Editing Taylor Swift (section)

===Pop Dominance and ''1989'' (2014–2017)===

With ''1989'' (2014), Swift made a decisive and complete transition to mainstream pop, abandoning the country format entirely. Named for her birth year and influenced by the synthesizer-driven pop of the 1980s, the album was a meticulous pop construction produced largely by [[Max Martin]] and [[Jack Antonoff]], yielding an extraordinary run of singles: ''Shake It Off'', ''Blank Space'', ''Style'', ''Bad Blood'', and ''Wildest Dreams''. It sold over ten million copies in its first year and won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2016 — Swift's second — making her the first solo artist to win the award twice.

This period also saw Swift emerge as a significant industry power broker. Her 2014 open letter to Apple Music, objecting to the company's plan not to compensate artists during a free trial period, resulted in Apple reversing the policy within twenty-four hours — a demonstration of her leverage within the industry that was widely noted. She also removed her catalog from Spotify in 2014 in protest of streaming royalty rates, returning it in 2017.

Her public profile during this era was defined as much by her personal life and celebrity friendships — her so-called ''squad'' — as by her music, generating both enormous press interest and a cultural backlash that would inform her next creative phase.