Shake It Off

Album: 1989 (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is a track from Ryan Adams' cover version of Taylor Swift's 1989 album. The original song is an upbeat dismissal of Swift's haters. Adams transforms it into an introspective ballad about the struggle to ignore one's worst fears.

    Adams told Billboard magazine: "I read the lyrics out loud to myself, I was compelled to side more with the anxiety and the pressure of a feeling like you are the subject matter of people's conversations that maybe aren't in the best light. I liked the pressure of that and wanted the music to sound like it was running away from that... That's a feeling and a place and a time that was inside the movie of my mind - what the parallel universe of my 1989 could be."
  • The Fault In Our Stars composer Nate Walcott added "piano vibes" to this version.

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