Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

by Chuck Klosterman

She recounts a litany of arguments with various label executives over every possible detail, from how much of her face would appear on the cover to how cowriter Max Martin would be credited in the liner notes. As far as I can tell, Swift won every one of these debates. “Even calling this record 1989 was a risk,” she says. “I had so many intense conversations where my label really tried to step in. I could tell they’d all gotten together and decided, ‘We gotta talk some sense into her. She’s had an established, astronomically successful career in country music, and shaking that up would be the biggest possible mistake.’ But to me, the safest thing I could do was take the biggest possible risk. I am confident that I can write a song. I’m not confident about a lot of other aspects of my life, but I know how to write songs. I’d read a review of [2012’s] Red that said it wasn’t sonically cohesive. So that was what I wanted on 1989: an umbrella that would go over all of these songs, so that they all belonged on the same album. But then I’d go into the label office, and they were like, ‘Can we talk about putting a fiddle and a steel guitar solo on “Shake It Off” to service country radio?’ I was trying to make the most honest record I could possibly make, and they were kind of asking me to be a little disingenuous about it. ‘Let’s capitalize on both markets.’ No, let’s not. Let’s pick a lane.”