142 songs by Taylor Swift, ranked from worst to best

In this business, there are two topics that will boost your page views like nothing else: Game of Thrones and Taylor Swift. One is a massive, multi-million dollar enterprise filled with violence and betrayal, and the other is broadcast on HBO. I find it difficult to explain exactly why, and I’m sure Swift would too: somehow, this 29-year-old woman from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania continues to be at the center of our national conversations on race, gender, fame, victimization and even the economics of the tech industry. And, apart from the legions of fans who eat everything she takes out, no hold on her ever stays solid for long. She was a precocious teenager and the ultimate embodiment of white privilege. She has been the worst nightmare of feminism and an advocate for victims of sexual assault. Some people say that she is a goddess of the alt-right. Others say she is Jewish.

And yet, unlike Madonna or Bowie, Swift went through the first 11 years of his career without major reinvention. (For 1989, she embraced feminism and threw away the last vestiges of her Nashville sound, but these were essentially just cosmetic changes.) If the word on her has changed since she started, it’s because we have changed, not her. Swift – or at least the version of Swift on his albums – has remained largely the same person since its inception: an obsession with thin skin and a thin heart, with a penchant for great romantic moments. People don’t slowly settle into a relationship in his songs; they show up at each other’s doors late at night and kiss in the rain. An unworthy suitor will not just say something rash; he’ll skip a birthday party or let a teenage girl cry alone in a hotel room. Listen to his songs and you will feel the resemblance to the most dramatic moments in your own private story. Listen to too many people and you might still feel the lingering feeling that your stories have all been a bit uneventful and dull in comparison. What kind of real life can resist such fantasies?

So, uh, I don’t recommend you listen to this list from top to bottom.

But I recommend sampling as many songs as you want. Even with the widespread critical embrace of poptimism – an evolution I suspect has as much to do with the online media economy as it does with changing winds of taste – there are still those who see Swift as just another widget of industry, a Miley or Katy with the tuner set to “girl with a guitar”. If this list does anything, I hope it will convince you that, under all the pieces of reflection, exes and quarrels, it is one of the great singer-songwriters of our time. It may not have the raw vocal power of some of its competitors, but what it lacks in the Mariah level range, it makes up for in versatility and personality. (A carpetbagger from a Pennsylvania suburb, she became a code change expert early in her career and never looked back.) And when it comes to writing instantly memorable pop songs, her only peers are a few anonymous Swedes, none of whom play their own stuff. I count at least ten cold stone classics in his discography. Others may see more. Whatever the height of your defenses, I guarantee that you will find at least one that will destroy them.

A few basic rules: we classify each Taylor Swift song that has never been released with its name on it – which means that unfortunately we have to leave out the unreleased 9/11 song “Didn’t They” and “This Is What “from Nils Sjöberg You came for” – excluding tracks where Swift is just “featured” (no one reads this list for B.o.B.’s “Both of Us”) but including some duets where she obtains an “and” credit. Writing songs is an important part of Swift’s spell book, so the covers are treated harder than the originals. Because Swift’s career started so young, we find ourselves in the delicate position of judging the work done by a literal high school student, who can sometimes look like a punch. I’ll try to take age into account, reserving the harshest criticism for songs written when Swift was an adult millionaire.

* This article was originally published in November 2017. It has been updated to include later versions of Swift. In addition, some rankings have changed to reflect the evolving taste of the author.

145. “Look what you made me do” Reputation (2017): “There is a mistake I see artists making when they are on their fourth or fifth album, and they think innovation is more important than solid songwriting,” said Swift. New York in 2013. “The most terrible disappointment as a listener for me is when I listen to a song and see what they were trying to do.” To Swift’s credit, it took six records to get there. Conceptually, the mission here is clear: after Kim-Kanye’s quarrel has made her the least favorite pop star of the thinker, this returning single would be her big heel turn. But the villain costume is uncomfortable on Swift’s shoulders, and worse, the songwriting just isn’t there. The worms are empty of meaning, the insults have no teeth, and just when everything seems to lead to a gigantic redemptive refrain, suddenly pop! The air escapes and we are left with a sarcastic reference Right Said Fred – the musical equivalent of pulling a Looney Tunes gag on the listener. Other Swift songs have more clumsy rhymes, or worse production values, but none of them have such a gaping hole in the center. (I still dig the happy “Because she is dead!”.)

144. “Umbrella” Soho iTunes Live (2008): Swift has recorded many times in his career, and none is less essential than this 90-second rendition of the Rihanna hit recorded at the peak of the song’s popularity. It is a pure university-campus café.

143. “Christmas must mean something more” The Taylor Swift Vacation Collection(2007): One of the two originals of Swift’s early Christmas album “Something More” is a plea to put Christ back at Christmas. Or as she says, “What if happiness comes in a cardboard box?” / So I think there is something we all forgot. In the future, Swift would do better to maintain empathy when she took a critical look at the silly things people care about; the atmosphere here is critical in a way that will be familiar to anyone who has ever read their teenage diaries.

142. “Better than revenge” Speak Now (2010): An unpleasant little song that hasn’t aged well. Whether it’s a simple imitation of Avril Lavigne’s style or an early attempt at self-satisfaction in the “Empty Space” style, the barbels never go beyond Bratty. (As in “Look what you made me do,” revenge turns out to be the song itself, which seems hollow.) Best known now for the line on “the things she does on the mattress,” that I suspect have been quoted in blog posts more times than the song itself was listened to recently.

141. “american girl, “Digital single without album (2009): Why would you want to cover this song and make it Slow down?

140. “I want you to come back” Around the world Speak Now – Live (2011): Another 90-second cover of a pop song that doesn’t particularly benefit from a stripped-down arrangement.

139. “Baby santa claus” The Taylor Swift Vacation Collection (2007): Before Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me”, there was only one holiday song about falling in love with Santa Claus, and for some reason we have spent decades covering all of our kids singers. Swift’s version looks at awkwardness by looking at materialism; she puts most of her vocal accent on the beautiful gifts she hopes Father Christmas will bring her. (The relationship seems to be pretty quid pro quo: she will believe in him if he gives her good gifts – even at this early stage, Swift had a keen business sense.) Otherwise, it’s vacation coverage in numbers, with sleigh bells in the mix.

138. “Sweet escape” Around the world Speak Now – Live; DVD target edition (2011): Swift’s quiet cover of 2006 hit Gwen Stefani – these “ooh-oohs” are at the bottom of Akon’s falsetto in the original – invests the song with a bittersweet vibe, though like anyone who’s ever tried the karaoke song, she stumbles on the rapid-fire triplets in the first verse.

137. “Silent night” The Taylor Swift Vacation Collection (2007): The resumption of Swift from the Christmas classic departs considerably from the original melody of Franz Xaver Gruber, and even gives him a Big Taylor Swift Finale. Ambition points, but sometimes you just want to hear the old standards as you remember them.

136. “The last time” red (2012): red is Swift’s strongest album, but it suffers a little from rhythm problems: the back half is full of endless ballads that you have to go through to get to the end. Worst of all is this duo with Ulsterman in the face in Gary Lightbody, which lasts about ten minutes.

135. “Invisible” Taylor Swift: special edition (2006): A bonus early song that plays like a proto – “You Belong With Me”. The rhymes “show you” / “know you” mark this as a first effort.

134. “… Ready for this?” Reputation (2017): The second right failure Reputation deployment, he sees Swift trying his hand at rap, with some ill-advised bars on Elizabeth Taylor and a stream she borrowed from Jay-Z. (Try to rap “Younger than my exes” without going over “rest in peace, Bob Marley”.) Increased one or two points for the chorus, a big Swift hook that looks like his best work – in this case, because he bites a lot of “Wildest Dreams”.

133. “I Heart?” Beautiful eyes EP (2008): Swift changes its code like a champion on this delightfully shallow country song, which comes from the Walmart-exclusive EP that she released between her first two albums. His voice gets rough in the chorus, but at least we end up with the delicious phrase “Wake up and feel the break”.

132. “Bad blood” 1989 (2014): When Swift teamed up with Max Martin and Shellback, the marriage of their dark songcraft eldritch has almost broken the pop charts. But when they fail, the results can be brutal. The lyrics here indulge in the worst Swift habits of the end of the period – a desire to play the victim, a slight lack of resemblance to anything that comes close to real life – attached to a school song melody which will never leave your head, even when you want it to. The remix avoids production and replaces Swift’s verses with two by Kendrick Lamar; it’s less annoying than the original, which doesn’t make it more memorable.

131. “White christmas” The Taylor Swift Vacation Collection (2007): The most bluegrass of Swift’s Christmas tunes, this sweet interpretation sees Swift’s voice give way to the stage with the mandolin and the violin.

130. “Crazier” Hannah Montana: the movie soundtrack (2009): When they were approached by the filmmakers about contributing a song to the Hannah Montana movie, Swift sent in this track, apparently a break from the Without fear sessions. In admirable devotion, she also showed up to play in the climax of the film. It’s kind of a rehearsal in itself, but compared to the other songs on the soundtrack, even the remnants of Swift shine.

129. “I would lie” Taylor Swift (2006): A bonus track only available to people who bought the beginnings of Swift at Best Buy. It’s as cute as a MASH game in the study room and just as disposable.

128. “The highway is not paying attention“Tim McGraw Two ways of freedom (2013): After joining Big Machine, McGraw gave Swift an “and” credit here as a professional courtesy. Although her choruses are very pleasant, it is 100% a song by Tim McGraw.

127. “Superman” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): A bonus track that will not soon forget Five for Fighting.

126. “Change” Without fear (2008): A bit of inspiration painted by numbers that apparently did its job to boost the 2008 American Olympic team to greatness. They won 36 gold medals!

125. “Me!” Lover (2019): Well, what were we expecting? The race for “Me!” was preceded by a week-long guessing game on the exact nature of Swift’s big announcement on April 26, 2019. Would she be out? Would she go out and reveal that she dated Karlie Kloss? Cut to the fateful day, and the news was … Swift, who is a pop singer, was releasing a new pop song. After the Sturm und Drang du Reputation era, “Me!” is a return to innocuous sweetness, a mission statement that says, “I’m doing mission statements.” When it comes to regaining a sense of youthful innocence, the song is probably too successful – the vibe we’re all just having fun aims to nerdy and lands at wire rack.

124. “End of Game” Reputation (2017): Swift tries his hand alongside Future and Ed Sheeran, on a track that undoubtedly sounds like a rejection of Rihanna. The only silver lining? She’s better in rap here than on “… Ready for It?”

123. “The lucky” red (2012): A distress ballad from the back half of red, with details that never go beyond the cliché and a melody that borrows from that Swift concocted for “Untouchable”.

122. “Beautiful ghosts” Cats soundtrack (2019): Swift’s first foray into musical theater writing combines many of his long-standing obsessions (an interest in the power of memories, the pain of social exclusion) with one or two short stories (the film Cats, dating British people). Always a conscientious student, Swift follows all the parameters of homework, but in the end, one has the impression of watching someone do their homework.

121. “A place in this world” Taylor Swift (2006): The Swift version of “Not a girl, not yet a woman”, it gives the impression of having missed his chance to be the theme of an ABC family show.

120. “I don’t wanna live forever” Fifty darker shades soundtrack (2017): In Fifty darker shades, this pallid duo soundtrack of a scene where Christian Gray and Anastasia Steele set off in a sunny boat while wearing fabulous sweaters. On the brand!

119. “Last christmas” The Taylor Swift Vacation Collection (2007): Swift is proud of George Michael with this respectful Wham cover! classic.

118. “Breathless” Hope for Haiti now (2010): Swift covered this Better Than Ezra deep cut for the Hope for Haiti telethon. With one take to get it right, she did not let the Haitian people down.

117. “the eyes of Bette Davis” Around the world Speak Now – Live (2012): “There is incredible music that came out of artists who come from L.A., did you know that?” Swift asks the audience at the start of this live song. The crowd, not being stupid, responds with an enthusiastic yes. This cover loses the two most famous parts of Kim Carnes’ original – Carnes synths and guttural performance – but the acoustic arrangement and the intimate voice of Swift bring out the best qualities of the air.

116. “Open eyes” The Hunger Games: songs from district 12 and beyond (2012): One of the two Swift songs contributed to the first Hunger Games soundtrack. With guitars seemingly plucked directly from 1998 alt-rock radio, this is the most interesting now in Swift preview. red sound.

115. “Beautiful eyes” Beautiful eyes EP (2008): The title track of Swift’s early career EP reveals that the young songwriter derives many kilometers from a single vowel sound: in addition to the eyes of the title, we have Me, why, steal, cry, lullaby, even sometimes. An animated vocal performance in the outro saves the song from feeling like homework.

114. “The exterior” Taylor Swift (2006): If you thought you felt weird judging the songs of a high school student, this is that of a real sixth grader. “The Outside” is the second song Swift has ever written, and although the lyrics sometimes turn to self-pity, it is probably the best song written by a 12-year-old child since Mozart’s Symphony No. 7 in D major . “

113. “Only young people” Miss americana (2020): The documentary of Swift 2020 traces his decision to embark on politics for the first time. An admirable position, certainly, but as the closing number of the doc clearly shows, there remains creatively an awkward adjustment. I’m not sure of the chronology, but “Only the Young” looks like a first draft for what has become “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince”: Swift is not a naturally political songwriter, especially when she speaks people who are not herself, and you can feel the tension in the clumsy couplets about the “big bad man” and his “big bad clan”. Moored at least a dozen spots for the verse on school shoots, the most noteworthy of Swift’s recent release.

112. “Super star” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): This bonus track is a relic from an unknown era when Swift could in theory be the least famous person in a relationship.

111. “Stars light” red (2012): Never forget that one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2012 contains a song from the fanfiction of Ethel Kennedy. The real story of Bobby and Ethel has more hard points than you will find in this resolutely pink piece, but that’s what happens when you spend a summer at Hyannis Port.

110. “Sad beautiful tragic” red (2012): Another ice-cold song from the back half of red which somehow pulls the rhyme of “magic” with “tragic”.

109. “Innocent” Speak Now (2010): The disparate reactions to the crushing of Kanye West’s scene at the 2009 VMAs testify to the Rorschachian nature of Swift’s image. Was Swift a teenager whose time was spoiled by an older man who couldn’t control himself? Or was it a white woman playing the victim to demonize a frank black man? Both are correct, which is why everyone has spent so much time discussing them. Unfortunately, Swift did no good when it presented “Innocent” at next year’s VMAs, opening with footage of the incident, which couldn’t help but feel that ‘she treated her. (Fairly or not, the comparison with West’s own artistic response hardly wins points in favor of the song.) Stripped of all this context, “Innocent” is very good: Swift turns in a tender vocal performance, although the words may be less condescending.

108. “Girl at home” Red: Deluxe edition (2012): This red bonus track offers a foreshadowing of Swift’s interest in a scintillating 80s style production. A singing melody accompanies a largely forgettable speech, with the exception of a hilarious and frank phrase: “It would be a beautiful proposition … if i was a stupid girl. “

107. “A perfectly good heart” Taylor Swift: special edition (2006): A pleading breakup song with a killer phrase and not much else.

106. “I think he knows” Lover (2019): Not, as the title might suggest, a cheat ballad. Instead, it’s a simple love song. The stripped production in the verses makes a fun contrast to the sparkling chorus, but otherwise there isn’t much here.

105. “Mary’s Song (Oh My Oh My)” Taylor Swift (2006): This first song was inspired by the older neighbors of Swift. Like “Starlight”, it is the vision of a young person of love for life, going directly from the proposition to old age.

104. “Come in with the rain” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): An ode to a long lost lover who follows the Swift model a little too slavishly.

103. “Dance with our hands tied”, Reputation (2017): Reputation sags a bit in the middle, never more than on this unforgettable piece inspired by the 80s.

102. “Death by a thousand cuts” Lover (2019): Apparently inspired by a Netflix rom-com, which tells you everything you need to know.

101. “Welcome to new york” 1989 (2014): In retrospect, there could not have been a song more perfectly designed to tick the authenticity police – didn’t Swift know that real The New Yorkers stayed until 3 am doing drugs with Fabrizio Moretti in the bathroom of the Mars Bar? I hope you sit back when I tell you this, but it’s possible that the initial response to a Taylor Swift song was a little reactionary. When not considered a mission statement, “Welcome to New York” is totally tolerable, a sparkling confetti tossed with beautiful synths.

100. “Tied together with a smile” Taylor Swift (2006): When she was just a teenager with a development contract, Swift met with famed Nashville songwriter Liz Rose. The two will collaborate on much of Swift’s first two albums. “We wrote and understood that it really worked. She understood that she could write Taylor Swift songs, and I wouldn’t stand in the way, “said Rose later. “She would say a line and I would say,” How about we say it like that? “It’s a bit like editing.” This first ballad on a friend suffering from bulimia sees Swift and Rose experimenting with the metaphor. Most of them work.

99. “Come back, be there” Red: Deluxe edition (2012): A vulnerable piece on long distance love, with simple feelings overwhelmed by an extravagant production.

98. “Breathe” Without fear (2008): A collaboration by Colbie Caillat which is remarkable especially for being a rare Swift song about the breakup of a friend. It’s like “Bad Blood” contains real human emotions.

97. “False God” Lover (2019): A piece of woozy R&B animated by an unrivaled vocal performance and a saxophonist who really enjoys his time in the spotlight.

96. “Stay beautiful” Taylor Swift (2006): Nathan Chapman was a session guitarist in Nashville before starting to work with Swift. He produced her first demos and she fought to get him to sit behind the controls of her debut; the two would work together on each Swift album until 1989, when his role was largely taken over by Max Martin and Shellback. Here he brings a lively arrangement to Swift an ode to a handsome and painful man.

95. “Nashville” Around the world Speak Now – Live; DVD target edition (2011): Swift gives luster to singer-songwriter David Mead with a cover of his 2004 ballad. (Hear the screams during the chorus and try to guess where it was recorded.) She treats him with a delicate respect, as if she was handling her grandmother’s porcelain.

94. “So it’s okay”, Reputation (2017): Unfortunately not a cover of Nick Lowe, this one comes and goes without having a lot of impact, but if you don’t like this murmur “1-2-3”, I don’t know what to tell you.

93. “You are not sorry” Without fear (2008): A flawless kiss song that got a gothic remix for Swift’s appearance as an unhappy teenager on CSI. It shouldn’t work, but it works.

92. “Releases of Jupiter” Around the world Speak Now – Live (2012): The best cover of the live album sees Swift engaging in the hit Train as if she wrote it herself. If you forgot that this song was released in 2001, it keeps the line on Tae Bo.

91. “The other side of the door” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): A bonus track saved from mediocrity by a brave outro who suggests that Swift, like any good millennium, was a big fan of “Semi-Charmed Life”.

90. “You need to calm down, you need to calm down” Lover (2019): The song where Swift came out as an LGBTQ ally and buried the hatchet with Katy Perry, all at the same time. The slangy Trump jabs (not to mention the slight Caribbean accents in the chorus) may be a few years late, but when it comes to straight pop stars writing gay rights themed songs, you could do much worse.

89. “I hope you want” 1989 (2014): Like “You Are in Love”, this is originally an instrumental piece by Jack Antonoff, and the final version retains his fingerprints. Maybe too much – you feel like it could work better as a Bleachers song.

88. “King of my heart”, Reputation (2017): Swift likes to say that “songs are what you think of when you get home – you know, big thought after the fact.” (She says it’s a quote from Joni Mitchell, but I couldn’t find it.) Anyway, I think that’s why some of the love songs on Reputation not quite land: Swift writes about a relationship from the inside, rather than with hindsight. It’s a different skill, which could explain why the character of the boyfriend here is less clearly drawn than some of his others.

87. “Cold like you” Taylor Swift (2006): A deadly serious parting song that proved that the teenage Swift (with the help of Rose, who has co-writing credit) could produce sharper beards than most adults: “You leave with a super short story / The messiness of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you. “Jesus.

86. “Haunted” Speak Now (2010): In which Swift tries Evanescence-style goth-rock. She almost succeeded, but at this point in Swift’s career, her voice was not strong enough to give the unrestrained performance that the song calls for.

85. “This love” 1989 (2014): Started life like a poem before evolving in an atmosphere 1989 deep cut. Like an imperfectly poached egg, it is shapeless but always quite appetizing.

84. “Untouchable” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): Technically a Luna Halo cover (don’t worry), although Swift rejects everything except the original bones. His subsequent renovation work is worthy of HGTV: it is almost impossible to believe that it was never a Taylor Swift song.

83. “Day light” Lover (2019): When it comes to finishing an album on a note of catharsis and elementary imagery, I prefer “Clean”. And when it comes to using this specific melody and cadence in a chorus, I prefer Beyoncé’s “Halo”. But I like a good speaking mission statement!

82. “Wonderland” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): A disturbed bonus track that sees Swift doing the most absolute. This song has it all: Alice in Wonderland metaphors, Rihanna sings, a zigzag bridge reminiscent of “I Knew You Were Trouble”, howls. As she says, “It’s all fun and games until someone loses their MIND!”

81. “Sweeter than fiction” A chance original soundtrack (2013): Swift’s first collaboration with Jack Antonoff is inspired by the 80s, and so sweet that a change of key placed in the choir is the only thing that prevents a toothache.

80. “Christmas tree farm, “Single non-album (2019): The fake here makes me smile: she spends the winter in the intro, then rushes backstage to put on a trail of Mariah Carey. Swift says she wrote it over the weekend, and it really looks like a lark, something she threw away not because she dreamed of knocking Burl Ives off the charts, but simply because she thought it would be fun.

79. “I’m only myself when I’m with you” Taylor Swift: special edition (2006): A catchy pop-rock tune reminiscent of Kelly Clarkson’s beginnings. As if to reassure fans of nervous country, the violin goes crazy.

78. “Tell me why” Without fear (2008): A swamp story of an unpleasantly distraught guy, but he is associated with one of the most winning melodies of Swift and Rose.

77. “Magnificent” Reputation (2017): In the erroneous deployment of Reputation, “Gorgeous” straightened the ship by not being completely terrible. Max Martin and Shellback pack the track with all kinds of fun audio doodads, but the melody is a little too horizontal to stick, and the lyrics have a touch of first draft about them. (You would be forgiven for preferring the first real draft, which is slightly more open and real.)

76. “If it was a movie” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): The mirror image of “White Horse”, which makes it strangely superfluous.

75. “How you get the girl” 1989 (2014): Swift’s loudest and least complicated song on the doorstep, which contributed to the feeling that 1989 was something of an emotional regression. You probably shouldn’t take it as an instruction manual unless you’re Harry Styles.

74. “Don’t blame me”, Reputation (2017): A wacky but slightly anonymous love song that presents itself as a sexier “Take Me to Church”.[[[[A dozen Hozier fans burst out of the room.]

73. “It’s nice to have a friend“ Lover (2019): Une grande partie du plaisir ici provient d’un échantillon d’une académie de musique de Toronto, un rythme de batterie et de chœur en acier qui ne ressemble à rien d’autre dans la discographie de Swift. L’ambiance de la cour d’école correspond aux paroles de la cour de récréation; Je suppose que toute ressemblance avec l’intrigue de Carol est accidentel.

72. “La façon dont je t’aimais” Without fear (2008): Écrit en collaboration avec John Rich de Big and Rich, ce qui peut expliquer à quel point celui-ci est majestueux et mi-tempo. (Il y a même un battement de tambour martial.) Ici, elle a le choix entre un gars trop parfait – il est proche de sa mère and parle d’affaires avec son père – et une relation tumultueuse pleine de «cris et combats et baisers sous la pluie», et si vous ne savez pas laquelle elle préfère, je vous suggère d’écouter plus de chansons de Taylor Swift. Swift joue souvent à des jeux de devinettes sur les parties de ses chansons qui sont autobiographiques, mais celle-ci est explicitement un fantasme.

71. “Nouveaux romantiques” 1989: Édition Deluxe (2014): Comme «22», une tentative d’écrire un grand hymne générationnel. Le fait qu’il ait été supprimé de l’album proprement dit suggère que Swift ne pensait pas qu’il y était vraiment parvenu, bien qu’il ait fait son travail pour étendre le cycle des singles de 1989 quelques mois de plus. Malgré ce que quelqu’un dit de «Bienvenue à New York», la ligne ici sur l’attente de «trains qui ne viennent tout simplement pas» indique que son écrivain a eu au moins une expérience authentique à New York.

70. “London Boy,” Lover (2019): La chanson qui a donné au Royaume-Uni une chance de clown sur Taylor Swift, qui est le meilleur cadeau que la nation ait reçu d’un Américain depuis le programme Lend-Lease de FDR. C’est tout à fait idiot, mais comme le produit d’un engouement similaire, il serait fallacieux de ma part de prétendre que je ne vois pas l’appel. Oi, laisse tomber!

69. “Étincelles” Parlez maintenant (2010): Celui-ci remonte aux jours de lycée de Swift et était destiné à l’obscurité jusqu’à ce que les fans tombent amoureux de la version live. Après ce qui semble être beaucoup de bricolage, il a finalement obtenu une sortie en studio appropriée sur le troisième album de Swift. C’est comme “True Love Waits”, mais avec plus de baisers sous la pluie.

68. “Tout ce que tu avais à faire était de rester” 1989 (2014): Tout comme la mélodie de «Yesterday» et le riff «Satisfaction», le «Stay!» Haut perché voici venu à son écrivain dans un rêve. L’inspiration fonctionne de façon mystérieuse.

67. “Reste reste reste” red (2012): Swift a éclaté son accent du sud une dernière fois pour cette tentative de folk homepun, qui est gâchée par une production si propre qu’elle est pratiquement antiseptique. Dans un univers alternatif où un Swift moins ambitieux a pris un travail de 9 à 5 pour écrire des jingles publicitaires, celui-ci a fait la bande originale d’un spot télévisé pour le nouveau plan de la famille AT&T.

66. “Les notres” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): Ce n’est pas la faute de cette chanson si la version étendue de Parlez maintenant a des chansons appelées à la fois “Mine” et “Ours”, et bien que “Ours” soit bon … eh bien, ce n’est pas “Mine”. Pourtant, même si cette chanson ne dépasse jamais la gentillesse, c’est incroyablement mignonne. Je pense que papa va surmonter les tatouages.

65. “Le meilleur jour” Without fear (2008): Les parents de Swift ont déplacé la famille au Tennessee afin qu’elle puisse suivre ses rêves musicaux, et elle les a remboursés avec ce tendre hommage. Maman obtient les couplets tandis que papa est relégué au huitième milieu – même dans la chanson, la disparité entre la fête des mères et la fête des pères tient.

64. “Tout a changé” red (2012): “Nous sommes prêts à partir?” Pour de nombreux auditeurs américains, ce fut la première introduction à un crooner rousse nommé Ed Sheeran. C’est un duo doux et Sheeran a une rugosité qui va bien avec les voix plus propres de Swift, mais les harmonies sont un peu fades.

63. “Afterglow“ Lover (2019): Si je ne savais pas mieux, je dirais que celui-ci était un reste du Reputation séances. (Ce n’est pas le cas; les co-auteurs Louis Bell et Frank Dukes n’ont pas travaillé sur cet album.) Pourtant, l’ambiance aérienne et la batterie lourde rappellent la sortie de Swift en 2017 avec la peur et la paranoïa échangées pour l’honnêteté et la responsabilité.

62. “Appelez ça comme vous voulez” Reputation (2017): Beaucoup de Reputation les célibataires visent le sexy; this airy slow jam about losing yourself in love after a scandal is the only one that gets there, though the saltiness in the verses (“all the liars are calling me one”) occasionally betrays the sentiment.

61. “Today Was a Fairytale” Valentine’s day soundtrack (2010): How much of a roll was Swift on during the Without fear era? This song didn’t make the album, and sat in the vault for a year until Swift signed on for a small role in a Garry Marshall rom-com and offered it up for the soundtrack. Despite the extravagant title, the date described here is charmingly low-key: The dude wears a T-shirt, and his grand gestures are showing up on time and being nice.

60. “Last Kiss” Speak Now (2010): A good-bye waltz with an understated arrangement that suits the starkness of the lyrics.

59. “You Are in Love” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): The best of Swift’s songs idealizing someone else’s love story (see “Starlight” and “Mary’s Song”), this bonus track sketches Jack Antonoff and Lena Dunham’s relationship in flashes of moments. The production and vocals are appropriately restrained — sometimes, simplicity works.

58. “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” Lover (2019): After years of being dinged for staying apolitical in her art, Swift here takes her first step into the arena, reframing the most recent presidential election through the high-school environment that provided so much of her early inspiration. It’s an ambitious conceit that I don’t think works 100 percent, but I appreciate how well the song evokes those pit-in-your-stomach days of late 2016. Knocked a few spots for featuring the cheerleader chorus on Lover that finally broke me.

57. “The Story of Us” Speak Now (2010): The deluxe edition of Speak Now features both U.S. and international versions of some of the singles, which gives you a sense of how fine-tuned Swift’s operation was by this point. My ears can’t quite hear the difference between the two versions of this exuberant breakup jam, but I suspect the U.S. mix contains some sort of ultrasonic frequencies designed to … sorry, I’ve already said too much.

56. “Nettoyer” 1989 (2014): Co-written with Imogen Heap, who contributes backup vocals. It is 1989’s big end-of-album-catharsis song, and the water imagery of the lyrics goes well with the drip-drip-drip production. I’d be curious to hear a version where Heap sings lead; the minimalist sound might be better suited for her voice, which has a little more texture.

55. “I Almost Do” red (2012): The kind of plaintive breakup song Swift could write in her sleep at this point in her career, with standout guitar work and impressive vulnerability in both lyrics and performance.

54. “The Man” Lover (2019): Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy” transported to the world of media meta-narratives. It’s funny in a way Swift rarely lets herself be in her work. And props for succinctness — the chorus sums up so much you barely even need the rest of the song. But it also feels a bit like a really good op-ed.

53. “Long Live (We Will Be Remembered)” Speak Now (2010): Ostensibly written about Swift’s experiences touring with her band, but universal enough that it’s been taken as a graduation song by pretty much everyone else. Turns out, adolescent self-mythologizing is the same no matter where you are — no surprise that Swift could pull it off despite leaving school after sophomore year.

52. “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” Reputation (2017): Put aside the title, which can’t help but remind me of the time Hillary Clinton tweeted “delete your account.” The same way “I Did Something Bad” is the best possible version of “Look What You Made Me Do,” this is a much better rewrite of “Bad Blood.” Swift brings back the school-yard voice in the chorus, but also so much more: She does exaggerated politeness in the bridge, she spins the “Runaway” toast, she says the words “Therein lies the issue” like she’s been listening to Hamilton. The high point comes when she contemplates forgiving a hater, then bursts into an incredulous guffaw. Reader, I laughed out loud.

51. “The Moment I Knew” Red: Deluxe Edition (2012): An epic account of being stood up that makes a terrible birthday party seem like something approximating the Fall of Troy. If you’re the type of person who stays up at night remembering every inconsiderate thing you’ve ever done, the level of excruciating detail here is like a needle to the heart.

50. “Jump Then Fall” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2006): An effervescent banjo-driven love song. I get a silly kick out of the gag in the chorus, when Swift’s voice leaps to the top of her register every time she says “jump.”

49. “Never Grow Up” Speak Now (2010): Swift’s songs where she’s romanticizing childhood come off better than the ones where she’s romanticizing old age. (Possibly because she’s been a child before.) This one is so well-observed and wistful about the idea of children aging that you’d swear she was secretly a 39-year-old mom.

48. “Paper Rings” Lover (2019): Had Swift never moved to Nashville, this pop-punk confection sounds like something she might have released in the late aughts. I see a bright future for it as the hipster wedding’s “Shake It Off” — like the titular jewelry, this song is pleasantly handmade.

47. “Should’ve Said No” Taylor Swift (2006): Written in a rush of emotion near the end of recording for the debut, what this early single lacks in nuance it makes up for in backbone. I appreciate the way the end of each verse holds out hope for the cheating ex — “given ooonnne chaaance, it was a moment of weeaaknesssss” — before the chorus slams the door in the dumb lunk’s face.

46. “Back to December” Speak Now (2010): At the time, this one was billed as a big step for Swift: the first song where she’s the bad guy! Now that the novelty has worn off “Back to December” doesn’t feel so groundbreaking, but it does show her evolving sensitivity. The key to a good apology has always been sincerity, and whatever faults Swift may have, a lack of sincerity has never been one of them.

45. “I Forgot That You Existed,” Lover (2019): Probably too muted to be a first single, but man, imagine how different the buzz for Lover would have been had this winning song been our introduction to the era. As it is, it’s a fitting leadoff track for the album proper, as Swift puts the Reputation drama behind her with a sprightly ode to the joy of indifference. In a fun twist, the utter lack of negative emotion here makes this one of Swift’s coldest kiss-off songs. Elie Wiesel was right.

44. “I Did Something Bad,” Reputation (2017): It’s too bad Rihanna already has an album called Unapologetic, because that would have been a perfect title for Reputation, or maybe just this jubilant “Blank Space” sequel. Why the hell she didn’t release this one instead of “Look What You Made Me Do,” I’ll never know — not only does “Something Bad” sell the lack of remorse much better, it bangs harder than any other song on pop radio that summer except “Bodak Yellow.” Is that a raga chant? Are those fucking gunshots? Docked a spot or ten for “They’re burning all the witches even if you aren’t one,” which doth protest too much, but bumped up just as much for Swift’s first on-the-record “shit.”

43. “Holy Ground” red (2012): This chugging rocker nails the feeling of reconnecting with an ex and romanticizing the times you shared, and it livens up the back half of red a bit. Probably ranked too high, but this is my list and I’ll do what I want.

42. “Dress,” Reputation (2017): An appropriately slinky track that gives us an unexpected payoff for years of lyrics about party dresses: “I only bought this dress so you could take it off,” she says in the chorus. The way the whole song starts and stops is an obvious trick, but I like it.

41. “Soon You’ll Get Better” Lover (2019): Swift brought out the Dixie Chicks for this soft acoustic ballad inspired by her mother’s cancer recurrence. Despite the star-studded lineup, the song is simple, sincere, and affecting, and Swift’s vocals infuse the heartbreaking details with just the right amount of childish vulnerability: “You’ll get better soon / ’cause you have to. “

40. “Enchanted” Speak Now (2010): Originally the title track for Swift’s third album until her label told her, more or less, to cut it with the fairy-tale stuff. It’s a glittery ode to a meet-cute that probably didn’t need to be six minutes long, but at least the extended length gives us extra time to soak up the heavenly coda, with its multi-tracked “Please don’t be in love in with someone else.”

39. “I Know Places” 1989 (2014): No attempts of universality here — this trip-hop song about trying to find a place to make out when you’re a massive celebrity is only relatable to a couple dozen people. Peu importe. As a slice of gothic pop-star paranoia, it gives a much-needed bit of edge to 1989. Bumped up a couple of spots for the line about vultures, which I can only assume is a shout-out.

38. “Treacherous” red (2012): Swift has rarely been so tactile as on this intimate ballad, seemingly constructed entirely out of sighs.

37. “Speak Now” Speak Now (2010): The rest of the band plays it so straight that it might take a second listen to realize that this song is, frankly, bonkers. First, Swift sneaks into a wedding to find a bridezilla, “wearing a gown shaped like a pastry,” snarling at the bridesmaids. Then it turns out she’s been uninvited — oops — so she decides to hide in the curtains. Finally, at a pivotal moment she stands up in front of everyone and protests the impending union. Luckily the guy is cool with it, so we get a happy ending! All this nonsense undercuts the admittedly charming chorus, but it’s hard not to smile at the unabashed silliness.

36. “22” red (2012): Another collaboration with Martin and Shellback, another absurdly catchy single. Still, there’s enough personality in the machine for this to still feel like a Taylor song, for better (“breakfast at midnight” being the epitome of adult freedom) and for worse (the obsession with “cool kids”). Mostly for better.

35. “Cruel Summer,” Lover (2019): The Bananarama song comes from 1993, but this feels more 1989, with a big, sexy hook that ranks among Swift’s strongest. (Compliments to Jack Antonoff, who co-produced, and St. Vincent, who co-wrote.) We’re back in the realm of late-night hookups with dreamy bad boys, and there’s a yearning here I really enjoy — not just the ache of falling for someone you weren’t supposed to but also the nostalgia of someone in a settled relationship reminiscing about those uncertain early days. Try singing that “grinning like a devil” line in the bridge without making a gnarly face, I dare you.

34. “Christmases When You Were Mine” The Taylor Swift Vacation Collection (2007): The clear standout of Swift’s Christmas album, with an endearingly winsome riff and lyrics that paint a poignant picture of yuletide heartbreak. If you’ve ever been alone on Christmas, this is your song.

33. “Getaway Car,” Reputation (2017): Another very Jack Antonoff–y track, but I’m not mad at it. We start with a vocoder she must have stolen from Imogen Heap and end with one of Swift’s most rocking outros, and in between we even get a rare key change and a “soary” that suggests the presence of at least one Canadian in the recording booth.

32. “White Horse” Without fear (2008): You’d never call Swift a genre deconstructionist, but her best work digs deeper into romantic tropes than she gets credit for. In just her second album, she and Rose gave us this clear-eyed look at the emptiness of symbolic gestures, allegedly finished in a mere 45 minutes. Almost left off the album, but saved thanks to Shonda Rhimes.

31. “I Knew You Were Trouble” red (2012): The guiding principle on much of red seems to have been to throw absolutely every idea a person could think of into a song and see what worked. Here, we go from Kelly Clarkson verses to a roller-coaster chorus to a dubstep breakdown that dates the song as surely as radiocarbon — then back again. It shouldn’t hang together, but the adventurous vocals and vivid lyrics keep the track from going off the rails.

30. “Cornelia Street” Lover (2019): Fans joke that Swift is the only person in the world who finds Joe Alwyn compelling, but against all odds this dreamy deep cut imbues the relationship with a sense of grandeur. She’s looking back at their past, hoping her memories won’t be poisoned by whatever comes next. It’s as powerfully observed as all her best work — love makes nostalgists of us all.

29. “Teardrops on My Guitar” Taylor Swift (2006): An evocative portrait of high-school heartbreak, equal parts mundane — no adult songwriter would have named the crush “Drew” — and melodramatic. It’s also the best example of Swift and Rose’s early songwriting cheat code, when they switch the words of the chorus around at the end of the song. “It just makes the listener feel like the writer and the artist care about the song,” Rose told Billboard. “That they’re like, “Okay, you’ve heard it, but wait a minute — ’cause I want you know that this really affected me, I’m gonna dig the knife in just a little bit deeper.’” (In a fitting twist, “Teardrops” ended up inspiring a moment that could have come straight out of a Taylor Swift song, when the real Drew showed up outside her house one night. “I hadn’t talked to him in two-and-a-half years,” she told the Washington Publish. “He was like: ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ And I’m like: ‘Wow, you’re late? Good to see you?’”)

28. “Begin Again” red (2012): Swift’s sequencing genius strikes again: After the emotional roller coaster of red, this gentle ballad plays like a cleansing shower. (It works so well she’d repeat the trick on 1989, Reputation, and Lover.) Of all Swift’s date songs, this one feels the most true to life; anyone who’s ever been on a good first date can recall the precise moment their nervousness melted into relief.

27. “Lover” Lover (2019): She’s gone alt-country. The title track from Swift’s seventh album turned out to be a self-consciously muted ballad about slowing down and settling down into an adult relationship. With a vibe like that, who better to evoke than the patron saint of weary 30-somethings, Jenny Lewis? It’s trodding ground she’d already covered in “New Year’s Day,” but by this point in Swift’s career, I’d much rather hear her mine this vein than release an umpteenth singsongy single. The closing wedding waltz veers a little off track for me, but it’s rescued somewhat by an energetic performance.

26. “Shake” 1989 (2014): Swift’s second No. 1 was greeted with widespread critical sighs: After the heights of red, why was she serving up cotton-candy fluff about dancing your way past the haters? (Never mind that red had its own sugary singles.) Now that we’ve all gotten some distance, the purpose of “Shake It Off” is clear: This is a wedding song, empty-headed fun designed to get both Grandma and Lil Jayden on the dance floor. Docked ten or so spots for the spoken-word bridge and cheerleader breakdown, which might be the worst 24 seconds of the entire album.

25. “Delicate” Reputation (2017): With multitracked, breathy vocals, this is Swift at her most tentative. Would any other album’s Taylor be asking, “Is it cool that I said all that?” On an album where Swift attempted to play the villain without much success, the vulnerability plays better: This is the most genuinely sexy song on Reputation.

24. “Safe and Sound” The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond (2012): Swift’s collaboration with folk duo the Civil Wars is her best soundtrack cut by a country mile. Freed from the constraints of her usual mode, her vocals paint in corners you didn’t think she could reach, especially when she tries out a high-pitched vibrato that blends beautifully with Joy Williams and John Paul White’s hushed harmonies. Swift has worked in a variety of emotional palettes in her career, but this is the only time she’s ever been spooky.

23. “Picture to Burn” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift’s breakup songs rarely get more acidic than they do in this country hit. By the time she’s twanging a line about dating all her ex’s friends, things have gotten downright rowdy. The original lyrics — “Go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy / That’s fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay” — show how far standards for acceptable speech in nice young people have shifted in the past decade.

22. “The Archer” Lover (2019): By 2019, Swift’s pattern with promotional releases was well-established: The first few singles are infectious bubblegum stuff, and not until those have become annoyingly inescapable do we get to hear the slower, more emotional material. As with “Gorgeous,” it’s tempting to grade “Archer” on a curve based on what came before, but I suspect this one will hold up. Jack Antonoff’s production now sounds as nostalgic for 2014 as it does for 1989, but it never overwhelms the intriguing vulnerability of Swift’s lyrics. The line “I never grew up, it’s getting so old” is possibly the most self-aware lyric in the artist’s discography.

21. “Without fear” Without fear (2008): The title track from Swift’s second album has more of her favorite images — in one memorable twofer, she’s dancing in the rain tandis que wearing her best dress — but she invests them with so much emotion that you’d swear she was using them for the first time. The exuberance of the lyrics is matched in the way she tumbles from line to line into the chorus.

20. “Tim McGraw” Taylor Swift (2006): If you by chance ever happen to meet Taylor Swift, there is one thing you should know: Do not, under any circumstances, call her “calculating.” “Am I shooting from the hip?” she once asked GQ when confronted with the word. “Would any of this have happened if I was? … You can be accidentally successful for three or four years. Accidents happen. But careers take hard work.” However, since the title of her first single apparently came from label head Scott Borchetta — “I told Taylor, ‘They won’t immediately remember your name, they’ll say who’s this young girl with this song about Tim McGraw?’” — I think we’re allowed to break out the c-word: Calling it “Tim McGraw” was the first genius calculation in a career that would turn out to be full of them. Still, there would have been no getting anywhere with it if the song weren’t good. Even as a teenager, Swift was savvy enough to know that country fans love nothing more than listening to songs about listening to country music. And the very first line marks her as more of a skeptic than you might expect: “He said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia pines to shame that night / I said, ‘That’s a lie.’”

19. “Dear John” Speak Now (2010): “I’ve never named names,” Swift once told GQ. “The fact that I’ve never confirmed who those songs are about makes me feel like there is still one card I’m holding.” That may technically be true, but she came pretty dang close with this seven-minute epic. (John Mayer said he felt “humiliated” by the song, after which Swift told Charme it was “presumptuous” of him to think that the song his ex wrote, that used his first name, was about him.) She sings the hell out of it, but when it comes to songs where Swift systematically outlines all the ways in which an older male celebrity is an inadequate partner, I think I prefer “All Too Well,” which is less wallow-y. I’ve seen it speculated that the guitar noodling on this track is meant as a parody of Mayer’s own late-’00s output, which if true would be deliciously petty.

18. “red” red (2012): Re-eh-eh-ed, re-eh-eh-ed. red’s title track sees the album’s maximalist style in full effect — who in their right mind would put Auto-Tune and banjos on the same track? But somehow, the overstuffing works here; it’s the audio equivalent of the lyrics’ synesthesia.

17. “Forever & Always” Without fear (2008): This blistering breakup song was the one that solidified Swift’s image as the pop star you dump at your own peril. (The boys in the debut were just Nashville randos; this one was about a Jonas Brother, back when that really meant something.) Obligatory fiddles aside, the original version is just about a perfect piece of pop-rock — dig how the guitars drop out at a pivotal moment — though the extended edition of Without fear also contains a piano version if you feel like having your guts ripped out. I have no idea what the lines about “rain in your bedroom” mean, but like the best lyrics, they make sense on an instinctual level. And to top it off, the track marks the introduction of Swift’s colloquial style — “Where is this GOoO-ING? ” — that would serve her so well in the years to come.

16. “Mean” Speak Now (2010): It takes some chutzpah to put a song complaining about mean people on the same album as “Better Than Revenge,” but lack of chutzpah has never been Swift’s problem. Get past that and you’ll find one of Swift’s most naturally appealing melodies and the joyful catharsis that comes with giving a bully what’s coming to them. (Some listeners have interpreted the “big enough so you can’t hit me” line to mean the song’s about abuse, but I’ve always read it as a figure of speech, as in “hit piece.”)

15. “Style” 1989 (2014): The much-ballyhooed ’80s sound on 1989 often turned out to just mean Swift was using more synths than usual, but she nailed the vibe on this slinky single, which could have soundtracked a particularly romantic episode of Miami Vice. Despite the dress-up games in the chorus, this is one of the rare Swift love songs to feel truly adult: Both she and the guy have been down this road too many times to bullshit anymore. That road imagery is haunted by the prospect of death lurking around every hairpin turn — what’s sex without a little danger?

14. “Hey Stephen” Without fear (2008): Who knew so many words rhymed with Stephen? They all come so naturally here. Swift is in the zone as a writer, performer, and producer on this winning deep cut, which gives us some wonderful sideways rhymes (“look like an angel” goes with “kiss you in the rain, so”), a trusty Hammond organ in the background, and a bunch of endearing little ad-libs, to say nothing of the kicker: “All those other girls, well they’re beautiful / But would they write a song for you?” For once, the mid-song laugh is entirely appropriate.

13. “Out of the Woods” 1989 (2014): Like Max Martin, Jack Antonoff’s influence as a collaborator has not been wholly positive: His penchant for big anthemic sounds can drown out the subtlety of Swift, and he’s been at the controls for some of her biggest misfires. But boy, does his Antonoff thing work here, bringing a whole forest of drums to support Swift’s rapid-fire string of memories. The song’s bridge was apparently inspired by a snowmobile accident Swift was in with Harry Styles, an incident that never made the tabloids despite what seemed like round-the-clock coverage of the couple — a subtler reminder of the limits of media narratives than anything on Reputation.

12. “New Year’s Day,” Reputation (2017): Like a prestige cable drama, Swift likes to use her final track as a kind of quiet summing-up of all that’s come before. Here, she saves the album’s most convincing love song for last: “I want your midnights / but I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day” is a great way to describe a healthy relationship. The lovely back-and-forth vocals in the outro help boost this past the similar “Begin Again.”

11. “Wildest dreams” 1989 (2014): Swift is in full control of her instrument here, with so much yearning in her voice that you’d swear every breath was about to be her last. For a singer often slammed as being sexless, those sighs in the chorus tell us everything we need to know. Bumped up a few spots for the invigorating double-time bridge, the best on 1989.

10. “Love Story” Without fear (2008): Full disclosure: This was the first Taylor Swift song I ever heard. (It was a freezing day in early 2009; I was buying shoes; basically, the situation was the total antithesis of anything that’s ever happened in a Taylor Swift song.) I didn’t like it at first. Who’s this girl singing about Romeo and Juliet, and doesn’t she know they die in the end? What I would soon learn was: not here they don’t, as Swift employs a key change so powerful it literally rewrites Shakespeare. The jury’s still out on the question of if she’s ever read the play, but she absolument hasn’t read The Scarlet Letter.

9. “State of Grace” red (2012): Swift’s songs are always full of interesting little nuggets you don’t notice until your 11th listen or so — a lyrical twist, maybe, or an unconventional drum fill — but most of them are fundamentally meant to be heard on the radio, which demands a certain type of songwriting and a certain type of sound. What a surprise it was, then, that red opened with this big, expansive rock track, which sent dozens of Joshua Tree fans searching for their nearest pair of headphones. Another surprise: that she never tried to sound like this again. Having proven she could nail it on her first try, Swift set out to find other giants to slay.

8. “Ronan,” non-album digital single (2012): A collage of lines pulled from the blog of Maya Thompson, whose 3-year-old son had died of cancer, this charity single sees Swift turn herself into an effective conduit for the other woman’s grief. (Thompson gets a co-writing credit.) One of the most empathetic songs in Swift’s catalogue, as well as her most reliable tearjerker.

7. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” red (2012): Flash back to 2012. Carly Rae Jepsen had a No. 1 hit. Freaking Gotye had a No. 1 hit. LMFAO had deux. And yet Swift, arguably the biggest pop star in the country, had never had a No. 1 hit. (“You Belong With Me” and “Today Was a Fairytale” had both peaked at No. 2.) And so she called up Swedish pop cyborg Max Martin, the man who makes hits as regularly as you and I forget our car keys. The first song they wrote together is still their masterpiece, though it feels wrong to say that “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” was written; better to say that it was designed, as Swift and Martin turn almost every single second of the song’s 3:12 run time into a hook. Think of that guitar loop, the snippets of millennial-speak in the margins (“cuz like”), those spiraling “ooh”s, the spoken-word bit that could have been overheard at any brunch in America, and towering over it all, that gigantic “we.” Like all hyper-efficient products it feels like a visitor from some cold algorithmic future: The sense of joy here is so perfectly engineered that you get the sense it did not come entirely from human hands.

6. “Our Song” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift wrote this one for her ninth-grade talent show, and I have a lovely time imagining all the other competitors getting the disappointment of their lives once they realized what they were up against. (“But nice job with that Green Day cover, Andy.”) Even at this early stage Swift had a knack for matching her biggest melodic hooks to sentences that would make them soar; that “’cause it’s late and your mama don’t know” is absolutely ecstatic. She’s said she heard the entire production in her head while writing, and on the record Nathan Chapman brings out all the tricks in the Nashville handbook, and even some that aren’t, like the compressed hip-hop drums in the final refrain.

5. “Mine” Speak Now (2010): As catchy as her Max Martin songs, but with more of a soul, “Mine” wins a narrow victory over “Our Song” on account of having a better bridge. This one’s another fantasy, and you can kind of tell, but who cares — Paul McCartney didn’t really fall in love with a meter maid, either. Swift packs in so many captivating turns of phrase here, and she does it so naturally: It’s hard to believe no one else got to “you are the best thing that’s ever been mine” before her, and the line about “a careless man’s careful daughter” is so perfect that you instantly know everything about the guy. Let’s give a special shout-out to Nathan Chapman again: His backup vocals are the secret weapon of Speak Now, and they’re at their very best here.

4. “Blank Space” 1989 (2014): You know how almost every other song that’s even a little bit like “Blank Space” ranks very low on this list? Yeah, that’s how hard a trick Swift pulls off on this 1989 single, which manages to satirize her man-eater image while also demonstrating exactly what makes that image so appealing. The gag takes a perfectly tuned barometer for tone: “Look What You Made Me Do” collapsed under the weight of its own self-obsession; “Better Than Revenge” didn’t quite get the right amount of humor in. But Swift’s long history of code-switching works wonders for her here, as she gives each line just the right spin — enough irony for us to get the jokes, enough sincerity that we’ll all sing along anyway. Martin and Shellback bring their usual bells and whistles, but they leave enough empty space in the mix for the words to ring out. Who wouldn’t want to write their name?

3. “Fifteen” Without fear (2008): For many young people, the real experience of romance is the thinking about it, not the actual doing it. (For an increasing number, the thinking about it is all they’re doing.) Swift gets this almost instinctively, and never more than on this early ballad about her freshman year of high school, which plays like a gentle memoir. Listen to how the emotional high point of the second verse is not something that happens, but her reaction to it: “He’s got a car and you feel like flyyying. ” She knows that the real thing is awkward, occasionally unpleasant, and almost guaranteed to disappoint you — the first sentence she wrote for this one was “Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind / We both cried,” a line that became exhibit B in the case of Taylor Swift v. Feminism — and she knows how fantasies can sustain you when nothing else will. “In your life you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team / but I didn’t know it at 15,” she sings, even though she’s only 18 herself. That there are plenty of people who spent their teenage years making out, smoking cigarettes, and reading Anaïs Nindoesn’t negate the fact that, for a lot of us squares, even the prospect of holding someone else’s hand could get us through an entire semester. Virgins need love songs, too.

2. “All Too Well” red (2012): It’s no wonder that music writers love this one: This is Swift at her most literary, with a string of impeccably observed details that could have come out of a New Yorker short story. “All Too Well” was the first song Swift wrote for red; she hadn’t worked with Liz Rose since Without fear, but she called up her old collaborator to help her make sense of her jumble of memories from a relationship recently exploded. “She had a story and she wanted to say something specific. She had a lot of information,” Rose told Rolling stone later. “I just let her go.” The original version featured something like eight verses; together the two women edited it down to a more manageable three, while still retaining its propulsive momentum. The finished song is a kaleidoscopic swirl of images — baby pictures at his parents’ house, “nights where you made me your own,” a scarf left in a drawer — always coming back to the insistence that these things happened, and they mattered: “I was there, I remember it all too well.” The words are so strong that the band mostly plays support; they don’t need anything flashier than a 4/4 thump and a big crescendo for each chorus. There are few moments on red better than the one where Swift jumps into her upper register to deliver the knockout blow in the bridge. Just like the scarf, you can’t get rid of this song.

1. “You Belong With Me” Without fear (2008): Swift was hanging out with a male friend one day when he took a call from his girlfriend. “He was completely on the defensive saying, ‘No, baby … I had to get off the phone really quickly … I tried to call you right back … Of course I love you. More than anything! Baby, I’m so sorry,’” she recalled. “She was just yelling at him! I felt so bad for him at that moment.” Out of that feeling, a classic was born. Swift had written great songs drawn from life before, but here she gave us a story of high school at its most archetypal: A sensitive underdog facing off with some prissy hot chick, in a battle to see which one of them really got a cute boy’s jokes. (Swift would play both women in the video; she had enough self-awareness to know that most outcasts are not tall, willowy blonde girls.) Rose says the song “just flowed out of” Swift, and you can feel that rush of inspiration in the way the lines bleed into each other, but there’s some subtle songcraft at work, too: Besides the lyrical switcheroos about who wears what, we also only get half the chorus the first go-round, just to save one more wallop for later. The line about short skirts and T-shirts will likely be mentioned in Swift’s obituary one day, and I think it’s key to the song’s, and by extension Swift’s, appeal: In my high school, even the most popular kids wore T-shirts.

Australian artist set to make Eurovision history by performing indigenous lyrics in Sweden showdown – as fellow Australian represents another country

04.05.2024

Travis Kelce arrives for Kentucky Derby without Taylor Swift as dapper Chiefs star wears white and black suit – Daily Mail