Steve Fairclough uncovers the inside story of a 2014 Taylor Swift album cover
According to US superstar Taylor Swift, her fifth studio album, titled 1989, was inspired by ‘listening to a lot of late ’80s pop. I really loved the chances they were taking, how bold it was’. It was originally released on 27 October 2014, by Big Machine Records, and saw Swift switching her musical direction from country to mainstream pop music.
The album was titled after Swift’s birth year, mainly to signify her symbolic artistic rebirth, and was supported by seven singles, including three US Billboard Hot 100 number ones – Shake It Off, Blank Space and Bad Blood.
The fact that Swift named 1989 after her birth year also tends to corroborate the influence of 1980s synth-pop on the record. As creative director, Swift insisted the record’s packaging included pictures taken with a Polaroid instant camera – a photographic method that was significantly more popular in her birth year of 1989 than in the year of the album’s release, 2014, in the age of smartphone cameras and digital images on social media.
LOWFIELD
Lowfield is the professional name for the photography and directing duo of Sarah Barlow and Stephen Schofield, who are based in Los Angeles. They originally met in Nashville with Schofield seeing potential beyond Barlow’s wedding photography work. Lowfield’s first official paid job was shooting the cover of Taylor Swift’s 2012 album Red. The duo has subsequently also shot record covers for Pharrell Williams, Wilder Woods, Grace Mitchell and Hailee Steinfeld. www.low-field.com
FACT FILE
Taylor Swift, 1989
Released: 27 October 2014 (Big Machine Records)
Best chart performance: No. 1 in 13 countries, including the US and UK
Sales: Over 10,000,000 certified sales worldwide
Fascinating fact: The cover concept and execution for the album quickly gained plaudits and spawned a host of parodies and imitators. One of the most entertaining was by the residents of Sydmar Lodge Care Home in London who, during the first 2020 Covid lockdown, recreated several iconic album covers. The Taylor Swift cover was mimicked by resident ‘R.C.’ with 1922 replacing the 1989 birth year. The project was masterminded and creatively directed by Robert Speker (activities coordinator at Sydmar Lodge), with sales proceeds going to the Alzheimer’s Society and the residents. See carehomealbumcovers.com
The alleged inspiration of the musical work of Peter Gabriel also seems fitting as, like Gabriel with his 1980 album Peter Gabriel III (aka ‘Melt’), Swift chose to depict herself on the cover by using a Polaroid image as the main visual. In addition, similarly to what Gabriel and his art creatives Hipgnosis did on the cover of the ��
