I've got a blank space, baby–and I'll write your name

Photo credit: Sarah Barlow

I’m really proud of Taylor Swift right now. I’m proud that she cut her hair and moved to New York and made a pop album–because she wanted to. I’m proud that she figured out the definition of feminist and realized it applies to her. I’m proud she now knows that boys don’t equal happiness. The girl is speaking my language right now: that a great city, good friends, and a passion for whatever you decide you are is all that you actually need.

I didn't make these gifs, staystaystay.tumblr.com did.

It’s all very great.

You know what else is great? That pop album. I mean, I knew I was going to like 1989 whenever Taylor first announced it because–with the brief exception of when her first album came out and I was annoyed by how often “Tim McGraw” and “Teardrops on My Guitar” were on the radio–I have liked everything she has ever done. My enthusiasm only grew when I found out she was making an exclusively pop album, inspired by music from the mid-to-late 1980s, an extremely smart move that sets everything she has done on this album apart from everything that’s on the radio right now (the only contemporary likeness I’ve found so far is that “Wildest Dreams” sounds very similar to Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful”). 

But I couldn’t have known I would like it this much.

Because this album is wonderful. I won’t go into too much detail because you should really just listen to it and because I probably won’t have much to add on what’s already been said by everyone from Lena Dunham to Lorde to Kevin McHale. But I will say I agree. Listen to “Blank Space,” my favorite, for the tongue-in-cheek T-Swift sassiness that I fell in love with back on “Better Than Revenge” (before Taylor and I both learned that slut-shaming is uncalled for/internalized misogyny). Listen to “Out of the Woods” because it sounds like Roxette’s “The Look” and Love & Rockets’ “So Alive” put into a 2014 blender. Listen to “Wildest Dreams” because it’s sexy. Listen to “Shake It Off” because it’s fun. Listen to “Clean” because it’s truthful. 

Listen to all of it because it’s fantastic.