1989

On 1989, Taylor Swift's fifth studio album, the global superstar takes a conceptual pop turn from her country-ish roots and manages to hold on to what brought her to this moment in her career. Swift's mainstay—multifaceted love songs—continues to dominate on this album. “Clean” is haunted by the aching absence of an addictive ex-love; “This Love” is the rekindled kind; and “Bad Blood” will have you screaming along over wronged love à la early Pink or Alanis Morissette. On “Blank Space,” Swift's self-satirizing is spot on as she pokes fun at her man-hungry ways (“Look at that face/you look like my next mistake”) and twists the delivery to let the subtext come through. And if you don't enjoy letting loose to “Shake It Off,” you probably don't enjoy much of anything. 1989 sold nearly 1.3 million copies in its first week, a feat last attained by Eminem's The Eminem Show in 2002. Artistically, it's great to see music's genre barriers continue to crumble, freeing Swift and other musicians to explore the medium with a broader scope. Country, pop-country, pop—it doesn't matter, as long as Swift keeps writing music. If she ever stops, Lorde help us.