You could have at least changed RED/FEARLESS to Taylors version. But Swifts most recent three albums are united through their more matured temperament and the stark intimacy of Swifts songwriting, with the comparatively scaled-back nature of her sound serving as a natural extension of this methodology. Swifts cottage-core diptych felt innovative in how they rebuilt Swifts sound from the ground up, but despite its own idiosyncratic delights, Midnights ultimately feels too indebted to her past efforts to truly push her forward. But while her grasp of song structure at this point in her career suggested an innate talent for how to develop a melody, Fearless also highlights Swifts then-limited repertoire and lack of creativity in constructing her narratives of doe-eyed infatuations and first loves gone wrong. In every instance, whats noteworthy is Swifts precision in communicating her exact intent. to ultimate effect (and influence to mega-fan Olivia Rodrigo's raucous debut). Back in 2006, a little-known country singer called Taylor Swift released her debut single Tim McGraw. On earworm lead-single Anti-Hero Swift sings: Its me/Hi/Im the problem, its me, the kind of thought weve all had when lying awake trying to drift off. Some of her trademarksher gift for melody, her third-act POV reversalswere already present here, but theres a sloppiness to the writing that shes long since cleaned up. Pam Grier reflects on her most iconic roles, from Coffy to Jackie Brown. This record at last acknowledges that, yes, a pop star idolized by young girls can also be a sexual being, singing of dirty daydreams and undressing with your eyes (the chorus on "Dress" even blatantly mimics the cadence of a mounting orgasm). "Red" and "Lover" remain in the middle of the pack. What follows is a collection of stone-cold glimpses into the ripple effect discontentment has on relationships: the sadness of a seasonal lover, affection and effort met with indifference, infidelity ending in death. Last Night by Morgan Wallen The spectacular The Last Great American Dynasty describes the life of American artist Rebekah Harkness (whose Rhode Island house Swift bought in 2013) with vivid descriptive lyrics. Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince, however, is her stock in trade, a richly painted narrative punctuated by cool synth washes and pep-rally chants, while The Archer is quintessential Swift: wistful, minimalist dream pop that displays her willingness to acknowledge and dismantle her own flaws, triggers, and neuroses. the album's opening track, and in the closing track, "New Year's Day," when we hear a stripped-down, piano-heavy ballad in which Swift sings emotion-filled lyrics. Rather, their relative simplicity only adds to Fearless' charm, bridging the old with the new a woman's voice singing a girl's anthems to make a once good album now great. If nothing else, the album proves shes unwilling to operate on anyones terms other than her own. Swifts seventh ignores the bombastic electro-pop of its predecessor, and instead embraces the sleek stylings of 1989. Songs like I Know Places ride a reggae swagger and trap-influenced snare beats before launching into a soaring, Pat Benatar-esque chorus. ", "Ivy," the 10th track on "Evermore," alludes to an illicit affair, which is the name of track 10 on "Folklore.". But reputation's best serenade is also its most understated (and underrated): "New Years Day." "Picture To Burn" is a scorned teen's "Before He Cheats" swapping shooting whiskey for rumor mills with a grown woman's wit and a veteran songwriter's aptitude. Speak Now. Although there are standout individual songs on the album, "Taylor Swift" isn't particularly cohesive and now that her discography has been built up, it's hard to rank this high when listeners now know exactly what she's capable of. Another remote collaboration composed in secret, evermore is a sort of epilogue to the backwoods mythos and backdoor relationships on folklore, delving into new character studies with a familiar, folk-infused air of coulds, woulds, and shoulds. She's an artist defined by eras (as is the name of her heavily anticipated upcoming tour) a Reputation era for self-defense, a Lover era for romantic solace which her adoring fans latch onto and assign to their own life stages with fervor. "Cold As You" highlights Swift's talent in writing beautiful lyrics about heartbreak, a key Swift signature: "You put up walls and paint them all a shade of gray / And I stood there loving you, and wished them all away / And you come away with a great little story / Of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you.". The All Taylor Swift Songs (including Midnights) Tier List below is created by community voting and is the cumulative average rankings from 190 submitted tier lists. Her self-titled debut stood as her lone and tall titan at the time of its 2006 release, which was immediately met with commercial and critical success, catapulting a then-16-year-old Swift to stardom almost overnight. Top that, Shakespeare. It was all over the place, a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end. Jonathan Keefe. But on Red, it's "worthwhile fight" and "a ruthless game," never easy but always intoxicating, almost to the point of nausea. Here Taylor sacked off her country roots and embraced full-blown pop. Written when she was a high school freshman, it saw Swift dissect her relationship with a senior who she knew would break up with her when he went off to college. "Red" and "Lover" remain in the middle of the pack. Her once apolitical music is, on Lover, peppered with references to Americas current state of affairs, both thinly veiled (Death by a Thousand Cuts) and more overt (You Need to Calm Down). "We Were Happy," Fearless (Taylor's Version) (2021) There's a thin line between timeless and basic, and this "from the vault" track stays on the wrong side. Despite the pandemic, 2020 was a big year for the artist, who released two surprise albums and secured her first Album of the Year nomination since her 2015 record, 1989. Having no taste when it comes to state of Grace?) Only time will tell if "Midnights" will climb up my ranking, but as a new album amidst an outstanding discography, more time is needed to test how well it stands out from the rest. "Epiphany," track 13 on "Folklore," is written with Swift's grandfather in mind. She may be on the outs, but she sure isn't alone. It's the stuff of shared languages, not unlike our own pensive journal entries when we had nowhere else to turn but the page. And on this album, in particular, the stories she tells are about how her narrators choices impact others, often in ways that cause irreparable harm. Many listeners at the time of its 2017 release were less than thrilled by what they saw as pseudo-edgy antics, the equivalent of a prep having a bad day and reaching for black lipstick. Red is filled with top notch tunes: the brilliantly snarky We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Swifts first ever Billboard 100 Number One) and fizzing 22 are stone-cold smashers. By albums end, Swift assesses her crumbling empire and tattered reputation, discovering redemption in loveonly Reputation isnt so much a rebirth as it is a retreat inward. Midnight's answer: she's still soaring. Written in her freshman year of high school, it positioned her as a country-crossover hopeful ready for mainstream success. If the black-and-white cover art didn't let you know this one would be different, the first song she released off the album, "Look What You Made Me Do," says it all. escaped the fate of Pharrell in Minions or Timberlake in Trolls). Read on for a ranking of all of Swift's albums, from least to most iconic in descending order. Some songs lean more country ("Mean") whereas others hint at the musical experimentation that would follow in subsequent albums ("Enchanted," "Haunted"), and, yet, the album is a mix of styles that seamlessly blend together. Its fantasias are more melancholic, its themes of longing more resentful. On Thursday at midnight, Taylor Swift dropped her 10th studio album, "Midnights." Only vault songs are included. On 2012s Red, Swift began her transition from country crossover artist to creating glossy, mainstream pop; on its 2021 re-record we were reminded just what a superb songwriter Swift has always been. What's likely the most famous track on this album, "Teardrops on My Guitar" is a textbook example of a popular Swift trope: a relatable song about a boy punctuated with clever lyrics. 175. Listening to folklore then is like wiping the cuff of a cable knit on fogged glass to peer in on private moments. Sal Cinquemani, Midnights is far removed from the folk instrumentation of Folklore and Evermore, coming closest to mirroring 1989s more uptempo electro-pop palette. The songs are as fresh as they were when first released in 2014 with the choruses still getting embedded in your head. Songs range from edgy and confident with "I Did Something Bad" to breathy and beautiful with "Dress," all the while playing with different musical styles and production effects. Meanwhile, "Fifteen" translates the same country sentiment into a contemplative portrait of girlhood, of trying to mentor yourself before you've even grown up ("When all you wanted was to be wanted / Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now"). Keefe, Nearly every track on Swifts sophomore effort, Fearless, builds to a massive pop hook. So reads Taylor Swift's social media announcement that, just two months after gracing fans with her re-recording of Fearless, she was giving the same treatment to 2012's Red with all 30 songs originally intended for the record. Report RESET RANKING RESET TEMPLATE SAVE/DOWNLOAD TIER LIST Template by lucy Ten albums, a mantelpiece of awards and over a decade later, Swift has become one of the biggest popstars on the planet. The tongue-in-cheek I Forgot That You Existed is a strutting reminder of Swifts skills as a lyricist. Debut. Songs like "Blank Space" and "Wildest Dreams" are more than deserving of their far-reaching recognizability, but not so much their long time (and only recently dethroned) standing at the top of Taylor's Spotify play stats. Its nostalgic sound has paved the way for other artists to make pure pop albums without feeling the need to embrace whatever genres popular at the time (just look at Dua Lipas Future Nostalgia or Lordes Melodrama). It won a mantelpiece of awards including the Grammy for Album of the Year but perhaps even more impressive is the fact its already left a massive impact, a mere six years after it was released. Keefe, Swifts seventh album, Lover, lacks a unified sonic aesthetic, ostensibly from trying to be something to everyone. The album feels incredibly personal to Swift, as the songs are odes to important parts of her life, from her current boyfriend to New York City. Look, Reputation served a purpose. "Evermore" takes us deeper into the mystical music-writing forest established by "Folklore," but like many sequels, it doesn't resonate as powerfully as the original. And theres what Swift has called The Teenage Love Triangle, a trio of songs (Betty, Cardigan and August) that explore a knotty romance from three peoples perspectives. Let's be clear: There are no bad Taylor Swift albums. Theres a free-wheeling, carefree attitude to the collection. As if the gift of folklore's acoustic stylings wasn't a treat enough, Taylor conceived a surprise sister album like clockwork during her end-of-year creative storm, amidst filming the Long Pond Studio Sessions documentary and re-recording Fearless. Rather, it recalls the key moments of a love gone awry in arresting detail "I'll get older, but your lovers stay my age" wasting not a single word in confronting a past partner many years her senior (unanimously believed to be Jake Gyllenhaal) nearly 10 years after the fact. It's her only album with skip-every-time songs (why on earth would you force a collab between Future and Ed Sheeran? This time, "All Too Well" retires a full band backing for hazy synths, but it's anything but smoke and mirrors. While she had flirted with a transition from country in Red two years prior, 1989 came full throttle with heightened production from soon-to-be mainstay producer Jack Antonoff (of Fun. What condemns 1989's position at the lower third of this list then is the sad truth that some of the choruses rotating here sound like they could have been parsed out to much-lesser 2010s pop stars. 1 as it best represents the evolution of Swift and her music. Released in 2006, Swift's first studio album is so country that newer fans may barely recognize the songstress' sound considering she has experimented with a number of other genres since then. Keefe, In the run-up to the release of her sixth album, Reputation, Swift was excoriated by fans and foes alike for too often playing the victim. "Champagne Problems" serves as a painful tale of a failed relationship. Too many of us have felt like the monster on the hill encroaching on a peaceful city, the devastated partygoer in the blood-soaked gown, the midnight raining on a kindred spirit's sunlight, the lovesick loner lost in a labyrinth of their own making. The catalyst was lead single "Tim McGraw," but this ticket to the country radio airwaves turned out to be a red herring with the advent of other ironclad, infinitely repeatable songs that remain fan favorites, even in lieu of our now excess of options. "So I just kept writing them.". 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