“Style” by Taylor Swift

song info

    “Style” by Taylor Swift (official video) is a pop song.

link to the static song information page for this song:
http://www.thissideofsanity.com/music/songs/st/styletaylorswift.php

    Summary quotation from Wikipedia:

    “Style” is a song by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and is the third track from her fifth studio album, 1989 (2014). The pop rock song was written by Swift, Max Martin, Shellback and Ali Payami. It was released to radio by Republic Records, in partnership with Swift’s label Big Machine Records, on February 9, 2015, as the album’s third single after “Blank Space.” By February 13, 2015, “Style” was ranked at number 18 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and entered the charts of numerous regions, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Background and concept

    Swift explained the meaning and inspiration of the song to Ryan Seacrest during an interview on iHeartRadio/KIIS FM in October 2014.

    I loved comparing these timeless visuals with a feeling that never goes out of style … It’s basically one of those relationships that’s always a bit off … The two people are trying to forget each other. So, it’s like, “All right, I heard you went off with her,” and well, I’ve done that, too … My previous albums have also been sort of like, “I was right, you were wrong, you did this, it made me feel like this”—a righteous sense of right and wrong in a relationship. What happens when you grow up is you realize the rules in a relationship are very blurred and that it gets very complicated very quickly, and there’s not a case of who was right or who was wrong.

    “Style” debuted as a snippet in a Target commercial to promote her album. In late December 2014, Big Machine Records head Scott Borchetta answered a fan’s question on an impromptu Q&A on social networking site Twitter. The fan asked, “What’s Taylor’s next single?,” and Borchetta responded promptly that he was leaning towards “Style”—it was an “obvious single choice”, according to Billboard. In January 2015, Republic Records officially anounced “Style” as Swift’s third single from 1989, set for a release on February 9, 2015.

Critical reception

    “Style” garnered acclaim from critics. PopMatters described Swift as “(trying) on several fresh styles that fit her like a cashmere-lined leather glove” on this song and praises it as “immaculate, almost impossibly ebullient and thrilling”. AbsolutePunk lauded it for its “radiant hooks” and as “a song that is almost certain to get stuck in your head after just one listen.” The Observer called it a “percolating funk-pop number that satisfies on every level”. The New York Times declared it as the album’s high mark and compared it to the original Miami Vice soundtrack. NOW Magazine called it the top track from the album.

    The hook of “Style” was praised by Consequence of Sound, proclaiming it’s “one of the album’s most arresting hooks… The song is deliriously triumphant, but triumph is an easy place to get to when you’re young, hot, and loaded in the country’s sparkliest city. Here, Swift’s girl-next-door likability slips, making it harder to forget that “Style” literally debuted as an advertisement.” Drowned In Sound commented that “There’s that same ‘stay positive’ philosophy, and a fair few shouty bits. Best of all is ‘Style’, which celebrates Swift’s fling with 1D’s Harry Styles (geddit?) as though being young and reckless is all a part of growing up. This is something anyone can relate to, whether they’ve made a string of poor romantic choices or ‘done a whitey’ on the weekend gone by.” NME described “Style” as “so ’80s-indebted with its thick piano-house and uplifting “Take me home” coda, echoes the retro-modern atmosphere conjured by the slinky cool of Electric Youth and Blood Orange.”

    Less positively, The Independent called “Style” “desperately inclusive electropop grooves and corporate rebel clichés of songs”, though “a certain piquancy” is apparent. The Los Angeles Times praised it as “a sensual funk track” in their mixed review for the album. Pitchfork Media named “Style” the 50th best song of 2014.

Chart performance

    The song first debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 60, due to strong sales of parent album 1989, but declined the week after. Following her live performance at the 2014 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in December 2014, the song re-entered the charts in the week ending December 18, and moved to number 75 with sales of 48,000 copies.

    As of January 2015, “Style” had sold 450,672 digital units in the U.S. By February 13, 2015, the song had reached number 18 on the Hot 100, number 9 on the Radio Songs chart and number 7 on the Digital Songs top-10 chart (92,000 downloads sold).

Music video

    The accompanying music video was directed by Kyle Newman. On February 10, 2015, Swift posted a teaser for the music video and its release date on Instagram. Some of the scenes were shot in the Hercules Cave in Tangier, Morocco as she mentionned it on Facebook. The video showed Swift’s head and steam/smoke tendrils rising up her neck. A second teaser was posted on Swift’s social media accounts the next day, depicting shadowy trees on her back. A third teaser was released showing lightning and two different colored eyes being projected onto Swift as she stands against a blank backdrop. The video was scheduled to be released on Good Morning America on February 13, 2015, but was appeared a few hours before schedule in Canada by Canada’s music channel Much. The video was then quickly uploaded to Swift’s official Vevo. Swift’s love interest in the video is played by model Dominic Sherwood.

Synopsis

    The video begins with Swift’s head being overlayed by a scene in which her boyfriend (played by Sherwood) is standing in a seashore. As the song starts, it can been seen that Swift is holding on to an airplane necklace (similar to the one in her “I Knew You Were Trouble” video) with scenes of her in the woods accompanied by various flashbacks. The man is shown waking up from a bed interspliced by Swift in a dim-lit room. As the chorus begins, the man holds a mirror infront of him in which Swifts lips are overlayed which is followed by various scenes in which both Swift and the man gets overlayed by each other. As the video progresses the man can be seen driving a car with Swift in the back seat. He then takes off his clothes joined by Swift as they embrace and kiss each other. Through the following clips the man is shown on a beach while Swift sings in a dim-lit room. The video ends with the man pulling up his car as Swift rises from sitting on the ground in an isolated location and turns towards him.

Analysis

    Rolling Stone writer Daniel Kreps opined that unlike “Shake It Off” or “Blank Space”, “[Style] is a different beast, showcasing Swift in a darker, more abstract, light.” Jessica Derschowitz of CBS News agreed calling the video “a major departure from the more playful videos for her earlier 1989 singles “Blank Space” and “Shake It Off.”” Emilee Lindner of MTV felt the video was “mature, tasteful, and, dare I say… sexy?” InStyle deemed it “Swift’s most cinematic video to date.” Louis Virtel of HitFix described the video as “a slow throb, a pleasant recollection of quaint memories with a cute boy who resembles James Dean.” The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Driscoll wrote: “the video is reminiscent of ’80s pop with its steady synth bass line and images that may bring to mind Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’, from an album also released in 1989.” Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times found that the video contains “a creepy homage to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, with Sherwood looking in the rear-view mirror of his car and finding Swift staring back at him.” The Huntington News said, “While the track is one of the album’s best, the video […] leaves something to be desired” and called the video “very hipster —: the whole things looks as if it was shot through an Instagram filter by a man wearing thick-framed specs.”

Live performances

    Swift first performed it live as part of Taylor Swift’s 1989 Secret Session with iHeartRadio on October 27, 2014 in New York City, streamed on iHeartRadio and Yahoo! Swift later performed “Style” alongside with “Blank Space” during the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2014 in December 2014.

—from Wikipedia (the Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License applies to Wikipedia’s block of text and possible accompanying picture, along with any alterations, transformations, and/or building upon Wikipedia’s original text that ThisSideofSanity.com applied to this block of text)

Proverb:

Qualities of a moral order are measured by deeds. —Proverb of the Inner Temple of ancient Egypt