Many Taylor Swift fans eagerly waited for her fifth album to be released on October 27th. In less than a week, Swift’s album “1989” soared to iTunes’ number one album with three songs in iTunes’ top 10. “Shake It Off”, currently has over 218 million views on YouTube, and has become the most popular song in the album followed by “Blank Space”. Unlike her other albums, “1989” which contains 14 songs, is Taylor Swift’s first official pop release and fans love the change.

“I love Taylor Swift’s pop genre songs just as much as I loved her country ones. She seems to be having a lot of fun experimenting right now and she really portrays it in her songs,” said junior Brittany Feinberg.

At only 24 years of age, the seven-time Grammy award winner has become a pop sensation with millions of fans across the globe. Because of Taylor Swift’s widespread popularity and attention of media, many people are aware of her reputation of having many boyfriends. “1989” includes a couple of songs about how Taylor deals with the misconceptions people often tend to make about her. For example, Taylor addresses the faulty accusations against her in her hit song “Shake it Off”, and in “Blank Space.”

“You know what’s interesting about this song is that I actually started writing it as a joke. I was just kind of sitting around thinking about how the media has kind of had a field day talking about what they think my personal life is like. So I just kind of thought ‘all right so they’ve drawn up this fictitious profile of this serial-dating, overemotional, completely clingy, needy nightmare.’ I just thought of how incredibly complex that character actually is if it were a real girl and what kind of song she would write,” Swift told radio station Sirius XM. “It was really interesting to kind of joke around with it and play around with the narrative everyone else has been joking around about anyway”.

Taylor also debuted the Album live on Good Morning America singing “Welcome to New York”, “Out of the Woods” and “Shake it Off” in the center of Times Square. After her performance, she told GMA host Robin Roberts that a tour would be coming soon.

“Taylor Swift’s songs are so relatable to all teenage girls and I could listen to her album all day. There are songs on it that fit almost every mood I have. I can’t wait until she goes on tour so I can see her perform ‘1989’ live,” said Junior Elizabeth Cheung.

Swift continues to be a role model for fans everywhere offering a strong message of not caring about other people’s opinions and to just simply “Shake it off”.

FSA Connection Questions:

1. Summarize the article in one sentence.
2. Pick one sentence from the article that supports the main idea.
3. According to the article the word “fictitious” means…
4. Use the word “fictitious” in a sentence
5. Why inspired Taylor Swift to write the song “Blank Space”?