“Out of the Woods” is here.
Chances are you saw it coming, whether or not Swift is the kind of star you feel like having on your radar. She’s been covering all the magazines, making the talk show rounds, hinting, hinting, hinting. She’s been firing on all the social media cylinders. Leave the unwelcome surprises to the pathologically uncool dad-rockers of U2; Swift leads hashtagged countdowns on Twitter and Instagram to whip her fans into a frenzy: #1989SecretSessions. #3HoursTilOutInTheWoods.
The girl is a hype machine master, a public relations phenom. Watching Taylor Swift orchestrate the build-up to the release of a new album is like watching Amazing Amy Dunne put together a scavenger hunt. Say what you will about the way she puts on makeup and high heels for treks to and from the gym: what we have here is a presentation queen. Earlier today, “Out of the Woods” shot to number one on iTunes, dethroning Swift’s other 1989 single, “Shake it Off.” And don’t expect the teasers to stop anytime soon:
Whenever she gives the reins of songwriting over to Svengalis like Max Martin, she trades narrative individuality for universal appeal. She has a songwriting credit on “Shake it Off,” naturally, along with Martin and Shellback, but you’d never know it; the song sounds like it was penned by a Martian who doesn’t know anything about Swift or her public persona. As I noted when the video debuted, the opening line in particular is a hilariously jarring one, as no one has ever accused noted homebody/Law and Order watcher Taylor Swift of staying out too late or having nothing in her brain. “Shake it Off” is a snappy little earworm that could just as easily have been a hit for Miley Cyrus (framed as a middle-finger to her critics) or Katy Perry (in the mode of her usual platitude-as-empowerment-anthem thing) or Ariana Grande (no discernable onstage personality so what difference would it make).
Swift co-wrote “Out of the Woods” with Jack Antonoff of fun. and Bleachers fame, who is the boyfriend of a voice of a generation Lena Dunham, which certainly doesn’t hurt the social media buzz.
Even though “Out of the Woods” has Antonoff’s echoing, drum-machine-metered feel, the storytelling is all Swift’s. This is Swift back in her wheelhouse, where she gets to indulge her dark, tortured, romantic impulses. It’s like the next chapter in the “All Too Well” songbook; you can already see her performing it and doing that I’m-an-artist-now headbanging thing at the mic.
After all the promises that this would be so different from before, that 1989 would be her “first documented, official pop album,” Swift is releasing a single that echoes all her earlier work with every line. A reference to last December, check. Dancing around household furniture, check. Lying on the couch, check. A guy who can’t stop looking at her, check. Metaphors that only kind of hold up to close inspection, check.
Like almost all of her signature songs—going all the way back to “Our Song,” and “Love Story” and “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “Red” and on and on—“Out of the Woods” is all past tense, with nostalgia knobs cranked all the way up. The word “remember” makes seven appearances. Part of Swift’s trademark was, and still is, her relative youth. She’s still young enough to make you feel like an underachiever and to highlight the year of her birth in the title of her album without needing to be self-conscious, but she spends all her songs looking in her rearview, as if everything that happened to her happened so long ago. She prematurely ages her past to make it more appealing to the ear; the sonic equivalent of an old-timey Instagram filter, basically.
In “Out of the Woods” she employs two of her trademark tricks: hyper-specific details she may or may not have invented (sure, you really were taking Polaroids two years before you planned the marketing for this 1980s-themed album) and lyrical bread crumbs that lead an easy-to-follow trail to a real ex-boyfriend (“twenty stitches in a hospital room,”hey there, Harry Styles).
Where “Shake it Off” is generic, “Out of the Woods” is particular to Swift, the kind of song that only she would write. It’s reassuring, exciting stuff, whether or not this particular song is even to your liking. If you care about how all pop music sounds exactly the same because the same five people are churning out hits for everybody on the Billboard Top 100, then you should care about someone like Swift — a serious songwriter with a distinct voice — crafting her own songs. If she’s singing somebody’s else’s words, it means she isn’t gutting you with lines like “you call me up again just to break me like a promise / so casually cruel in the name of being honest,” or telling a whole life in four words with “careless man’s careful daughter.” I don’t want to turn on the radio and hear female artists belting out girl power jams written by a bunch of dudes. I want moreLorde, more Charli XCX, more Nicki Minaj, more Kacey Musgraves. I want Swift to keep sounding like Swift, coy references to unnamed celebrity exes and all.
