On "How You Get the Girl", a bubblegum pop track featuring guitar strums over a heavy disco-styled beat, Swift hints at her desire to reunite with an ex-lover. With lyrics inspired by her personal troubles, Swift described " Out of the Woods" as the song that "best represents" the album.

It became the best-selling album of 2014 in the country with total sales of 6 million as of 2016, while selling 10. In addition to the standard, 13-song album, Swift teamed up with Target for this extended deluxe release, featuring three new songs and three voice memos from her writing sessions.

Style" is one of the better Max Martin tracks on the album since it lets Taylor be herself, complete with the lyrics you'd expect.

This album strives more toward a certain sound at expense of discernible, catchy synths on each song.The first thing is simply how a lot of the songs seem to blend together not only after the first listen but after ongoing listens as well. Big Machine and Swift kept 1989 only on paid subscription-required platforms such as Rhapsody and Beats Music. Or singing a drum beat over top of it, and I would send it to them and say, ‘I don’t have the right keyboard to make this sound in my house.

Wildest Dreams" speaks of a dangerous affair with an apparently untrustworthy man and incorporates a sultry, dramatic atmosphere accompanied by string instruments. Swift became the first artist to have three albums each sell one million copies within the first week, and 1989 was the first album released in 2014 to exceed one million copies. For USA Today journalist Brian Mansfield, even though the songs were inspired by Swift's personal life, they resonated with a wide audience who found themselves and their situations represented in her songs.The album prominently incorporates synthesizers, programmed drum machines, pulsating basslines, and processed backing vocals—a stark contrast to the acoustic arrangements of Swift's past albums.

The album opener "Welcome to New York" is a Ryan Tedder trademark track that is catchy in the way that you'd expect from him, and it fits the album perfectly as there are numerous references to a "new soundtrack. On September 17, 2021, Swift released “Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version)” as a response of the 2014 version of the track becoming a trend on social media, especially on TikTok, making it the first song of the album to be released.Supported by three US number-one singles—" Shake It Off", " Blank Space", and " Bad Blood", 1989 spent 11 weeks atop the Billboard 200 chart and was certified nine-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.