Student consensus on Taylor Swift's '1989': 'Catchy and fun'

Jake Iverson has a message for college students nationwide: "Taylor Swift obsessions happen to the best of us."

In a recent column for The Montana Kaimin at the University of Montana, Iverson contends, "At this point, avoiding Swift is futile. She’s on every radio station. She’s plastered all over every surface in Target. ... She just sold 1.25 million records in a single week, enough to give every Montanan a copy, and still have enough left over to offer to repave the streets. Swift is a juggernaut. She’s the Halley’s Comet of pop music, the kind of compelling force that lights up the landscape so rarely that its arrival is deservedly heralded as a sort of coronation."

The arrival of her latest album, 1989 has inspired an avalanche of advertisements, entertainment news stories and critical reviews. College students have joined the chorus of reviewers in campus newspapers nationwide, passionately dissecting every track on the album and its accompanying, inescapable Swift-mania.

The student consensus: The album is imperfect but enjoyable -- stacked with some dance-happy beats, catchy hooks and interesting messages for the Millennial generation to consider and embrace.

As Iverson puts it, "[T]here’s no point denying it any longer. Swift is no longer just a pop star. She’s our pop star."

She is also a strong singer, a talent which University of Delaware student Kelly Flynn says is on display in her new album more than ever before.

"'1989' showcases Swift’s vocal prowess in ways her previous albums haven’t," Flynn writes in UD's campus newspaper The Review. "... Swift has traded in her tear-stained guitar in favor of heavy synthesizers and drumbeats on this record, and as a whole, '1989' is undoubtedly her most sonically cohesive record to date. While Swift’s previous two albums 'Speak Now' and 'Red' straddled the line between country and pop, '1989' confidently asserts Swift’s place in pop music."

According to a similarly positive review by Johns Hopkins University student Gillian Lelchuk, Swift's place is now alongside "1980’s greats like Madonna and Phil Collins."

As Lelchuk opines in The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, "Although the album exhibits a sound vastly different from anything Swift has done before, the songs on '1989' are still about love and boys. Like always, listeners will speculate who Swift is missing, complaining about and pining for, but the subjects of her songs are not what is important. What matters is the brutal honesty that Swift continues to share with her fans. As with each of her previous albums, Swift pulls songs straight from her journals, sharing her life experiences with her fans, many of whom are young girls. Swift has been in the public eye for more or less, eight years, and she continues to be a positive role model."

The model that Swift is currently constructing for herself, University of Wisconsin-Madison student Amanda McEnroe confirms, is "more than just the 'ex-girlfriend,' but rather a fiercely independent woman who knows what she wants, and knows how to get it."

As McEnroe writes in The Badger Herald campus newspaper, "While pop artists like Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj and Kesha sing about drugs, sex and money in order to sell records, Taylor Swift refrains from these themes. She does not engage in the widely accepted objectification of female bodies, choosing instead to focus on meaningful lyricism in addition to her catchy melodies."

Catchy, but perfunctory is the perspective shared by James Madison University junior Dominique Lategano.

In a negative review for The Breeze student newspaper, Lategano laments, "There is no denying the catchy pop quality of the songs, but the high-pitched verses and occasional spoken interjections lack uniqueness. ... At age 24, Swift is still singing about the same boy problems she had when she was a 16-year-old, minus the country accent and the originality."

Perhaps the most original album critique is an open letter to Swift written by Boston College student Kayla Famolare.

An admitted longtime Swift fangirl, Famolare recently decided to say goodbye to the star in a column for The Heights campus newspaper. Its headline: "We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together."

As Famolare writes to Swift, "Your newly released album '1989' is not you. You traded in the cutesy country star image for a more modern, pop-techno crossover. ... [T]he album focuses too much on sounding different, and shies away from the lyricism that once carried your work. The tempos on '1989' stress me out, and beneath the album’s heavy computer manipulation, the lyrics are swallowed up. ... I won’t stop listening to you. Like an old love, I’ll still listen to your old music, allowing myself to escape to those times and places your music once brought me. I’ll still listen to your new album, with a longing for a more traditional Taylor Swift."

Bottom line, Middle Tennessee State University student Samantha Hearn argues in The Sidelines campus newspaper, "Swift’s '1989' is not bad. Some of it is cheesy, sure, but it’s Taylor Swift." Or as Bates College freshman Ethan Benevides tellsThe Bates Student, "The new album surprised me when I first heard it, but the songs are pretty catchy and fun."

Dan Reimold, Ph.D., is a college journalism scholar who has written and presented about the student press throughout the U.S. and in Southeast Asia. He is an assistant professor of journalism at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where he also advises The Hawk student newspaper. He is the author of Journalism of Ideas (Routledge, 2013) and maintains the student journalism industry blog College Media Matters. A complete list of Campus Beat articles is here.

This article comes from The Paste BN College Contributor network. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Paste BN. You understand that we have no obligation to monitor any discussion forums, blogs, photo- or video-sharing pages, or other areas of the Site through which users can supply information or material. However, we reserve the right at all times, in our sole discretion, to screen content submitted by users and to edit, move, delete, and/or refuse to accept any content that in our judgment violates these Terms of Service or is otherwise unacceptable or inappropriate, whether for legal or other reasons.

This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.