I don’t like anybody’s Standom and they’re all pretty equally annoying to me (except Barbz, who are obviously the worst, because they are jobless and illiterate on top of being loud and mean). In Taylor Swift’s case, I think a lot of the aversion to her from non-fans comes from the way Swifties have a way of speaking about her as if she is the most perfect, most talented, most amazing pop star to ever grace the planet. Well, she’s not.
But she’s really fucking good!
I was an old-school fan from way back in 2006 in the “Teardrops on My Guitar” times, because I grew up on country music and I loved her particular blend of country, soft rock, and power-pop coming from a girl who was around my age. To this day, I think her second album, Fearless, is one of the definitive radio-country masterpieces alongside Miranda Lambert’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Shania Twain’s Come On Over.
That said, she lost me a bit when she went full pop and I was very cool on that whole era from 1989 through Lover but she got me back during COVID when she dropped Folklore. Because she releases so much music, and it’s hard to talk about Taylor Swift with a fan, I wanted to introduce some of y’all to what I think is a pretty decent overview of her discography, and I have three playlists for you:
Taylor Swift (Bops Only) is for the folks who just really, really do not vibe with her voice. Truth be told, her voice has grown a lot since she was a teenager, and though she’ll never be a great live singer to me, she knows what she’s doing in the studio, and I think if you “don’t like her voice” you’re probably using a limited set of data. Still, this playlist doesn’t have any ballads on it, because even the weakest singer can make a bop if the production is punchy enough.
Taylor Swift (Expanded) is all of my favorite songs from her. It’s well over 100 tracks, so this is for people who really want to dig in (you are probably a Swiftie that I know personally and you just want to see which songs we both like).
And the last, Best of Taylor Swift, is just 37 songs, a little over 2 hours, and it has my tip top faves. Albums I like more (like Red and Fearless) have more tracks (and Reputation only has one because that is not a good album, I’m so sorry y’all). This is the one you want if you want a broad scan, and that’s the one I wanna dig into real quick.
Taylor Swift
If you have beef with Taylor Swift’s authenticity, this is where it would start, because she’s putting on a fake Southern twang through most of this album. She’s from Pennsylvania, but the family moved to Nashville so she could be a country music singer. If this is your first time with this album, I can understand if it doesn’t quite hit — she was very young. I didn’t grow up watching Disney movies, and they are all pretty terrible to me as an adult seeing them for the first time. When I saw The Little Mermaid for the first time in my 30s, I couldn’t believe y’all grew up loving it! I thought it was terrible! Similarly, I have nostalgia to power a lot of my love for her early songs, because I was also young the first time I heard them. There are some really good teenaged girl coming-of-age stories sprinkled throughout, but my major beef is that they’re all basically duets with a grown ass man. Instead of hiring a female backup singer, Taylor is singing with the producer, a man 10 years older than her, about what it’s like to be a teen girl. Aside from that, still some great pop-country to be heard.
“Should’ve Said No”
Some shades of future pop-country superstardom here from Baby Shania.
“I’m Only Me When I’m With You”
Firmly planted in the mid-00s, this is giving The Veronicas in the best way.
“Teardrops On My Guitar”
This version (the pop version) was my first introduction to Taylor Swift, at a bowling alley I think.
Fearless
A 10/10 album. No notes. This was Taylor’s first Album of the Year win, and during my re-listen I thought to myself damn, this whole thing still holds up. I decided to go with her re-recorded Taylor’s Versions for the next four albums because I like her voice better today than I did back then. Plus, Taylor Swift writes so many songs, she has a whole vault of unreleased stuff that she was working on during these album cycles, and a lot of it is really good. She was firmly planted in making pop-country here, but I do love the very 1990s VH1 Lisa Loeb vibe of “Hey Stephen.”
“Love Story”
“You Belong With Me”
“Forever & Always”
“Mr. Perfectly Fine”
Speak Now
It’s tough to follow up an Album of the Year Win, and Speak Now does feel like she reheated some nachos a bit. Thankfully, the chips were banging to being with, so it didn’t really hurt the overall quality. There’s definitely a harder power-pop/pop-rock edge to some of the songs and I wouldn’t have minded her veering off into Avril Lavigne territory instead of where she ended up.
“Sparks Fly”
“Mean”
“Better Than Revenge”
She was really in her Much Music bag here and I felt her reaching for a pair of checkered Vans.
“Superman”
Red
Of all the re-recordings she did, the tracks she pulled from the vault to add to Red are definitely the best. This was her last hurrah near country radio, and not only was she writing hits for herself, she gave two great songs to other artists: Little Big Town and Sugarland. Taylor was definitely gearing up for her pop career with a few of the songs probably fitting a little better on 1989. She even has a song on here that sounds like one of those Grey’s Anatomy Emotional Scene Background Music songs — “The Last Time.”
“Red”
“All Too Well”
I cannot handle the 10 minute version, but what an amazing feat, to be able to not only send a re-recording of your album to #1 but also a 10 minute version of an old song to the top of the chart as well.
“Holy Ground”
I just did a mix recently where I faded this song into Beyonce’s “Ya Ya” and it slapped.
“Girl At Home”
Very 1989.
“Better Man”
This is one of my favorite songs from Little Big Town, and it was out for a few years before I realized Taylor Swift had written it.
“Message in a Bottle”
Also very 1989.
“Forever Winter”
This is one of my top songs from Taylor Swift. It’s about helping someone suffering with depression and suicidal thoughts, but the production is very cheery, as was the vibe back then. It’s a very “Pumped Up Kicks” situation where you could skip along to the song for days before realizing the lyrics do not match the sound.
1989
And this is where she lost me. I did not like most of this album (I only like 6 songs out of the full 22) because I don’t think it’s all that sonically interesting. There’s a sameness about a lot of the songs and I was surprised that “Shake It Off” really catapulted her into superstardom. I still don’t like that song to this day.
“I Wish You Would”
“New Romantics”
Very annoying to me personally that my #1 Taylor Swift song is on one of my two least-favorite albums.
Reputation
Terrible album. I only like two songs on it. Upon re-listen, it feels even more awkward than it did back then.
“Dancing With our Hands Tied”
Lover
The best of the Pop Trilogy in her mid-career, there’s some variety and some risks here that I really appreciated. There’s a stripped down duet with The Chicks on “Soon You’ll Get Better” and the production on “Paper Rings” is the best of these three albums.
“The Man”
“False God”
I love this vocal. This is probably my favorite Taylor Swift performance (in the booth) and the way she delivered this song shows so much growth.
folklore
I will always remember my first listen to this album. I had queued it up for a bike ride down the Hudson, and right as I set out, I noticed a light mist. And that vibe is this whole album. This was the beginning of Taylor’s No More Bops era and she’s been chilling in the cut ever since. So far, she hasn’t reached this level of songcraft with her successive releases, but folklore was such a high bar. It’s very rare that a lo-fi album can land on my no-skips list, because I love a beat and I love energy, but she turned me back into a fan with this album.
“Cardigan”
Such a mood, definitely in her Lana Del Rey bag, and I’m glad they collab’d a couple of albums after this.
“The Last Great American Dynasty”
“Seven”
Excellent, perfect song that I’m sure Sarah McLachlan wishes she had on one of her albums. No notes.
“August”
evermore
In some ways, evermore felt like a throwaway of B-sides to folklore, and I wasn’t really feeling it when it first came out. Later, after it settled in, I do still see it as a companion to folklore, but they’re not from the discard pile. The musical point of view is similar, but there’s a little bit too much energy on most of the tracks to qualify for Misty Forest Music. It feels like it’s trying to be a little too cool, a little too cute though, to the point where “Closure” sounds like a Postal Service knockoff. Still, a solid album anyway.
“Gold Rush”
Definitely love the shades of Lorde in this, especially toward the end.
“Long Story Short”
“Marjorie”
Midnights
Two things I did not expect:
- Taylor Swift to do a lo-fi R&B project.
- For me to really enjoy Taylor Swift doing a lo-fi R&B project, to the point where I wish she’d stayed in that lane more for the whole album.
Some of the songs feel like they didn’t really belong here (“Paris” and “Hits Different” specifically feel like 1989 leftovers) but she’s continuing the vibe of folklore/evermore but with some weed and a glass of wine in a basement.
“Lavender Haze”
There are so many mumble rappers I could see sliding on this beat with Taylor.
“Karma”
The remix with Ice Spice is nonsense. I put it here for the music video, but she was unneeded.
“Snow On the Beach” feat. More Lana Del Rey
Also a top Taylor Swift song, this version with more Lana is the one you want to sink into.
THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
I was not in love with this and both the songs and the tracklist could do with some editing: too many words in the songs and too many songs on the project. There’s a little throwback to Red on here (“So High School”), but overall, Taylor is still giving the same chill vibes. Because the album feels a bit like a full offload of every thought she ever had over the previous year, I’m thinking it could serve as the bookend for this era and we could get a new sound entirely for Showgirl.
“So Long, London”
“The Albatross”
“Cassandra”
“The Bolter”
So those are my picks, and I hope at least a few of y’all have been opened to the fact that a lot of her music is quite good — not hyperbollically, best selling artist ever good — but still very good. Aside from that, it must be said that her fight with her record label has fundamentally changed the music industry. The fact that a young woman recognized her power and stood up for herself in an industry of men who thought she was bluffing? A brave masterstroke of genius and I don’t think the general population gives her enough props for standing ten toes down.
Swifties, you can stop reading here, because I don’t want anybody to get mad at me.
I’ve said this before when I post little reviews of movies, but art is subjective. A good movie to one person may not be a good movie to someone else, which is why I take movie reviews with a grain of salt. I like Marvel movies. I wouldn’t read a review about Thunderbolts from someone who does not like Marvel movies, because we obviously don’t like the same things.
This is true for music too. There are some things I like in my musicians that Taylor Swift cannot give me. I love a strong vocalist who can project, ad-lib, run, and create a new song on the fly every time they sing it. No two Whitney Houston performances are alike because she sang the song however the spirit moved her on that day. I also love a strong performer. It is very silly to me when Swifties compare her to Beyonce because Taylor Swift does not have a great singing voice live, she cannot dance, and her stage presence does not project strength to me the way Beyonce does or Tina Turner did.
Plus, I think her songwriting has grown and developed from the precocious teenager to a middle-aged woman who keeps a diary of anything that pops into her head, and then puts music to it. Less is more for me. The Scarlet Letter could have been half as long if Nathaniel Hawthorne would’ve just spit it out instead of using five words anytime he could have used two. Mariah Carey would never use four words if there is a better, single word to put in its place. Taylor Swift loves a wordy lyric. It’s The Gilmore Girls of songwriting.
What I love about Taylor Swift is the same thing I love about Madonna — their musical instincts. Madonna is on my Diva Holy Trinity with Janet and Whitney, and she’s not there because she’s a great lyricist or a great singer. She’s there because she has a great ear and instincts you can’t teach, and that led to an incomparable pop discography that few can hold a candle to. Taylor Swift has such good melodic instincts and she can write an earworm like nobody’s business.
Taylor Swift has managed to grow and cultivate the single-largest pop fanbase in music over the past 20 years, and that’s impressive. Popularity doesn’t have to mean bad — sometimes popularity means someone was talented enough to tap into what the people want. Friends wasn’t the biggest show on television because it was terrible — it was the biggest show on television because it was engaging enough for millions of households to want to tune in. Taylor Swift is the Friends of music, so I understand if she’s not for you, the same way Friends may not have been, but there is a very talented ear behind all of those record-breaking albums sales. Don’t write her off just because too many of her fans think she’s the second coming.
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