To honor Taylor Swift’s latest rerecording, we’re celebrating 1989 (Taylor’s Version) Week at The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. That means we’re throwing it back to 2014, to relive everything that Taylor—and the rest of pop culture—was up to.
All week, we at The Daily Beast’s Obsessed have been revisiting Taylor Swift’s 1989 era: a pivotal time in her career where she was the biggest pop star. She was the moment; she was “the man,” years before she would proclaim herself as such. So it’s almost easy to forget that, at the same time she was outselling and outcharting her peers, she was also at the center of one of 2015’s biggest and most exhausting debates in pop music, all thanks to Ryan Adams.
What’s that? You forgot that troubled troubadour Adams, in a weird move that either made him an unhinged troll or the biggest Swiftie ever, released a track-by-track cover of 1989 almost a year after Swift’s blockbuster album? You’d be forgiven for forgetting it entirely, both because it had virtually no ripple effect after its initial splash, and because conversations around Adams have soured in recent years after the many sexual misconduct and harassment allegations leveled against him (more on that later).