All 243 of Taylor Swift’s Songs, Ranked
Taylor Swift the celebrity is such a magnet for attention, she can distract from Taylor Swift the artist. But Swift was a songwriter before she was a star, and she’ll be a songwriter long after she graduates from that racket. It’s in her music where she’s made her mark on history — as a performer, record-crafter, guitar hero and all-around pop mastermind, with songs that can leave you breathless or with a nasty scar. She was soaring on the level of the all-time greats before she was old enough to rent a car, with the crafty guile of a Carole King and the reckless heart of a Paul Westerberg — and she hasn’t exactly slowed down since then.
So with all due respect to Taylor the myth, the icon, the red-carpet tabloid staple, let’s celebrate the real Taylor — the songwriter she was born to be. Let’s break it down: all 243 tunes, counted from the bottom to the top. The hits, the flops, the deep cuts, the covers, from her raw 2006 debut as a teen country ingenue right up to Midnights and 1989 (Taylor’s Version).
Every fan would compile a different list—that’s the beauty of it. She’s got at least 5 or 6 dozen songs that seem to belong in her Top Ten. But they’re not ranked by popularity, sales or supposed celebrity quotient — just the level of Taylor genius on display, from the perspective of a fan who generally does not give a rat’s nads who the songs are “really” about. All that matters is whether they’re about you and me. (I guarantee you are a more fascinating human than the Twilight guy, though I’m probably not.)
Since Taylor loves nothing more than causing chaos in our lives, she’s re-recording her albums, including the outtakes she left in the vault before. So far, she’s up to Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and 1989 For the Taylor’s Version remakes, both versions count as the same song. It’s a tribute to her fierce creative energy — in the past couple years she’s released an avalanche of new music, with more on the way. God help us all.
Sister Tay may be the last true rock star on the planet, making brilliant moves (or catastrophic gaffes, because that’s what rock stars do). These are the songs that sum up her wit, her empathy, her flair for emotional excess, her girls-to-the-front bravado, her urge to ransack every corner of pop history, her determination to turn any chorus into a ridiculous spectacle. So let’s step back from the image and pay homage to her one-of-a-kind songbook — because the weirdest and most fascinating thing about Taylor Swift will always be her music.
How to Watch Taylor Swift’s Acoustic ‘Folklore’ on Disney+
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“Karma” (2022)
“Karma is my boyfriend” is a brain-devouring hook from this surprisingly perky chorus. A Midnights track that feels like a leftover from the past, especially since she already wrote a reply to this one on Evermore, with “Long Story Short,” advising “past me” to let go of petty distractions and just let her nemeses defeat themselves. Ice Spice adds her magic to the remix.
Best line: “Karma is a cat.”
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‘Suburban Legends’ (2023)
“I broke my own heart because you were too polite to do it”—now there’s a line that sums up a lot of chaotic Swiftian love stories. “Suburban Legends” is a witty yet regretful tune with more of her 1950s fantasies, with Taylor fantasizing about a happy ending to a long-gone high-school romance. Like other 1989 vault tracks, “Suburban Legends” sounds like it would have fit right into Midnights—so many invisible strings between those two albums, in terms of her songwriting.
Best line: “You kiss me in a way that’s gonna screw me up forever.”
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“Love Story” (2008)
Romeo meets Juliet: Proof that star-crossed teen romances never go out of style. But changing the plot of Romeo and Juliet so these two crazy kids end up together — now that’s some endearing Taylor hubris. She keeps going back to the well of Shakespearean tragedy, quoting Julius Caesar in the “Look What You Made Me Do” video. It’s never been clear what the line, “I was a scarlet letter,” is doing in this song, but now it’s a hint that Tay was just a few years away from going Full Hester Prynne in “New Romantics.”
Best line: “Just say yes.”
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“Don’t Blame Me” (2017)
She tries on the moody “bad girl goes to church” vibe of Madonna circa Like a Prayer – addicted to love, falling from grace, going down on her knees to beg for one more kiss.
Best line: “My name is whatever you decide.”
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“Vigilante Shit” (2022)
A love triangle that gets lowdown and vicious: “I don’t dress for women / I don’t dress for men / Lately I’ve been dressing for revenge.” The hint of this sexual vigilante seducing her lover’s wife adds a bit of spice, as does the idea of using cosmetics as a fatally glam murder weapon.
Best line: “Draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man / You did some bad things but I’m the worst of them.” -
“White Horse” (2008)
Teen Romantic Tay meets Bitter Adult Tay in a superbly disenchanted breakup ballad that gives up on princesses and fairy tales.
Best line: “I’m not the one you’ll sweep off her feet/Lead up the stairwell.”
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“Mr. Perfectly Fine” (2021)
The opening act of Mr. Casually Cruel, a guy Taylor has kept meeting in her songs ever since. How did she possibly leave a song this strong off Fearless? Because she clearly figured that she needed to save “casually cruel” for an even better song a few years down the road. (One Mr. Casually Cruel wears “a well-pressed suit,” the other wears plaid shirts.) Poor Joe Jonas—now all her exes know that when Taylor sends their babies presents, it means there’s a song on the way. “Mr. Perfectly Fine” was the song that truly proved her Taylor’s Version project was for real—the outtakes from her vault weren’t leftovers or juvenalia, but bona fide Swift songs. Never be so casual you forget to be cruel; never be so cruel you forget to be casual.
Best line: “Sashay away to your seat/It’s the best seat in the best room.”
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“Come Back…Be Here” (2012)
A yearning prayer for a rock & roll boy on tour, weak in the knees as she pleads for him to jet back on any terms he chooses.
Best line: “I guess you’re in London today.”
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“Teardrops on My Guitar” (2006)
One of her defining early smashes – and the one that marked her crucial crossover to the minivan-mom adult audience, where country stars do most of their business. It also inspired the first anti-Taylor answer song – Joe Jonas sang, “I’m done with superstars/And all the tears on her guitar” in 2009, on the JoBros’ instantly forgotten Lines, Vines and Trying Times. She added a P.S. years later in “Invisible String,” after she and Joe became friends again — proof that her songs just go on rewriting themselves.
Best line: “Drew walks by me / Can he tell that I can’t breathe?”
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“It’s Nice to Have a Friend” (2019)
The most divisive track on Lover — but for those of us who cherish this song, it’s a tiny little haiku miracle. That harp. Those steel drums. That creepy Lost Boys choir. That “Moonlight Mile” guitar. The childhood vibe evokes the White Stripes’ “We’re Going to Be Friends,” but it’s all her. Also, love how this story starts with a lost glove — seven years after the lost scarf in “All Too Well.”
Best line: “Call my bluff / Call you ‘babe.’”
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“I Did Something Bad” (2017)
Wait, she fell in love with a narcissist? Who saw that coming? Despite the Eurodisco bleeps and bloops, this is a total Nineties grunge-rock rager – she switches into Eddie Vedder/Scott Weiland mode when she growls that “over and over and over again if IIII could.” This is just waiting for her to turn it into a head-banging live guitar monster.
Best line: “I never trust a playboy but they love me / So I fly ’em all around the world and I let them think they saved me.”
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“I Bet You Think About Me,” With Chris Stapleton (2021)
This rowdy hell-raising saloon sing-along about a rich ex is a delightful honky-tonk jam — the kind of straight-up Nashville vibe she was about to leave behind. In the classic “Friends in Low Places” country tradition, she taunts him for his “organic shoes” and “cool indie music concerts.” Which in 2012 meant he was into the National and Bon Iver.
Best line: “The girl in your bed has a fine pedigree/And I bet your friends tell you she’s better than me.”
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“Sad Beautiful Tragic” (2012)
She must have heard a Mazzy Star song on the radio that morning and thought, “Hey, this sounds like fun.” All the details are in place, from her woozy Hope Sandoval mumble to the way it nails Sandoval’s exact tambourine sound. Such an underrated Red gem, one she’s almost never sung live, but it was one of her templates for the sound of Folklore — Mazzy Swift rights forever. Would any other songwriter on Earth have the sheer gall to get away with that title? Let’s hope nobody tries.
Best line: “You’ve got your demons, and, darling, they all look like me.”
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“Lavender Haze” (2022)
A Nineties R&B trip through the “Lavender Haze,” with two lovers in their own private world, tuning out society and gender roles and social media, blocking out the noise, leaving it all at their door. It’s a kind of love story she’s kept singing about her whole career, from “Ours” to “Holy Ground” to “Call It What You Want.” Taylor rejects “the 1950s shit they want from me,” where “the only kind of girl they see is a one-night or a wife.” Intriguing footnote: At her NYC commencement speech in May, Dr. Swift revealed, “I had a phase where, for the entirety of 2012, I dressed like a 1950s housewife.”
Best line: “Staring at the ceiling with you/You don’t ever say too much/And you don’t really read into my melancholia.”
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“Illicit Affairs” (2020)
A cheating ballad that can turn me into a godforsaken mess any time. The guitar has a wistful “Last Kiss” tinge, except instead of sneaking peeks at an ex’s social-media photos, it’s all sordid meetings in the parking lot, where all getaway cars end up. The muted regret boils over in the bridge, as she snarls: “Don’t call me kid, don’t call me baby.” The definitive version is from The Long Pond Studio Sessions, with Aaron Dessner stretching out on guitar. She does an unforgettably powerful version on the Eras Tour where she simply chants the bridge. Can you imagine how great her Bridges Tour will be? Just four hours of her bridges?
Best line: “Take the words for what they are/A dwindling, mercurial high/A drug that only worked the first few hundred times.”
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“The Lakes” (2020)
Let’s face it: Swift has trained us to expect the unexpected, but nobody guessed she’d crown Folklore with the best song ever about 19th century Romantic poets. (Only competition: Van Morrison’s “Summertime in England.”) In “The Lakes,” she wanders the Windermere Peaks in the footsteps of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s her answer to Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” as she roams the wide open spaces so she can listen to “the still sad music of humanity.” As a Wordsworth fanatic, I’m grateful this song exists (“Peele Castle” Hive, rise!) and Tay should keep it going with the lit fan-fic — maybe Emily Dickinson or Gertrude Stein next?
Best line: “I want auroras and sad prose/I want to watch wisteria grow.”
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“The Man” (2019)
Imagine a timeline where Taylor released this as the first single from Reputation, instead of “Look What You Made Me Do.” It’s safe to say people might have gotten the message faster. “The Man” is the sharpest feminist anthem she’s written (so far). The unspoken subtext: If these dudes had to spend a day in her shoes, they’d crumble like a soggy chunk of feta cheese.
Best line: “When everyone believes you, what’s that like?” Listen here.
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“Cowboy Like Me” (2020)
Taylor never really had a thing for cowboys, even in her country days, so it makes sense she’d rather be the cowboy than rope one for herself. She’s a grifter swindling her sugar daddies, until she falls for a fellow con artist. But they don’t know if they can give up the thrills of the chase — the same old dilemma of “you love the players and you love the game.” Aaron Dessner’s guitar adds the right touch of country-rock. “I’m waiting by the phone like I’m in an airport bar” is one of the best old-media jokes on an album that also has centerfolds and VHS tapes.
Best line: “The skeletons in both our closets plotted hard to fuck this up.”
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“Wildest Dreams” (2014)
You rang, Goth Taylor? At first this might have seemed like a minor pleasure on 1989, but it really sounds stronger and stronger over the years, especially when she hiccups the words “my last request ih-is.” The video features giraffes and zebras.
Best line: “He’s so tall and handsome as hell/He’s so bad, but he does it so well.”
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“Anti-Hero” (2022)
Taylor should begin more songs with the line “I have this thing where…”, right? She has LOTS of this thing. “Anti-Hero” addresses her public persona, in the tradition of Taylor Lead Singles, as opposed to her private or creative life, with self-deprecating quips in every verse, and the sing-along chorus: “It’s me! Hi! I’m the problem, it’s me!”
Best line: “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby/And I’m the monster on the hill.”
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“Daylight” (2019)
The finale of Lover, and a passionate sequel to “Clean.” “Daylight” takes off in the final minute when she gives a soliloquy that sounds like one of those 2 a.m. voice memos you forget about until you find them on your phone weeks later. “I wanna be defined by the things I love, not the things I’m afraid of” — it’s an affirmation to believe in.
Best line: “I once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden.”
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“Mine” (2010)
“You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter” is one of those hooks where she seems to cram a whole life story into one line.
Best line: “I was a flight risk with a fear of falling.”
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“You’re On Your Own Kid” (2022)
A New Order-like synth-pop tale of teenage isolation: another teenage girl from a wasteland of a home town, dreaming of getting out or running away, but using music and art and writing to create her own fantasy world.
Best line: “I searched the party of better bodies/Just to learn that my dreams aren’t rare.”
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“Dress” (2017)
Swift is no stranger to getting emo over her dresses, but this time it’s different: “I Only bought this dress so you could take it off.” Her most carnal slow jam is also one of her saddest – the ache in her voice, the yearning in those synth sparkles. There’s something so “Little Red Corvette” in the way she interrupts her own wordplay with forlorn sighs. As for that golden tattoo – hold on, we’re going home.
Best line: “I don’t want you like a best friend.” Listen here.
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“This Love” (2014)
A meditative 1989 nocturne – half acoustic introspection, half electro reverie – as she genuflects in the midnight hour.
Best line: “I could go on and on, on and on/And I will.”
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“Timeless” (2023)
You can’t argue with a 19-year-old, especially when she’s already a genius, but [plugs in magic time machine] maybe This Song Should Have Made The Damn Album? Yet there’s no way she could have sung “Timeless” as beautifully as she does now. “Timeless” is a Speak Now vault song inspired by her grandparents, combining a few of her favorite stories—old photos, old couples, teen love that grows through the decades. “A crowded street in 1944” makes this sound like a sequel to both “Marjorie” and “Epiphany,” while putting “Mary’s Song” and “You Are In Love” inside an even bigger snowglobe.
Best line: “I’d die for you in the same way if I first saw your face.”
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“Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” (2022)
Taylor revisits the memory of her teenage self, with an adult sense of compassion. “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” comes on like a powerful sequel to “Dear John,” but when she sang about a similar story before, her tone was more straightforward anger and regret. This song is messier, more confused, more ambivalent, as she struggles to understand the brash, complex 19-year-old artist/superstar/mirrorball she used to be. As she reflects, “I would have stayed on my knees/And I damn sure never would’ve danced with the devil at 19/And the God’s honest truth is that the pain was heaven.”
Best line: “If I was some paint, did it splatter on a promising grown man?”
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“Mastermind” (2022)
The flip side of “Enchanted”: in this story Taylor is the chess master of love, plotting out every move in advance until her prey falls right into her logical trap. Love how she says, “Checkmate! I couldn’t lose.” Since Taylor recently revealed that the final scene of her “All Too Well” short film was inspired by Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas, “Mastermind” could be Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, as the grifter scheming to destroy Henry Fonda’s life. (The Swift/Stanwyck connections go so deep.)
Best line: “I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian because I care.”
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“Treacherous” (2012)
“Put your lips close to mine/As long as they don’t touch” – now there’s an entrance line. Taylor braves the ski slopes of love, with a seething acoustic guitar that finally detonates halfway though. A weird sonic detail: if you play this immediately after Joni Mitchell’s “People’s Parties,” the transition is almost frighteningly perfect.
Best line: “Nothing safe is worth the drive.”
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“Ronan” (2012)
A little-known charity single for cancer research, unlike anything else in her songbook. She wrote this about Ronan Thompson, a four-year-old Arizona boy who died of neuroblastoma, after she read his mom’s blog. She turned the blog posts into an eloquent ballad (crediting Maya Thompson as co-writer) and performed “Ronan” at the Stand Up to Cancer benefit. You might expect it to be manipulative and obvious; it isn’t. It’s emblematic of the kind of narrative she could keep doing for decades to come — an early run for her Folklore and Evermore character studies. She sings it with even more soul on Red (Taylor’s Version).
Best line: “What if the miracle was getting even one moment with you?”
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“Happiness” (2020)
The saddest song on her saddest album — so what else would she call it but “Happiness”? Taylor’s lifelong romance with The Great Gatsby pays off here, when she quotes Daisy Buchanan and sings, “I hope she’ll be a beautiful fool.” And “I haven’t met the new me yet” is a poignant line from a songwriter who’s collected so many New Mes over the years. She also sings about “the dress I wore at midnight” — bet that’s the same party dress she’s wearing in “The Moment I Knew,” a song about getting stood up on her 21st birthday. Taylor released this exactly ten years after that night, just in time for her 31st birthday. The lesson, as always: she plans everything.
Best line: “I pulled your body into mine every goddamn night/Now I get fake niceties.”
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“Safe and Sound,” With the Civil Wars (2012)
This hidden jewel took on a whole new luster after it became her blueprint for Folklore and Evermore. “Safe and Sound” ventures into rootsy folkie territory, on the Hunger Games soundtrack. She explores crevices in her voice she’d never opened up before, teaming up with the Civil Wars and producer T-Bone Burnett. The Swift-Burnett connection raises the question of how long it’ll take her to collaborate with Elvis Costello, a songwriter with whom she shares some fascinating affinities. At the very least, Tay should cover “New Lace Sleeves.”
Best line: “Don’t you dare look out your window, darling/Everything’s on fire.”
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“My Tears Ricochet” (2020)
What a ghostly scene: a spectre watches her funeral, haunting her enemies, friends, and lovers. “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace” — maybe not a huge surprise. One of her spookiest Goth Tay ballads, especially when she admits, “I still talk to you,” and the ghost choir adds, “When I’m screaming at the sky.”
Best line: “If I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake cursing my name?
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“Mean” (2010)
A banjo-core Tay-visceration of people who are mean, liars, pathetic, and/or alone in life, including the ones who live in big old cities. Always a live highlight on her early tours, showcasing her murderers’ row of a band, the Agency.
Best line: “Drunk and grumbling on about how I can’t sing.” Listen here.
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“I Knew You Were Trouble” (2012)
It slams like a lost Blondie hit, from somewhere between Parallel Lines and Eat to the Beat. The way she sings the word “drown-i-i-i-ing” alone makes it.
Best line: “He was long gone when he met me/And I realize the joke is on me.” Listen here.
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“Sweet Nothing” (2022)
It’s a long road through pop history from 1950s teen country star Brenda Lee chirping “Sweet Nothin’s” to the Velvet Underground chronicling street-punk existential despair in “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’.” But Taylor connects all the dots along the way. “Sweet Nothing” is her portrait of domestic bliss. Love the moment where she writes a poem on the way home and he marvels, “What a mind.” Like so many of her finest love songs, it’s about finding the courage to stop hiding behind distractions, and letting yourself be seen.
Best line: “Industry disrupters and soul deconstructers/And smooth-talking hucksters out-glad-handing each other.” -
“Tim McGraw” (2006)
We knew she was trouble when she walked in – or at least we should have guessed from her debut single. You couldn’t make this up – a nervy high school kid shows up with a country ballad she whipped together after math class one day, about slow dancing in the moonlight to the pickup truck radio: “When you think Tim McGraw/I hope you think of me.” Within a couple of years, she’s an even bigger star than McGraw is.
Best line: “He said the way my blue eyes shined/Put those Georgia stars to shame that night/I said, ‘That’s a lie.'” Listen here.
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“Ivy” (2020)
An ode to a forbidden extramarital crush, with Taylor raging, “It’s a fire, it’s a goddamn blaze in the dark, and you started it!” “Ivy” has weird musical echoes of the Grateful Dead — those Jerry Garcia-style guitar ripples, or the way the chorus leaps into that “goddamn” a la “Uncle John’s Band.” It shouldn’t be a surprise — Aaron Dessner and his brother Bryce masterminded a great 2015 tribute album, Day of the Dead. His guitar also goes full Garcia in “Cowboy Like Me.” So many invisible strings between Taylor and the Grateful Dead. Here’s looking forward to her full-on Deadhead era—imagine how great her American Beauty will be.
Best line: “The old widow goes to the stone very day/But I don’t, I just sit here and wait/Grieving for the living.”
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“Call It What You Want” (2017)
Always here for the Taylor castle metaphors. The warmest Rep electro-ballad, about how exotic it feels to give up worrying about judgy strangers and start living a damn life. “Call It What You Want” celebrates a mature relationship — the kind where you turn off your phone for hours at a time and pull down the shades and risk letting yourself get a little known.
Best line: “Not because he owns me / But ’cause he really knows me.” Listen here.
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“Better Man” (2021)
Taylor gave this one away to Little Big Town, who turned it into a massive 2016 country hit. “Better Man” came to loom large in her legend as a writer, so it was worth the wait to finally get her own proper version. “Better Man” hits even harder with Taylor wailing her tale of adult regret, confessing to the mirror, “The bravest thing I ever did was run.”
Best line: “I gave to you my best/And we both know you can’t say that.”
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“When Emma Falls In Love” (2023)
“She’s the kind of book that you can’t put down / Like if Cleopatra grew up in a small town”—now there’s a quintessential Swift heroine. A gorgeous Speak Now vault ballad that shows how great she’s always been at observing other girls. She envies the way everyone gazes at Emma, but she sees Emma clearer than anyone else does, wishing she could be her. In so many ways, she’s singing about her future self. (Emma’s not the only one who can make the bad guys good for a weekend.) “When Emma Falls In Love” has a strong “Drops of Jupiter” vibe, which makes sense since she did a groovy cover version on the Speak Now tour. All songs about women named “Emma” rule (it’s the law) and so do all songs about Cleopatra, so this is a flawless combo.
Best line: “She’s so New York when she’s in L.A.”
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“Bejeweled” (2022)
“Bejeweled” is full of late-night disco jitters, as Taylor sings about the the fear of stepping out onto the floor and putting her heart on display, until she takes the plunge because it’s scarier to think about *not* doing it. It sounds like this could be the neglected wife of “Tolerate It,” finally breaking free. (She boasts, “I polish up real nice,” as opposed to “I polish plates until they gleam and glisten.”) It’s got that “tears on the dance floor” vibe of “New Romantics,” except “New Romantics” was sung by a “we,” yet the singer of “Bejeweled” is feeling very alone indeed.
Best line: “Sapphire tears on my face/Sadness became my whole sky/Some guy said my aura’s moonstone just ‘cause he was high.”
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“Sparks Fly” (2010)
“Drop everything now! Meet me in the pouring rain!” Oh, this girl loves her precipitation scenes, but “Sparks Fly” really brings the thunder. It shows off her uncanny power to make a moment sound gauchely private and messily public at the same time. (Waxahatchee has another excellent song called “Sparks Fly” — no relation.)
Best line: “Just keep on keeping your eyes on me.” Listen here.
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“Now That We Don’t Talk” (2023)
After years of marveling at the great 1989 bonus tracks that didn’t make the album, it’s startling to hear these intense vault tunes that didn’t even make the cut as bonuses. But if Taylor combined the 1989 bonus/vault loosies into a 10-song album of their own, it would add up to 1989’s nastier, cattier, funnier evil sister. “Now That We Don’t Talk” shows off her acerbic wit, especially her staccato vocals when she snipes “it just ended” one petty syllable at a time. Funny to hear her drag “acid rock.” Poor Taylor—one minute you’re on a nice innocent yacht ride, next you’re trapped listening to Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service bootlegs.
Best line: “I don’t have to pretend I like acid rock/Or that I like to be on a mega-yacht / With important men who think important thoughts.”
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“22” (2012)
Approximately 22,000 times more fun than actually being 22. The best song about turning the double deuce since Neil Young’s “Powderfinger,” if not the Stratford 4’s “Telephone,” it’s also her first shameless disco trip, with that Nile Rodgers-style guitar flash. But the power move is that “uh oh” into the chorus – the oldest trick in the book, except she makes it sound brand new every time.
Best line: “This place is too crowded, too many cool kids.” Listen here.
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“Hits Different” (2022)
The bonus track from Midnights is a breezy departure from the rest of the album, with sun-kissed California rock guitar and wildly funny lines about why Taylor is your ultimate Argumentative Antithetical Dream Girl. “Hits Different” sounds like it could be Betty or James a couple years down the line, after one of them skips town like an asshole outlaw. “I never don’t cry at the bar” feels like the truth. But “I don’t need another metaphor” is the funniest lie in the song, since Taylor loves piling up metaphors even more than she loves crying in bars.
Best line: “Each bar plays ‘Our Song’/ Nothing has ever felt so wrong.”
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‘Slut!’ (2023)
“Slut!” is one of her most hard-hitting vault treasures, up there with “Nothing New” and “Is It Over Now?” It comes from the same place as “Blank Space,” or “Shake It Off,” but lets more of her anger show. As she explains in her new 1989 Prologue, “I had become the target of slut shaming.” She’s trying to trust in a new romance (“in a world of boys, he’s a gentleman”) but all too aware of the world’s misogynistic disapproval, noting, “I’ll pay the price, you won’t.” Yet she resolves, “If they call me a slut / It might be worth it for once.” It’s a sadly pained love song and a scathing satire at the same time, indexing ways that patriarchy corrupts the heart. Can you imagine if she’d dropped this song on people in 2014? But like so much of 1989, “Slut!” was truly ahead of its time.
Best line: “Being this young is art.”
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“Style” (2014)
Not always a subtle one, our Tay. This extremely 1986-sounding synth-pop groove is full of hushed-breath melodrama, where even the guy taking off his coat can feel like a plot twist. (Why would he keep his coat on? This is his apartment.) And the long-running songwriting badminton between her and Harry Allegedly is pop call-and-response the way it ought to be – no matter how much misery it might bring into their personal lives, for the rest of us it means one great tune after another.
Best line: “You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye/And I got that red lip classic thing that you like.” Listen here.
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“State of Grace” (2012)
She opens Red with one of her grandest love songs in arena-rock drag, and the U2 vibe makes sense since she’s also got a red guitar and the truth. The acoustic version was always a welcome bonus track on the expanded Red, but it sounds even more autumnal now on Taylor’s Version. If “State of Grace” is her U2 song, what’s the U2 song that sounds most like Taylor? Probably “All I Want Is You,” though you could make a strong case for “A Sort of Homecoming.”
Best line: “Up in your room and our slates are clean/Twin fire signs, four blue eyes.” Listen here.
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“Willow” (2020)
“Take my hand, wreck my plans, that’s my man” is a great hook from the songwriter who turns plan-wrecking into an art form. “Willow” is the perfect song to introduce Evermore, all rustic guitar and spooky romance, deep in the woods. Taylor really committed to the concept at the Grammys, singing “Willow” on the roof of a moss-covered cabin. In the video, she gazes at her reflection in a pool like Narcissus, and like she once sang, the narcissists love her. Heartbreak: the Nineties trend that always comes back strong. The live version in the Eras Tour movie turns this song into the terrifying horror movie it always deserved to be, a swirl of black capes and glowing orange orbs.
Best line: “Show me the places where the others gave you scars.”