1989 is one of my all-time favorite Taylor Swift records. It becomes more difficult the longer her discography gets (TS10 out October 21st!!!!!) to select favorites, but 1989 is a standout for so many reasons. For starters, it’s one of her most successful albums commercially. Her fifth studio album, 1989 boasted Grammy wins for Album of the Year (making Swift the first female artist to win the category twice - she would go on to win it a third time, breaking her own record with folklore), Best Pop Vocal Album, and Best Music Video for Bad Blood. Rolling Stone named it one of the best albums of the 2010’s. It hit No. 1 on Billboard 200 and spent an entire year in the top ten, one of only five albums to ever do so.
1989 also sits in a special place in my heart because of its significance in her discography. After attempting a slow break-up from country music with Red, Swift dove head first by partnering with Jack Antonoff and Max Martin to produce 1989, fully turning herself into a pop star. It was a controversial decision and many thought that it would cheapen her value as a song-writer, which she proved wrong with 1989 (and then would continue to do so four albums later). In many ways, 1989 was a leap of faith and a clapback at her critics.
1989 came out when I was in college and admittedly, it took me a minute to buy into it. I needed a couple listens to acclimate to this new version of Swift. The first songs to drop ahead of the album were enthusiastic pop singles like Shake It Off and Welcome to New York. It can be difficult to remember when the singles drop that the entire rest of these albums often sound very different from the singles. The (Swifties - brace yourselves) 1980’s synth-pop (I am literally laughing as I type this) was just so new for her and unlike anything she had ever done. (Non-Swifties, I’m LOLing because the phrase “1980’s synth-pop” was the only moniker anyone in interviews or pieces would use to talk about this album when it came out). 1989 then steadfastly became an album I would listen to on repeat for years to come. To me, it truly is the perfect pop album. It’s emotional, catchy, and wild in its own way.
There are a lot of clips of Swift performing Out of the Woods, it was her finale song for the 1989 World Tour, she performed it live at the Grammy’s and in Time’s Square at the televised New Year’s Eve ball drop. It was difficult to pick one video performance to include for this week’s post, but I opted for this stripped down performance she did for the Grammy Museum. She did a live performance of select songs from the album while also sitting down to share an in-depth talk on the songwriting process for each song on the album. In my opinion, it’s one of her best live performances to date and this stripped down version really emphasizes the best aspects of the song.
The studio version of the song feels like a constant forward-motion, almost as if you’re running with the beat. The backing vocals do some WORK in this song, carrying the melody lines so that she can option up throughout the song to her heart’s content when singing it live. The very simple chorus becomes the perfect pair to the iconic bridge - one of her best ever, in my opinion - which brings her frustration with the central topic of the song to a fever pitch. The song really encapsulates the 1989 vibe, too. It’s almost like she’s asking herself if this next album is going to work, are the wolves and their sharp teeth ever going to stop throwing stones?
This song is about a moment in time where you are rushing to the next thing and trying to evade the incoming obstacles. You get just around the corner to a safe place and ask yourself - are we out of the woods yet? Has the danger passed? Am I in a place where I can relax and let my guard down? Swift describes a relationship that felt this way, but the larger meaning can extend further. I’ve felt this way for the last three years. I feel like I get moments of safety but haven’t felt totally stable in a long time. So much in my life has changed that at times I find myself looking up and wondering if I’M out of the woods yet. Or, if I will ever be out of the woods.
I love the music video for this reason, because while the song doesn’t really answer that question for us, the video does (linked below). She answers her own question - she lost something along the way, but found herself in the end. In the song, she ends the question of “are we in the clear yet?” (with frequency) towards the end with just: “good.” I like to interpret this not as her directing this question externally, but directing it internally. She asks questions of the subject of the song during the bridge - do you remember when you hit the brakes too soon? etc. - but at the end I like to think that she has answered her own question. We don’t really hear the answer directly, because ultimately we can only get it from ourselves. We will all navigate ourselves out of the woods eventually, even if it takes awhile to get there. And after we are in the clear, we’ll say: I remember.