. The same thing can happen with time and our memories, as sometimes we are confronted with a doppelganger that makes us question our own sanity. It isn't quite deja vu, because we know it isn't the same, but it's so close we wonder if we've slipped into one of the theoretical alternate dimensions.

Taylor Swift has finally reached what I consider the most important chapter of the 'Taylor's Version' series. As she has reclaimed the rights to her songs in one of the most successful 'eff you's' in music history, we have confronted just how much Taylor Swift has come to define pop music in our current age. That started with '1989'.

Pop music and I have had an amicable divorce, and rarely have I felt a compulsion to look in on what my ex has been up to. We have moved on from each other, except for the cases where it is unavoidable we wind up in the same place at the same time, and I can't help but stumble across those feelings of longing for what pop music once meant to me. When "1989" came out, it started a new era of pop music we are still in the midst of, and it made me question whether I had actually signed the papers in pencil instead of pen.

No, I will not even try to defend "Shake It Off", but the rest of the record was the bending of time, taking the pop music Taylor and I grew up on, and melding it with the synthetic future we were still programming. If we believe in time loops, "1989" is evidence of one, as it shows how little changes from one generation to the next, other than the faces and voices who sing and shout in defiance of this fact.

So what do we make of a new version of this watershed album? This is where the uncanny valley comes into play, as these are nearly identical versions to what we have known and loved, but they aren't identical. There is just enough of a difference to know we are listening to a recreation, to see the slight-of-hand as it is being executed. The skill of magic still exists when we know how the trick is done, but the wonder is gone. I can't help but think that is the best explanation I can give for how I felt listening to 'Taylor's Version'.

The first thing of note is that the production has been modernized, with the overall sound being even louder and more compressed. The synths, and Taylor's voice, are put front and center even more than before. This gives the record an aggressive sound that doesn't match the cool delivery of the original, and it shifts the focus onto the one aspect the album is trying to hide; time.

Taylor Swift is still a young woman, and I'm not trying to say she has in any way diminished as a performer, but she isn't the same person who sang the original recordings of these songs. Her voice has different colors and overtones, and her inflections have changed after singing these songs hundreds of times on tour. After so much repetition, it's difficult for anyone but the most talented actress to put the same passion into the performances. The record always had an air of disconnection, which is one of the key factors that made me love it as much as I did, but it feels less intentional now than it did back then.

This is where we get to something we don't often recognize; the difference between the song and the recording. There is a reason why the Grammys award separate trophies to the writers and performers of the best songs of the year. A song is not a performance, even if that is how we have always experienced them. Songs are ethereal things that exist beyond us, even if they are entirely us. I'm getting a bit esoteric here, but the point I'm trying to make is that a great song is a great song no matter who is performing it. We heard that when Ryan Adams (a name I'm loathe to mention) covered the entire album for some unknown, but probably creepy, reason. The songs shone, even though he came at them from a completely different angle.

That is to say "1989" is still a great album, because the songs are great. No parallax distortion between our ears and our memories is going to change that. It does, however, show that even for those of us who are musicians, and who deal with hearing our own songs done in different ways, we grow attached to a certain performance. We begin to think of the song as being the same thing as that recording, even though we know it's not true.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that "1989" is a pop landmark, and would be regardless of which version came out first. I would likely say they are equally good if I was able to hear them with fresh and unbiased ears. I can't do that, though, and so I am left listening to a remake.

When "Psycho" was remade shot for shot, many of us asked what exactly the point was. It was the audience's fault if they couldn't see the brilliance in a film that didn't look quite of the time, not the movie's fault. The same is true here, as "1989" gets updated for the modern time. I know why Taylor Swift is doing this, and I commend her for taking control of her own music, but I also can't help but feel like I'm listening to the needle tracing the outline of a 'new and improved' sticker, when it might be new, but it surely isn't improved.

'Taylor's Version' isn't New Coke, it isn't that interesting. Instead, this is audio Crystal Pepsi.