A Canberra academic studied Taylor Swift. Here's what he found (2024)

1989. It's a year - for Swifties - now synonymous with Taylor Swift. But how much did the decade impact the singer's music?

And is it part of a larger 1980s revival?

According to ANU lecturer in music technology Pat O'Grady, yes. And he should know, having just submitted his research on this topic for review.

"1989 is when she pivoted out of country pop and made the move into pop and electronic inputs," he says.

"That speaks to the fact that she has this capacity to change her sound, to transform quite substantially. And in doing so, she's able to not only take her fans along with her but attract new fans as well.

"When you think about the history of popular music, there's not too many artists that have been able to make substantial changes to their sound and remain as commercially successful as what Taylor Swift has."

The largest and biggest influence, sonically, is the synth-pop sounds that the '80s brought.

Swift herself has spoken about this; in a 2014 interview with the Recording Academy, she spoke about how she wanted 1989 to be sonically cohesive and was inspired by the music of that decade.

"I wanted it to have its sound that was not all over the place," she said.

"The sonic inspiration for this album kind of hearkens back to the sounds of late-80s pop. I loved how they were being so experimental and they were taking so many risks.

"You look back to that time in pop music and in pop culture and fashion, everybody seemed to be bucking the system."

And for Swift, 1989 was certainly the album that saw her bucking the system, and leaving the country genre behind.

But the '80s revival is more than just one album.

"Television shows such as Stranger Things, we can see that whatever the interest is in the '80s it's much broader than music. Music's just one part of that revival," O'Grady says.

"But I was interested in how '80s aesthetics can be overlaid on somebody's sound as a musician. With Taylor Swift, and other artists like Harry Styles, you can see parts of their artistry remain in the music, but with these really clear gestures that is '80s pop.

"I'm interested in how that's worked and also how that's made people perhaps more interested in '80s music more generally. There are lots of songs like Running Up That Hill that have become popular, possibly more popular than when it first came out.

"And the way that artists such as Taylor have engaged with '80s pop is a part of that bigger story."

The album 1989 plays an interesting role in this revival because it appears not once, but twice thanks to Taylor's Version being re-released last year.

And according to O'Grady, this rerecord is interesting not just because of the slight differences, but also how similar it is to the original.

"It's tricky to completely replicate a particular record that has idiosyncrasies built-in with the way that the musicians played it. And the way that the sound was kind of processed," he says.

"It's quite remarkable how similar these two versions sound.

"Artists are notorious for changing the way that the songs are sung as they go through their career. If you look at, for example, Elton John's Your Song, the way that it was recorded to the way that he sings it live now it's quite different. He's embellishing the melody, he's phrasing it slightly differently."