Never Forever
Member
Release Date: 27th October 2014 (US) / 28th October 2014 (UK)
Available in standard and deluxe editions (although the deluxe doesn't seem to be available on US iTunes).
iTunes
Official site
There are three different bundles on offer from her official site, all of which include thirteen exclusive cutesy Polaroids. There are five different sets of thirteen, so gotta catch 'em all.
The First Single From 1989, Shake It Off
^ Click to watch the music video which premiered with the song.
Co-written by Max Martin and Shellback.
"Shake" shattered a radio record, launching at an all-time-best No. 9 on Adult Pop Songs. It also scores a record-matching No. 12 start on Pop Songs this week.
"Shake" is just the 22nd of the Hot 100's 1,038 No. 1s all-time to debut at the pinnacle. (Cue up a celebratory chorus of Swift's "22.")
"Shake" arrives with 544,000 first-week downloads sold in the week ending Aug. 24, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The sum marks the greatest weekly total this year and the fourth-best bow all-time, two of which now belong to Swift.
Also, dating to her arrival on Sept. 23, 2006, with "Tim McGraw," Swift swipes her 60th Hot 100 hit, a threshold that only 13 other acts have reached in the chart's 56-year history.
What do we know about the actual music on the album?
The themes:
1. Welcome to New York (Taylor Swift, Ryan Tedder)
It's a new soundtrack, I could dance to this beat... forevermore
2. Blank Space (Swift, Max Martin, Shellback)
Nice to meet you, where you been? I could show you incredible things.
3. Style (Swift, Martin, Shellback, Ali Payami)
I say, "I heard that you've been out and about with some other girl........."
4. Out of the Woods (Swift, Jack Antonoff)
Your necklace hanging from my neck
The night we couldn't quite forget
When we decided to move the furniture so we could dance
Baby, like we stood a chance
Two paper airplanes flying...
Flying
5. All You Had To Do Was Stay (Swift, Martin)
You were all I wanted... but not like this.
6. Shake It Off (Swift, Martin, Shellback)
My ex-man brought his new girlfriend
She's like oh my god
But I'm just gonna shake
7. I Wish You Would (Swift, Antonoff)
You always knew how to push my buttons. You give me everything and nothing.
8. Bad Blood (Swift, Martin, Shellback)
9. Wildest Dreams (Swift, Martin, Shellback)
10. How You Get The Girl (Swift, Martin, Shellback)
11. This Love (Swift)
When you're young, You just run, But you come back to what you need...
12. I Know Places (Swift, Tedder)
They are the hunters, We are the foxes. And we run.
13. Clean (Swift, Imogen Heap)
When I was drowning, That's when I could finally breathe
(note the Imogen Heap co-write, exciting!)
Plus the Deluxe bonus tracks (the final three are demos)
14. Wonderland (Swift, Martin, Shellback)
You searched the world for something else
To make you feel like what we had
And in the end, in Wonderland
We both went mad
15. You Are In Love (Swift, Antonoff)
16. New Romantics (Swift, Martin, Shellback)
17. I Know Places - Piano / Vocal (Swift, Tedder)
18. I Wish You Would - Track / Vocal (Swift, Antonoff)
19. Blank Space - Guitar / Vocal (Swift, Martin, Shellback)
ORIGINAL POST:
The time has come! Nearly two years after the release of her fourth studio album Red, Amazonian goddess Taylor Swift is back with yet another livestream in order to kickstart the fifth era of her successful recording career.
The stream was announced via these three clues, which came together rather more simply than most would have liked. Unless there are hidden details within the clues (shake it like a Polaroid, perhaps?). < Polaroids are a big part of the era
What do we know?
According to "industry sources":
The song is called 'Shake It Off'
It's not about love (well, not directly), and is instead about shaking off other peoples' perceptions of you and being yourself
Purported line: "They say I date too much & can't make 'em stay!"
She pokes fun at herself
Fun and upbeat, apparently has horns and no guitar
And also apparently has number one written all over it
Officially:
Nada
(But all the 'industry source' rumours were correct anyway, thanks leakers!)
It is also believed that she will premiere the music video for Shake It Off as well as the cover art for her new album, which is rumoured to be called Skyline but again, who knows. The album is also rumoured to release on October 13th 2014. (these two were wrong, oh well only a few weeks out)
Lots of rumours, but one thing's for certain: this new song is going to be everywhere. So you'd best start liking it or otherwise suck it up.
The Legend of Taylor Swift Thus Far:
Taylor Swift
Released: 26th October 2006
Peaked at #5 on the Billboard 200, topped the Top Country Albums Chart for twenty-four non-consecutive weeks and has been certified 5x Platinum by the RIAA. As of early 2013 it had been on the Billboard 200 / Top Pop Albums Chart for 274 weeks, making it one of the twelve longest-running albums in the chart's fifty-seven year history. It has sold over 5.5 million copies worldwide, and has also received certifications from ARIA, CRIA and the BPI (Platinum, Platinum and Gold respectively).
Metascore: N/A
Reviews:
"a fresh, still girlish voice, full of hope and naïveté, but it's also a confident and mature one"
"the more thoughtful material suggests a talent poised to last well past high school"
"Swift deftly handles lyrics and subjects in that shadowy area between teenager and womanhood"
Singles From Taylor Swift:
Also: Should've Said No (no single cover or music video for this release)
All certified Platinum by the RIAA.
Teardrops on My Guitar was the most successful, peaking at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100
Our Song became Swift's first #1 on the Hot Country Singles Chart.
Fearless
Released: 11th November 2008
Topping the Billboard 200 for eleven non-consecutive weeks, it set numerous records including longest chart-topper by a female country artist, whilst holding the top spot on the Hot Country Albums Chart for thirty-six weeks. Fearless is the eighteenth album to spend an entire year in the top ten of the Billboard 200, and is the second biggest-selling album of recent years, only losing to the juggernaut that is Adele's 21, holding multi-Platinum certification in six different countries. It has sold over ten million copies worldwide and is the most awarded album in the history of country music. It won Album of the Year and Country Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards in 2010.
Metascore: 73
Reviews:
"one of the best mainstream pop albums of 2008"
"an uncommonly-to-impossibly strong and gifted teenage girl"
"a songwriting savant with an intuitive gift for verse-chorus-bridge architecture that calls to mind Swedish pop gods Dr. Luke and Max Martin"
Singles From Fearless:
Love Story is one of the best-selling singles of all-time, having sold 6.5 million copies, and is therefore also Swift's most commercially successful single. It was the best-selling country single of all-time, until it was surpassed by a single by Lady Antebellum (who?). It's also her only Australian #1.
White Horse won Grammies for both Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance
You Belong With Me, peaking at #2 on the Hot 100, was Swift's highest charting single until 2012. It won the MTV VMA for Best Female Music Video in 2009.
Fearless was originally serviced as a promo single, making it the first song to be certified by the RIAA (Gold) before ever being properly released as a single.
Speak Now
Released: 25th October 2010
All songs written and composed by Taylor herself, the album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and sold over one million units in its first week in the US alone, with all fourteen of its songs charting somewhere on the Billboard Hot 100. This inducted it into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2012 for both feats: most simultaneous Hot 100 hits and largest selling digital album by a female artist of all time. Speak Now has sold over seven million copies worldwide, and is certified 4x Platinum by the RIAA. In June 2012, the album was included in Rolling Stone's top fifty female albums of all time.
Metascore: 77
Reviews:
"she writes from the perspective of the moment yet has the skill of a songwriter beyond her years"
"she makes memorable music by homing in on the tiny stuff: the half-notes in a hummed phrase, the lyrical images that communicate precisely what its like to feel uncomfortable, or disappointed, or happy"
"bravura work of nontransparent transparency; the most savage of her career, and also the most musically diverse. And it's excellent too, possibly her best"
Singles From Speak Now:
All songs went Platinum with the RIAA aside from Story Of Us (Gold). Mean and Mine went 2x Platinum.
Mean won Best Solo Country Performance as well as Best Country Song at the 2012 Grammies.
Red
Released: 22nd October 2012
Selling 1.2 million copies in its first week, Red had the largest debut for a female artist since Britney Spears's Oops... I Did It Again!, also making it the second-largest debut week for a female artist of all time. Topping the album chart in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, it has sold eight million copies worldwide as of December 2013 and was the second-largest selling album of 2012.
Metascore: 77
Reviews:
"she's constructed something so precise its success seems preordained, but underneath it all, Taylor is still twitchy, which makes Red not just catchy but compelling"
"her self-discovery project is one of the best stories in pop. When she's really on, her songs are like tattoos"
"Red puts Swift the artist front and center with big, beefy hooks that transcend her country roots for a genre-spanning record that reaches heights unseen since Shania Twain's Up!"
" On Red the color of blood and lipstick and fire and Southern dirt and hearts and conservatism and tractors and communism and sin, this last a word whose charged valence here might discomfit know-it-alls who would never use it without scare quotes Swift's too smart and tuneful to condescend to her contradictions"
Singles From Red:
WANEGBT, well. Enough said. The first song of her career to take the #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, certified 4x Platinum by the RIAA and the Song of Summer 2012, as well as highest first-week digital sales for a song ever (aside from something by Flo Rida, idk ha). Three million copies sold.
Begin Again dethroned Gangnam Style
I Knew You Were Trouble made Swift the first digital artist to debut with two singles selling 400,000 + copies., and has also sold over three million copies. It is actually certified 5x Platinum by the RIAA.
Other Classics:
Change was written for the 2008 Olympics
Today Was A Fairytale peaked at #2 on the Hot 100 and is very good, her joint-highest-charting song until 2012
Sweeter Than Fiction was for a film which had something to do with a BGT winner, I forget who/what, but the fact remains that the song is far better than it has any business being
NOT PICTURED: Eyes Open and Safe & Sound were both written for The Hunger Games and critically lauded
Ronan is dedicated to a four-year old boy who died of cancer, and his mother is credited as a co-writer
Beautiful Eyes is an EP featuring some alternative versions of tracks on her debut
And Taylor has even done a Christmas EP! It's pretty cute, in a 2007 'my record label made me do this' sort of way.
Tours:
Tickets for the first shows for the Fearless Tour went on sale in early February 2009 and sold-out almost instantly. On February 6, 2009, tickets went on sale for the May 22 date at Los Angeles Staples Center and sold out in two minutes. Tickets for several dates and venues, including Madison Square Garden, went on sale the following week and sold out in a record of one minute. Grossed $63.7 million in roughly 1 million tickets.
The tour placed fifth on Billboard's annual, "Top 25 Tours", with $107.9 million gross reported and 1.5 million tickets sold across 89 dates.
Smashed the all-time revenue record for a single tour by a country artist with the final stats reported from her Red tour that played arenas and stadiums in four continents during a 15-month span. The Red tours final box office counts total $150,184,971 in revenue from 1,702,933 sold tickets at 86 performances in 12 countries, with an itinerary including 15 stadiums worldwide during its run.
Personal Favourites and Recommended Album Cuts:
Enchanted
All Too Well
State of Grace
Treacherous
Holy Ground
(all wonderful examples of her songwriting, please take note)
And now, her fifth era begins. Which new records will she make, and which records will she break? We're about to find out.
