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The Oral History Of Taylor Swift's 1989

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58th GRAMMY nominees Swift, Imogen Heap, Mattias Bylund, Tom Coyne, and others tell the inside story of the Album Of The Year-nominated 1989
Paul Zollo
GRAMMYs
Feb 17, 2016 - 1:04 pm
GRAMMY.com

The Oral History Of Taylor Swift's 1989

Taylor Swift; Album Of The Year speech for '1989'

(Taylor Swift's 1989 won Album Of The Year honors at the 58th GRAMMY Awards. The following oral history, which was published prior to the 58th GRAMMY telecast, features commentary from Swift and some of the album's key contributors.) 

It can take a village to create an album, and in the case of Taylor Swift's 1989, an international village.

From Sweden to New York City to London to Nashville and beyond, 1989 represents a true team effort. Quarterbacking the team was Swift, a self-assured artist who envisioned the unabashed pop project after awakening in the middle of the night with sudden clarity. With select collaborators such as Max Martin, Shellback, Imogen Heap, and Jack Antonoff onboard, Swift carried out her singular vision of making a "sonically cohesive record."

1989 proved to be not only cohesive, but another career milestone for Swift. The chart-topping album sold more than 1.2 million copies in its first week and netted the seven-time GRAMMY winner seven total 58th GRAMMY nominations.

Following, Swift and other key players behind her pop triumph share their inside story of 1989. 

Taylor Swift (artist/co-producer): I woke up [one morning] at 4 a.m. and I [decided the album is] called 1989. I've been making '80s synth pop, I'm just gonna do that. I'm calling it a pop record. I'm not listening to anyone at my label. I'm starting tomorrow.

I liked the idea of collaborating. But with 1989 I decided to narrow down the list. It wasn't going to be 10 producers, it was going to be a very small team of four or five people I always wanted to work with, or loved working with. And Max [Martin] and I were going to oversee it, and we were going to make a sonically cohesive record again.

Imogen Heap (co-producer/co-engineer): We met at my studio in London. She had the bare bones of "Clean." She had the lyric, the chorus and the chords. I thought it was brilliant.

Swift: I had this metaphor in my head about being in this house, there's been a drought but you feel like there's a storm coming. Instead of trying to block out the storm you punch a hole in the roof and just let all the rain come in, and when you wake up in the morning, it's washed away.

Heap: I was really writing the tiniest amount just to help her do what she does. I put some noises to ["Clean"], played various instruments on it, including drums, and anytime she expressed she liked something I was doing, I did it more. It was a really fun day.

She recorded all her vocals [for "Clean"] during that one session. She did two takes, and the second take was it. We always thought she would probably re-record it, because we thought it can't possibly be that easy. But after we lived with it for a few months, we felt it was great.  

Swift: The coolest thing about Imogen for me was that there was no one else in the studio. There was no assistant; there was no engineer. It was her doing everything.

Heap: I knew she loved ["Clean"]. She said she loved it and her mum loved it. But I wasn't sure it would be included on the album. But everyone felt it had something special. It came together really magically.

Niklas "Nikk" Ljungfelt (guitarist): I played on "Style," a song I started with Ali Payami for ourselves. He was playing it for Max Martin at his studio; Taylor overheard it and loved it. She and Max wrote new lyrics. But I recorded the guitar on it before it was a Taylor song. It was an instrumental. I didn't have a clue that Taylor would sing on it. The inspiration came from Daft Punk and funky electronic music. Taylor liked that a lot when she heard the song the first time. [She was] taking a big step from the music she had done before.

Swift: "Blank Space" was the third thing I played [Max and Shellback]. And they [said], "No, this is the very first thingwe are working on today!" It's a very sparse track. We just wanted it to be about the lyric and the vocal.  

Mattias Bylund (string arranger): We were listening to a mix when Max Martin came in and said that he wanted me to listen to [some songs]. We got to hear "Shake It Off" and "Wildest Dreams." We immediately realized these were going to be future hits, and I was really happy to get the mission to arrange and record strings on "Wildest Dream." I recorded them in my home studio in Tuve, Sweden. The Mellotron notes through the song were there, and the staccato strings in the chorus, those I dubbed with real strings. I added some big chords and a build-up in the bridge. On the choruses I recorded Coldplay-type rhythm chords.

Jonas Thander (saxophonist): I recorded alto and tenor sax [for "Shake It Off"] at my studio in Sweden. Max had recorded some MIDI horn ideas for me, and I came up with my own parts. It had no vocals when I did my part. I recorded all my horn parts, and then overdubbed other players, and edited it in a 10-hour overnight session. Sounds like a lot but I'm really picky. Then I did it all over again after the next recording day. But I love it, so no real harm done on me. People think it's a baritone horn on the ["Shake It Off"] intro, but it's a Mellotron.

Swift: The Mellotron was really helpful for us in coming up with sounds. Sometimes we later replaced them with real instruments.

Thander: The first time I heard Taylor's vocals was when the song was released. It sounded amazing. Those guys really know what they're doing.

Laura Sisk (engineer): I worked with [producer] Jack Antonoff on three songs, "Out Of The Woods," "You Are In Love" and "I Wish You Would." It was just Jack and I in the studio for a lot of the tracking. Especially on "Out Of The Woods." He and Taylor were collaborating long distance and would send ideas back and forth rapid-fire. The songs came together really quickly. There was a lot of excitement surrounding the music.

When we got Taylor's vocals for "Out Of The Woods," I couldn't stop listening to it. I love the chorus so much and when her background vocals kick in at the end, it brings this anthemic feeling to the song that you can feel even just a cappella.

Tom Coyne (mastering engineer): My job was easy. Max Martin's collaboration with Taylor Swift pretty much assured the album was going to be big, bold and beautiful. I mastered the whole album in two days. When working with professionals of this caliber, things go smoothly.

Heap: [Taylor is] a force of nature.

Paul Zollo is the senior editor of American Songwriter and the author of several books, including Songwriters On Songwriting, Conversations With Tom Petty and Hollywood Remembered. He's also a songwriter and Trough Records artist whose songs have been recorded by many artists, including Art Garfunkel, Severin Browne and Darryl Purpose.

Tune in to the 58th Annual GRAMMY Awards live from Staples Center in Los Angeles on Monday, Feb. 15 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS. 

Lorde's Album Of The Year-nominated 'Melodrama'
Feature

Lorde, Jack Antonoff & More On Making 'Melodrama' | Album Of The Year

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Get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Lorde's acclaimed second album, and its journey towards an Album Of The Year nomination
Julian Ring
GRAMMYs
Jan 25, 2018 - 2:03 pm

Arriving in New York to record her sophomore album, Lorde faced what seemed like an impossible task: to somehow create a musical statement as honest as her first. The New Zealand native — real name Ella Yelich-O'Connor — was just 16 when she released Pure Heroine, a widely acclaimed pop culture critique and snapshot of suburban youth. But after a dizzying rise to fame and a painful breakup, she knew her next album had to come from closer to the heart.

With the help of producer Jack Antonoff and a team of studio veterans, Lorde channeled heartbreak and loneliness into the deeply personal LP Melodrama. The album earned Lorde her fifth GRAMMY nomination and her first for Album Of The Year.

Here, Lorde and key collaborators recount the making of Melodrama.

*Lorde (artist): It kind of takes a second, I learned, to write your way out of the record you just made. There was a real hit of, like, "I just don't have another one. It could never be good enough."

** It wasn't until I went through heartbreak, and moved out of [my parents'] home into my own house and spent a lot of time totally alone, that I realized I do have very serious, vivid feelings I needed to get out. Working with [producer Jack Antonoff] opened me up to feeling a lot; he was the perfect person to help me do that.

*Jack Antonoff (producer): I was like, "Let's just gather around a piano and see how you're feeling, and see what has happened to you since your last album that's really worth sharing." That was very important. It opened up a big space, which was, "OK, there's a way that you can talk about all of these things that have changed, and it's not going to put you on an island."

***Lorde: The first record was "we" and "us." And this record is "I." The focus does close in. I think that was necessary to get to the level of frankness that’s in there.

*Antonoff: [On Pure Heroine], Ella had these electronic sensibilities. But there are guitars on this album, there are all these analog-based instruments. It's not about minimalism anymore; it's this bigger, broader thing. It's a very different album in terms of the palette of sounds. I think that started by the fact that we wrote the album sitting around a piano.

"It wasn't until I went through heartbreak, and moved out of [my parents'] home into my own house and spent a lot of time totally alone, that I realized I do have very serious, vivid feelings I needed to get out."

Tom Elmhirst (mixing): It's my piano. I bought it from an NYU professor. … It's a really beautiful upright that was made here in New York.

Because they were working literally next door to me — upstairs at [Electric Lady Studios] — the proximity was obviously really close. … [They were in] a really nice live room with plenty of daylight, and it’s got the piano and a few other instruments set up for vocals.

They would set up a Pro Tools setup in there, and [mixer/engineer Laura Sisk], Jack and Ella would be in there doing their thing all day, all night.

****Laura Sisk (mixer/engineer): One of the coolest parts of working on this album was watching the songs come into existence. Jack and Ella are both super creative and very honest songwriters and it was thrilling to watch stories or conversations turn into songs that I absolutely love.

*****Lorde: ["Sober II (Melodrama)" is] the second part of one of the first songs that we wrote where I really started to understand what the album would be, which was "Sober." The two of them kind of came around the same time, this was April [2016] — I remember Jack and I went out to Coachella and we got a studio in Palm Springs.

In the first part, it's very much like the party's in full swing, and maybe sort of tipping over into that area where it might be a little too much, and then ["Sober II (Melodrama)"] is sort of singing from the perspective of the deflated room. There's such a sadness to the lights being on after a party, you know, this whole room has sort of been washed in this dark, and to see the corners of the room again can always be a little bit heartbreaking.

Elmhirst: The title song is really simple. It's not complex, and it wasn't a huge mixing process. But the clarity of the vocals and the simplicity of the track — you need a great artist to do that. I think [Lorde] did it really well.

******Antonoff: "Green Light" became a very important song to the album. It was a big moment.

*Lorde: [“Green Light” is] me shouting at the universe, wanting to let go, wanting to go forward, to get the green light from life.

******Antonoff: There was a night that we really cracked the code on "Green Light." We had these parts. We went and saw someone play at the Barclays Center, and there was all this jangly piano going on. It sounded like someone banging on a piano. We went home and started to put that in, and that's when it started to make sense.

****Sisk: [Jack and I] often work on different aspects of the same song in separate rooms and that ability to tag-team the work lets us move at a very fast pace, which is super important given the amount of projects we collaborate on.

Randy Merrill (mastering engineer): The album was mixed by a few different engineers, all with very different styles, so tying it all together to feel like an album was a bit challenging.

Elmhirst: There was a lot of forwards and backwards on the album. I would finish mixes, and then productions would change. So it was a tricky balance of being flexible while remaining creative.

***Lorde: We labored over every little sound, every word. To a level that I think people would never even pick up on.

Merrill: On the mastering side, it was all about tapering the sounds of each of the songs to that they felt cohesive as an album, with one song flowing into another with a feeling of consistency.

*Antonoff: It was a hard album to make. If you change a breath on a vocal take, [Lorde will] notice, and she'll like it or she'll hate it. It's a meticulous process with her, and this particular album was an intense journey. I think that's what it had to be.

***Lorde: [Melodrama is] about contrast: really big and grand, and really tiny and intimate. Going from the personal, emotional stuff to the headlines and the web. It goes from the world to my bedroom.

We finished it… and I said to Jack, "You realize, I can go anywhere I want now."

* As told to Rolling Stone
** As told to Vanity Fair
*** As told to NME
**** As told to Vice
***** As told to NPR
****** As told to Billboard

Catching Up On The GRAMMY Awards Just Got Easier. Have A Google Home Device? Just Say "Talk To GRAMMYs"

(Julian Ring is a music journalist and critic. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, NPR Music, The Wall Street Journal, and Consequence of Sound, and he has written for The Recording Academy since 2010. As a curator at Pandora, Ring reviews independent music, programs blues stations and produces creative editorial.  The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Pandora Media, Inc., nor was the article written on Pandora Media, Inc.'s behalf.)

GRAMMY Rewind: Album Of The Year
Video

Stevie Wonder To Adele: Album Of The Year GRAMMY Rewind

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Take a trip through GRAMMY history and look back at some of the incredible artists and albums that have been recognized for the Album Of The Year
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Jan 19, 2018 - 3:54 pm

For recording artists, the GRAMMY for Album Of The Year represents one of the highest honors for a collection of songs. One look at the storied list of previous winners reminds us of the historic weight the award carries. From seminal albums by Fleetwood Mac, Bonnie Raitt and Lauryn Hill to artists with multiple wins such as Stevie Wonder and Taylor Swift, the GRAMMY for Album Of The Year is the ultimate honor.

Rewind: Album Of The Year GRAMMY Winners

While hit singles throughout recorded music's history have always lit up radio's airwaves, electrified DJ sets or racked up massive streaming metrics, the holistic experience of listening to an album has remained meaningful — even essential — for the many passionate music fans. On the artist's side, ever since vinyl-cutting technology introduced the long-playing 33-1/3 format, true artists have labored over crafting a collection of songs that is cohesive, dynamic, inspired, and rich.

Over the years, the album format has yielded masterpieces in many forms, from concept albums to film and TV soundtracks to hit-packed track lists. A great album can come in many shapes and sizes. So what makes an album great? Simply put, when the whole of its collection becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

The first artist to win Album Of The Year at the inaugural GRAMMYs was Henry Mancini for The Music From Peter Gunn, and notable winners in the first three decades of GRAMMY history include three-time winner Frank Sinatra, Barbara Streisand, the Beatles, Carole King, and Michael Jackson.

More recently, the Album Of The Year has been awarded to artists spanning many genres and styles, such as U2, Whitney Houston, Bob Dylan, Alanis Morissette, Norah Jones, OutKast, Dixie Chicks, and Daft Punk.

In 2016 Swift became the first female artist to win Album Of The Year twice for her solo recordings when her landmark pop album 1989 took home top honors at the 58th GRAMMY Awards, closely followed by Adele's second Album Of The Year win for 25 at the 59th GRAMMYs.

Who will be prevail on Music's Biggest Night as this year's Album Of The Year? Tune in to the 60th GRAMMY Awards on Sunday, Jan. 28 to find out.

Here Are This Year's Contenders For Album Of The Year | 60th GRAMMY Awards

Photos: Getty Images/WireImage.com

Poll

Taylor Swift To Adele: Favorite Album Of The Year Winner By A Woman?

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From Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand to Whitney Houston, Lauryn Hill, Adele and Taylor Swift, vote for your favorite Album Of The Year winner made by a woman
GRAMMYs
Jul 25, 2017 - 5:17 pm
GRAMMY.com

NPR has issued a riveting list of the 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women, which features a variety of GRAMMY winners from Alicia Keys, Aretha Franklin and Miranda Lambert to Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks and Beyoncé. An impressive group of women has won the GRAMMY for Album Of The Year for their own recordings — vote for your favorite below.

Polls

What is your favorite Album Of The Year GRAMMY-winning recording made by a woman?

More GRAMMY history: See a full list of Album Of The Year winners

 

Feature

'To Pimp A Butterfly': Kendrick Lamar shares history

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58th GRAMMY nominees Lamar, Terrace Martin, Thundercat, Rapsody, and other key players reveal the inside story of the Album Of The Year-nominated To Pimp A Butterfly
Andreas Hale
GRAMMYs
May 15, 2017 - 2:36 am
GRAMMY.com

Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly album cover
'To Pimp A Butterfly': Kendrick Lamar shares history

In between Good Kid, M.A.A.D City and To Pimp A Butterfly, a 2014 trip to South Africa changed Kendrick Lamar. As he toured the country — visiting historic sites such as Nelson Mandela's jail cell on Robben Island — his worldview broadened, and so did his music.

The trip led Lamar to scrap "two or three albums worth of material," according to engineer/mixer Derek "MixedByAli" Ali. Lamar wanted to make music that reflected the sounds of his upbringing in Compton, Calif. He began to listen to the likes of Sly Stone, Donald Byrd and Miles Davis. Eventually To Pimp A Butterfly took form, incorporating elements of jazz, funk, soul, spoken word, and hip-hop.

"I wanted to do a record like this on my debut album but I wasn't confident enough," says Lamar.

Lamar garnered 11 GRAMMY nominations, including Best Rap Album and Album Of The Year. Following, Lamar and key collaborators tell the story of To Pimp A Butterfly.

Kendrick Lamar (artist): The title grasped the entire concept of the record. [I wanted to] break down the idea of being pimped in the industry, in the community and out of all the knowledge that you thought you had known, then discovering new life and wanting to share it.

Sounwave (co-producer): I remember he took a trip to Africa and something in his mind just clicked. For me, that's when this album really started.

Lamar: I felt like I belonged in Africa. I saw all the things that I wasn't taught. Probably one of the hardest things to do is put [together] a concept on how beautiful a place can be, and tell a person this while they're still in the ghettos of Compton. I wanted to put that experience in the music.

Derek "MixedByAli" Ali (co-engineer/mixer): [Lamar is] a sponge. He incorporated everything that was going on [in Africa] and in his life to complete a million-piece puzzle.

Lamar: I was on tour with Kanye [West] and I had Flying Lotus with me because I wanted to work on the bus studio. He would make beats and it was one particular beat that he forgot to play. He skipped it but I heard about three seconds of it and I asked him, "What is that?" He said, "You don't know nothing about that. That's real funk. … You're not going to rap on that." It was like a dare.

Thundercat (co-producer): ["Wesley's Theory"] started with Flying Lotus and I sitting on the couch in front of the computer analyzing George Clinton. He became the fuel for creating. I was really blown away that Kendrick was so into that song.

Sounwave: That song is the album cover.

Lamar: I had to find George Clinton in the woods, man. He was somewhere in the South and I had to fly out to him. We got in the studio and just clicked. Rocking with him took my craft to another level and that pushed me to make more records like that for the album.

Sounwave: When we first did "King Kunta," the beat was the jazziest thing ever with pretty flutes. Kendrick said he liked it but to "make it nasty." He referenced a DJ Quik record with Mausberg ["Get Nekkid"] and he told me what to do with it. I added different drums to it, simplified it, got Thundercat on the bass, and it was a wrap.

Thundercat: That strong-a** rhythm with banging drums and bass was created by me and Sounwave watching "Fist Of The North Star" while eating Yoshinoya. It's funny because a lot of this album was created eating Yoshinoya and watching cartoons. It was so funky and so black.

Terrace Martin (co-producer): If you dig deeper you hear the lineage of James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Mahalia Jackson, the sounds of Africa, and our people when they started over here. I hear something different every time. I heard Cuban elements in it the other day.

Martin: [For "Complexion"] we were listening to a lot of J Dilla, Jimi Hendrix and Lalah Hathaway, who's on that song too. Robert Glasper played piano over it. Me and Sounwave heard the piano but wanted another beat so we called Lalah Hathaway and got into the spirit of J Dilla. Then Rapsody got to it and murdered it.

Rapsody (featured artist): I was in New York the first time I got the call. [It was] the day after [Lamar's] "Control" verse dropped. Everybody was talking about the verse and Kendrick was in Africa. I went about a year before him so I knew what that trip does to you, especially as a black person.

Lamar: The idea was to make a record that reflected all complexions of black women. There's a separation between the light and the dark skin because it's just in our nature to do so, but we're all black. This concept came from South Africa and I saw all these different colors speaking a beautiful language.

MixedByAli: [Lamar] has an index in his head of everyone's voice and when he hears something that fits, he knows. He sees music as colors. Every song is like putting together a rainbow.

Lamar: Immediately when I heard the beat I heard [Rapsody's] voice and vocal tone. But what made her special was that I knew that she was going to bring the content from a woman's perspective about complexion, being insecure and at the same time having gratitude for your complexion.

Rapsody: He said he wanted to talk about the beauty of black people. I told him to say no more. What tripped me out is Kendrick originally said that he didn't want to do a verse on there. He wanted me to do two verses and Prince to do the hook.

Lamar: That's true. Prince heard the record, loved the record and the concept of the record got us to talking. We got to a point where we were just talking in the studio and the more time that passed we realized we weren't recording anything. We just ran out of time, it's as simple as that.

Thundercat: The album's theme was forming over time and a lot of the social issues he presents on the album were inevitable for him being a black man in America.

Sounwave: I didn't expect ["Alright"] to be the protest song but I did know it was going to do something because the time we're living in made it the perfect song.

Martin: One of the biggest moments was seeing kids marching to "Alright." We cried like babies because we were doing something. This is [our] vessel to get the message out. We had to use art for the message to help heal and help love.

MixedByAli: [The] session [for "U"] was very uncomfortable. [Lamar] wrote it in the booth. The mic was on and I could hear him walking back and forth and having these super angry vocals. Then he'd start recording with the lights off and it was super emotional. I never asked what got into him that day.

Lamar: It was real uncomfortable because I was dealing with my own issues. I was making a transition from the lifestyle that I lived before to the one I have now. When you're onstage rapping and all these people are cheering for you, you actually feel like you're saving lives. But you aren't saving lives back home. It made me question if I am in the right place spreading my voice. "Should I be back home sending this message or be on the road?" It put me in this space where I was in a little bit of a dilemma.

I sat on the beat [for "The Blacker The Berry"] and then the Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown situations happened and I knew that this needed to be addressed.

Sounwave: That last line, "gangbanging make me kill a n***** blacker than me," was a slap in the face. He wants you to be uncomfortable.

Lamar: If you speak on this kind of subject matter you're labeled a conscious rapper. I don't even know [if] that word conscious can only exist in one field of music. Everybody is conscious. That's a gift from God to put it in my heart to continue to talk about this because that's how I'm feeling at the moment. The message is bigger than the artist.

When Tupac was here and I saw him as a 9-year-old, I think that was the birth of what I'm doing today. From the moment that he passed I knew the things he was saying would eventually be carried on through someone else. But I was too young to know that I would be the one doing it.

With over a decade of experience as a journalist and editor, Andreas Hale has been called the "Swiss Army Knife of Journalism" by his peers. His work has been featured on Billboard, MTV, Complex, Jay Z's Life+Times, XXL, and The Source, among others. He is also the co-host of combat sports podcast "The Corner" on the Loud Speakers Network.

Tune in to the 58th Annual GRAMMY Awards live from Staples Center in Los Angeles on Monday, Feb. 15 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS.