Last week Taylor Swift’s new album leaked online, causing the suits of the music world to go into panic mode, after all, they’d been relying on Swift’s loyal fanbase to help boost this year's record sales. But now the album has officially hit shelves, has 1989, or 'Swift goes pop' (as some are calling it), managed to live up to the hype?

Taylor SwiftTaylor Swift's 1989 is here, but is it any good?

1989 is said to be Swift’s first pure pop album, where her influences have shifted from Nashville to 80s synth bands. This new direction might have had something to do with Taylor’s move to New York, the city which she celebrates in the album's opening track ‘Welcome to New York’.

Vulture’s Lindsay Zoladz found the opener to be the album's weakest moment, but the good news is the record then “really hits its stride across a stretch of three songs on which Swift seems to be making pop music bend to her will, rather than the other way around,”she writes.

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While 'Blank Space' and 'Style' all earn praise, it’s second single 'Out of the Woods' which really stands out. Zoladz calls it the album’s most “triumphant moment” adding that it’s the track which “brings you most immersively into Swift’s world.”

Thanks to Taylor's new more pop direction, 1989 doesn't contain what Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield describes as a “grandiose” single (like 'Dear John' or 'Enchanted'). However he describes the album as "deeply weird, feverishly emotional, wildly enthusiastic," and adds that 1989 sounds, "exactly like Taylor Swift, even when it sounds like nothing she's ever tried before." 

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On the negative side, USA Today felt that there are times in 1989 when it seems like you’re listening to the same song over and over. While The Guardian’s Kitty Empire writes that the record's one failing is, "there’s no obvious single here as unequivocally great as 'I Knew You Were Trouble'.”

Although 1989 may see Taylor finally giving into pure pop, the 24 year old still stands out among the rest in the contemporary scene. The New York Times' Jon Caramanica writes that Swift "has set herself apart and, implicitly, above" the rest.

Adding, "By making pop with almost no contemporary references, Ms. Swift is aiming somewhere even higher, a mode of timelessness that few true pop stars even bother aspiring to." 

Taylor Swift1989 is earning rave reviews

Yes the early leak aside, it seems Swift's transition into pure pop couldn't have gone more smoothly. As for how many copies 1989 will sell? Based on the reviews and the singer's loyal fanbase Swift's fifth album could actually end up being that one big seller 2014 has been crying out for all year.