Taylor Swift strays from her country roots with the release of her new album “1989.” The shift makes sense, since her most popular songs, “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me,” from her second album, “Fearless,” were a mixture of country and pop.  Swift has currently won eight Grammys, along with many other awards.  In 2009 she received the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, making her the youngest artist to ever win in that category.

Swift’s rise to success began in 2006, when she released a self-entitled album featuring the popular track, “Our Song.” Two years later, Swift released her next album, “Fearless,” which gave her much more attention than expected. At this point, almost everyone knew who Taylor Swift was.  In 2013, Swift performed for the millions of people watching in Times Square during Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve (she is expected to headline once again at the end of 2014).

Yet with all of this exposure, Swift’s sixth album, “1989,” was only projected to sell 650,000 copies in the first week.  Her popularity was proven once again when she exceeded this number and sold almost 1.3 million copies (as of the publication of this article).  That said, the album is a bit of a departure for Swift. Her usual mixture of country and pop gets cut, and is replaced with an all pop album.

With the early release of the single, “Shake It Off,” Swift allowed her fans to get a feel for what the album will sound like.  By and large, “1989” consists of love songs, and most of the tracks are somewhat similar. A few songs tend to drag on, such as “Out of the Woods” and “All You Had to do Was Stay,” but overall, the songs are very catchy.  “Wildest Dreams” does sound more like her older albums.  It is very similar to “Enchanted” off of her album “Speak Now,” which makes it stand out since it is slow and not as much of a pop song.  The songs that come across best are “Style,” “I Wish You Would,” and “How You Get the Girl.”  They are all very upbeat and catchy, which makes them more popular and fun to listen to.

Hopefully Swift adds more country and gives us more variety next time, but overall “1989” is a solid album.