Domerberry Album Review: 1989

This Monday, Ireland celebrated a bank holiday. Schools and offices were closed, I had the day off of work, and I woke up sans alarm feeling as giddy as Vernon Dursley when he remembers there's no post on Sundays. Before long, it was noon, and I was sitting in my pajamas on my couch, scrolling through my Instagram feed, and wondering, "How can I be more basic today?" And then I saw it.

My word. Today was the day of Taylor Swift's new album drop. "Shake It Off" is a hot club banger. I like Polaroids. I needed to make it mine. 

I bought the album, and I soon knew I would have to reprise my role as T Swiz blogger (a la 2012) to write a review. Friends, don't get me wrong: I like this album. A lot. I was very literally dancing around the kitchen while listening to it the first time three times and attempting to sort my laundry. But I have an assertion to make about this album, dear readers, and I make no apologies for it: this is not her best work. 

This is a good album, filled to the brim with fun pop songs. But Tay Tay does not succeed at pure pop in the way that she succeeded in her former brand of pop-country. Red certainly was, in almost all senses of the word, a pop album, but Tay Tay's team still branded it as country, kind of - and it was better for it. In her adamant declarations that this is her first pop venture, T-Money has lost on 1989 the storytelling ethos that made her songs so good back when they still clung to some semblance of country. Polaroids are an apt symbol for this album, because where Taylor once gave us fully-formed stories that made us relate and feel and cry like an eighth-grader, 1989's lyrics give us merely blurry snapshots of the stories that are hiding somewhere behind her sea of one-line choruses and club-banger hook-y jams. 

In scrolling through Tay Tay's Instagram this morning, I found that Billboard's review says 1989 "finds Swift meeting Katy and Miley on their home turf and staring them down." I disagree. 1989 certainly finds T Swiz meeting pop stars on their home turf, but it finds her merely casting friendly glances across the turf at them and inviting them over for tea, not in any way "staring them down." The pop songs of 1989 are good, but in their attempts to mimic current pop trends, the only distinctive thing about them is Taylor's now very recognizable voice - which, if we're being honest with ourselves, isn't good enough to carry an album by itself. 

What can carry and is carrying an album - and, indeed, a career - is Tay Tay's relentlessly charming persona. With her "quirkiness" and her love of cats and filters and sweaters and hair and stuff, Taylor Swift makes you (more and more by the day) want to be her best friend. It is for this reason that I love this album so darn much, even as I can stand back and observe that she peaked musically at Speak Now. (I SAID IT.) The appeal of good pop music lies in its ability to make you love it whether you want to or not, and the appeal of Taylor Swift lies in the exact same practice. Put those two together and you've got an album that I haven't stopped listening to for the past 72 hours. 

LIGHTNING SPEED IMPORTANT TRACKS RUN-DOWN

"Welcome to New York" - absurdly bright-eyed and idealistic about the concept of New York City, which is exactly how I feel about New York City; will feature in every montage of young movie heroines Arriving In The City for the First Time for the next decade without exception, and I will love it every time. 

"Out of the Woods" - verses come so close to giving us an actual story, then she hits that awful chorus and dashes my hopes forever; "fli-ying" is not a word.

"All You Had to Do Was Stay" - DO YOU WANT HIM TO STAY, THOUGH, TAYLOR?

"Bad Blood" - jam. This is a jam. That's all I can say. Good call to put reverb on the chorus to make it sound like there's a throng of angsty teens and twenty-somethings singing along with you, T Swiz, because there is such a throng. It's called everyone who's bought this album. I am their leader. 

"Wildest Dreams" - you are trying very hard to be Lana Del Rey, and I would like you to stop.

"I Know Places" - 1) Title makes me think of "I Know Things Now," which is a little too close to relevant for the content of this song, which makes me a little uncomfortable. 2) Possibly my favorite song on the album. When she hits the chorus for the second time and shrieks out that "WE RUN!" at 1:39, all of my can is lost, and I, in fact, cannot even. 

Taylor Swift, I stand by my assertion that you have done better than 1989. But man, this album is good.

A Series of Fortunate Events

Before I begin this post, which (to spoil the surprise) is just going to be a very run-of-the-mill post about How My Life Is Going In Ireland, I need to have a small rant about the 2004 film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. 

For those of you who have forgotten or may not know, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is one of the worst films ever made. For starters, the book author's name is included in the already verbose title, in the great tradition of such movies as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook. A Series of Unfortunate Events was and is completely flawless as a book series, and the casting of the film was and is completely flawless (Jim Carrey as Count Olaf? Meryl Streep as a paranoid elderly woman in Victorian mourning dress? Cedric the Entertainer as an old-timey police officer? THIS?!), so, by all accounts, this movie should have just rocked, relentlessly. But, as I was reminded upon finding it on Irish network television yesterday afternoon, this movie is terrible, and that just makes me a little sad. I needed to get that out there. Forgive me.

What does not make me sad, however, is how fantastic my last week was. It began at a hotel in Wexford where I returned from lunch to find this in my room.

My friends, no week can be bad when it starts with strawberries and a sundae flute full of melted chocolate. The first part of the week went by with a very busy work schedule and not a lot of things as exciting as the above chocolate, but then on Tuesday night, my friends appeared!! 

FRIENDS! 

From there, the week continued to be (despite a 24-hour flu pestilence descending on everyone at O'Connell House, myself included) almost ceaselessly fantastic. On Wednesday, we went to see the new Nicholas Sparks movie. There were mullets and cornrows. There was teen pregnancy. There was angst. There was a lot of James Marsden working as a mechanic. It made for a good afternoon. On Thursday, I ate an artisan grilled cheese culled before my eyes from a block of coolea so large that a bystander asked if it was a loaf of bread. And then I went to a playground with my friends and did a lot of swinging and stuff. 

And then there was Friday. Friday was one of those rare and glorious city days where, all day long, you know your way around, you know all the Cool Stuff To Do, and you feel as if you are the quirky-cute heroine of a charming rom-com in which Daniel Radcliffe could be hiding around any nearby corner waiting to love you unconditionally until death do you part. First, I took my visiting friends to the National Gallery, like a hip young urbanite would do. I looked at art. I created some funny art+caption Snapchats. I lived. After this Living and Art, I took my friends to the eclectic little restaurant I'd been eyeing, where we sat next to a life-sized gold sequined statue of a horse and ate sun-dried tomato tapenade and a pasta made out of pears. From there, we lucked into a free guided tour of the grounds of Dublin Castle and spent an hour coloring at a children's art display at the Chester Beatty Library. We went to Penneys (aka PRIMARK, Y'ALL), and I bought polka dotted dress pants for less than five euro. The sun set. 

And for these reasons, I am happy to say, The Domerberry was very fortunate indeed.