While it had some notable highlights, 2013's Red tour reeked of half-measure. Reaching for something new, but unwilling to give up her signature style, Red was an album which languished in mid-sentence, never fully committing to either side. With songs like I Knew You Were Trouble which added electronic elements on top of what was clearly just a typical chugging Taylor guitar rhythm, I wondered if she would ever be able to break free from her origin as a corn-fed Pennsylvanian songster, writing ditties in her bedroom on an acoustic guitar.
Flash forward two years and Taylor hits her home state again, landing so hard it leaves a crater the size of Heinz Field. This time she returns with an ethos, a fire in her eyes, and something left to prove. This isn't the earnest rocker I saw here on 2011's Speak Now tour, and it certainly wasn't the mere victory lap which was the Red tour. This is a whole new Taylor and she's waging war on her past.
If you didn't buy her new album, don't bother buying a ticket to 2015's 1989 tour. This isn't a "greatest hits" set. Out of the 16 songs on her new album, Taylor played 15 of them. That includes the bonus tracks.
From bygone days she played exactly three tracks: Two hits from the still quite recent Red, which leaves Love Story as the sole representation from Taylor's first six years (3 albums, 2 EPs) as a pop star. But her classic style just wouldn't do for Taylor's new ethos, so she reworked the songs as well. I Knew You Were Trouble reemerged as a dark, pulsing industrial track, far superior to the original version. Love Story became sort of a moody keyboard ballad, not the best take on this already often reworked song. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together fared better, becoming a rancorous electric guitar jam. I hope this tour gets a live CD 'cause some of these versions seriously need to be preserved.
For the rest of the gig, it was all 1989 -- except when she brought on country band Little Big Town to play their weird hit Pontoon. Not a favorite song of mine but it's a fun party tune and I was glad we finally got a special guest -- it's the kind of thing that usually happens in other cities but not in Pittsburgh.
Unlike the old tracks, Taylor's new songs were very faithful to their studio counterparts, except they often featured spectacular, pounding EDM intros. It's really good to hear gorgeous deep cuts like New Romantics, Clean and my personal favorite, All You Had to Do Was Stay, because you have to imagine... for the rest of her entire career, how many times will these songs ever be played after this tour? Maybe, maybe one of them might ocassionally slip in as a fringe rotating song on some 2021 setlist or they might be on the shortlist for a 2035 20th annivery 1989 tour. But those are going to be in the extreme minority if they even happen at all. And with every passing year Taylor has more and more she needs to fit into setlists that are, for all intents and purposes, of a finite, unchanging length.
And, about that... It's funny, but as the years go by, Taylor's playing less and less of her old music. And I don't mean her old music as in her first two albums. I'm talking about anything but her brand new material. The more hits Taylor has, the fewer hits she plays! By her fourth album you could already have filled an 18 song setlist with 18 top 20 singles and still leave 2 hits out. By age 25 you could fill that set with 14 bonafide top 10 singles and still leave room for 4 or 5 album cuts from the new record!
But Taylor's not going to play that game. She's not going to run these songs into the ground before she's even old. And as someone who plans to see every tour she does from 2011 to the day I die, I thank her for that. It means I'll be excited to hear the hits even ten, fifteen years from now. I've seen her three times and she's never played my personal favorite, and one of her biggest hits, Teardrops on My Guitar. Can you imagine when I finally see it, some years down the road? It may be my 10th Taylor show but I'll still be flipping out over it because there'll still be new things to discover.
The new record is spectacular and the tour is poised to match. For 1989 she's reinvented herself as a smoky dance beast and she has fully comitted to that role, fully committed to her new music. For now. What she'll change into next, time will tell. She'll obviously stick with pop for a good while but I don't believe this will be her final form. At the very least, when she grows older she'll naturally become more introspective and probably go into another acoustic phase, but in a more mature, folkier vein.
Now that Taylor has revealed herself to be a genuine chameleon, there's real potential here for me as a fan. The #1 thing that keeps me coming back, is having new material to explore. Because exciting new material reups my interest and I get back into the old material as well. Taylor's not only been putting out great new material but she does it like clockwork, too. If she can keep up this pace then she's a shoo-in for the all-time greats. Nobody'll ever beat my personal 1 & 2 (Neil Young and Tom Petty), but right now it doesn't look like Taylor has any competition for #3. Unless Ani Difranco can have a resurgence and put out something really exciting. Or if, I don't know, Pink Floyd or The Doors come back from the dead.
The only disadvantage with getting to live Taylor's career in the moment (which, granted, has so many unparalleled advantages!) is that I'll have to wait decades for the rarities box sets and live albums. And the bootleg market seems pretty DOA these days. If you can find torrents of Taylor live gigs then clearly you're a better man than I, 'cause I sure can't.
