Taylor Swift’s Master Plan

In 2014, Taylor Swift released an album called “1989,” marking her transition from country to pop. She went on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” where the talk-show host read aloud from some early reviews. Time magazine: “ [‘1989’] marks her most impressive sleight of hand yet—shifting the focus away from her past and onto her music, which is as smart and confident as it’s ever been.” Rolling Stone: “ ‘1989’ sounds exactly like Taylor Swift, even when it sounds like nothing she’s ever tried before.” The Times: “By making pop with almost no contemporary references, Ms. Swift is aiming somewhere even higher, a mode of timelessness that few true pop stars . . . even bother aspiring to.” The artist beamed: perhaps she knew it at the time, but this is the moment when Taylor Swift became Taylor Swift.