Taylor Swift Fought To Keep Country Off Of 1989 Album

Published on December 18, 2014.

Taylor Swift is having a stellar year, well a stellar career really because at 25 years old she has already released five full albums and has become one of the most well known and loved celebrities worldwide.

Her latest album however, “1989”, is the young star’s first official full-pop album after starting out as a country star with her self titled “Taylor Swift” in 2006.

While she ventured into pop quite early with her “Speak Now” and “Red” albums, there was always some country to hold her to her roots and when she announced she was determined to make the change to full pop for “1989” everyone panicked, especially her own record label.

Country radio stations were polling fans on whether or not to keep airing Swift’s new music meaning her pop sound would take up time that would otherwise be used for a completely country genre artist and her label head Scott Borchetta “went into a state of semi-panic,” Swift told Billboard.

Borchetta then tried to convince the singer to include three country songs as well as add a country sound with a fiddle to her first hit, “Shake It Off.”

“All my answers were a very firm, ‘no’, because it felt disingenuous to try to exploit two genres when your album falls in only one,” Swift stated of her determination to make “1989” what she wanted.

Well within one week of the album’s release Borchetta was probably letting out a huge sigh of relief as “1989” broke records for copies sold within it’s first week of release and even though it was released well into the latter end of 2014 it quickly rose to the second highest selling album of the year.

With a few weeks left in December, Swift still has time to overtake Disney’s Frozen soundtrack as the number one album for 2014.

Swift has also, once again, been named Billboard’s Woman of the Year, was one of Barbara Walter’s Most Fascinating People of 2014 and was on the top ten list for Forbes’ highest earning stars under 30. Not too shabby, Swifty!

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