Column: Swift grows up with her audience

I  have a confession: I own Taylor Swift’s Christmas album. As an individual who asserts her dominant musical interests as hard rock and hip hop, I must admit my affinity for Swift’s country-lite/Joni Mitchell-esque vibe. My journey with Swift begins, as everyone’s does, in middle school.

From the fiddle of “Our Song” to the poetic alacrity of a “redneck heartbreak who’s really bad at lying” in “Picture to Burn,” Swift’s self-titled 2006 debut suits the precedent set by Shania Twain, the Dixie Chicks and other country songstresses. Swift, 16 at the album’s debut, wrote songs pertinent to her adolescent experience, unconcerned with pretension. Her wholesome earnestness was palpable and attractive to an industry concerned with manufacturing sincerity.

I wouldn’t admit this at 15, but Fearless was one of my favorite albums in 2008. It’s not difficult to relate to a song concerned with girlhood anxieties named after your own age. I knew Swift wasn’t a great vocalist but didn’t know anyone else writing about issues intimately germane to my life. In a culture dominated by male protagonists, girls and women constantly filter their experiences with music, literature and film through the male gaze. Swift’s power has always been her accessibility and honesty.

I abandoned Swift beginning with 2010’s Speak Now and didn’t listen to 2012’s Red until a year after its release. I lost interest and became engaged with other artists who seemed to push bounds and ask questions greater than those posed by Swift. I considered her an artifact of my early teenage years. I was too good, I thought, too serious for songs with titles like “Enchanted” and “Starlight.”

When I finally listened to Red , I heard huge tension between pop and country. Red ’s best songs, “All Too Well” and “Everything Has Changed,” possess her signature neo-country sound. Swift’s foray into pop (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “I Knew You Were Trouble”) was awkward and confusing.

Released on Tuesday, 1989 immediately sounds distinct from Swift’s previous work. Her vocal performance and production is newly stylized — less Shania and more Charli XCX. The album is entirely pop, committing to a consistent 80s-synth soundscape. Instead of banjos and mandolins, 1989 is fraught with Max Martin-produced honeyed vox and 808 drum-machine claps. “Wildest Dreams” could be a cut from Lana del Rey’s Ultraviolence and “Bad Blood,” an Icona Pop track waiting to be sampled. Though the emphasis here is on atmosphere, the Imogen Heap-produced final track “Clean” allows Swift to assure us of her continued attention to lyrics.

Don’t let the silliness of “Shake It Off” fool you – 1989 is Swift at her most mature. I’ll always respect artists who push themselves and commit to new and potentially risky ideas. Without the affected pseudo-country twang of her prior efforts, 1989 may be Swift at her most sincere. For those of us entering adulthood, she’s more relevant than ever.