Swift parties, and yearns, like it's '1989'

If you are not aware that Taylor Swift has a new album out Monday, it's certainly not her fault, or ours. The rollout for 1989 (***½ out of four stars), named for the superstar's birth year, has been as meticulous and as eagerly pored over as a presidential campaign, and its ascent on the pop charts is as certain as death and taxes — and likely anticipated with as much dread by some folks.

Never mind the haters, though. Swift's genius — or part of it, anyway — has been to turn the same mix of unabashed neediness and cunning that can make her tough to defend as a celebrity into rock-solid musical assets. On 1989, she matches deceptively simple, irresistibly catchy melodies with lyrics that can seem by turns confessional and elusive, playful and aching.

"I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream," Swift sings on Blank Space, a sparkling tease that also nods to a "long list of ex-lovers who'll tell you that I'm crazy." For the more sober, spacious Bad Blood, she shifts into full-on drama queen mode, telling one of those exes, presumably, that she still bears "scars on my back from your knife. ... Band-Aids don't fix bullet holes."

Executive produced by Swift and Max Martin, 1989 is Swift's declaration of independence from the country music industry that inspired and nurtured her, but was never really a natural home. Always more of a pop singer/songwriter at heart, she teams with expert tunesmiths in that genre — in addition to Martin, Shellback, Ryan Tedder and Jack Antonoff — to craft songs that, as the title suggests, nod to a previous era, when the term electro-pop didn't evoke the R&B- and club-based grooves of EDM.

That's not to say that 1989 is without more organic touches, or rhythmic intuition. Guitars pop up frequently; horns lend a funky vibe to Shake It Off, while I Know Places offers a shuffling, artfully syncopated beat.

Bubbly synth chords and clean, crisp percussion dominate big, airy arrangements on songs such as Style, which could be a lost Berlin track, and Welcome to New York, a love letter to a city that "keeps you guessing" and "drives you crazy" — like any great relationship, right?

Swift may no longer be that naive, as it turns out. On the warm, dreamy This Love, she sings, "When you're young/ You just run/ But you come back to what you need."

At 24, of course, Swift is still in her youth, and likely has plenty of searching ahead of her — and plenty of folks who will watch, and listen, as she moves forward.

Download: This Love, How You Get the Girl, All You Had to Do Was Stay