My cuts are all in the second half: the first two singles, "London Boy," "Afterglow," and "It's Nice to Have a Friend." I know people like "Afterglow," but that song just feels SO faceless to me. The rare Taylor song that makes me think "Any contemporary pop artist could have written that." "London Boy" and "ME!" are probably both bottom 3 Taylor songs for me.
Lover is a bottom two Taylor album with about an EP’s worth of great tracks (including the truly top tier Swift song, “The Archer”). It’s a perfectly adequate listen, but it doesn’t fill any niches for me that her other releases don’t fill better. Reputation rules and is such a weird album for anyone who generally likes Taylor to not like. Absolutely love that thing’s vibe.
There’s only a couple songs that feel like classic Taylor. Delicate, NYD, Getaway Car. But then there’s all the hip hop influenced songs that don’t feel like her at all and comes across as kinda cringey to me. Kinda like the song she did with T Pain, but at least that one is meant to be funny. End Game and a couple others are so dumb. I’ve come around to LWYMD and Ready For It. But there’s too many songs on there that are just totally not for me.
I Think He Knows, Paper Rings, and Death By a Thousand Cuts are all very high on my all time favorite T Swift list.
Track 1-10 of Lover + False God is an A level album worth of songs, and that's even acknowledging I'm not crazy about Miss Americana and I'm leaving off some decent second half stuff. And second half of Rep is similar - from Getaway Car on is excellent song after excellent song. Take those, So it Goes, Delicate, and whichever you prefer of Ready for It and LWYMMD (I feel like it really only needs one of the over the top wannabe banger ones) and you have an excellent album there too. Dress? Call it What You Want? Elite tier songs
Dress is so good. This would be my reputation, I don’t care much for LWYMMD and ITIDSB, but they’re good singles, I think the songs in a similar vein (Dancing, Don’t Blame Me, End Game) are among her worst. 1. Ready for It 2. Look What You Made Me Do 3. Call It What You Want 4. I Did Something Bad 5. Delicate 6. Getaway Car 7. King of My Heart 8. Dress 9. So It Goes 10. This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things 11. New Years Day Ready For It, Dress, Delicate, King of My Heart and Getaway Car are the true stunners for me.
Dancing With Our Hands Tied and Don’t Blame Me being the cuts!!! WHAT!!! Like everyone can like what they like and every opinion is valid and tastes are what they are but WHAT!!!!!
Don’t blame me might be my least favorite t swift song. I have hated since the first time I heard it.
Also bad. But “Don’t Blame Me” is just anonymous trash. I know a lot of people around here like it, this isn’t a new opinion I’ve expressed. It’s a bad song, I have a similar opinion about it as Craig does with “Afterglow”, feels cribbed from any number of mid 10’s pop records. Bad girl counterbalanced with religious imagery is generally always lame to my ears. I can be probably be convinced that I’ve never given “Dancing” much of a chance after my initial bought with the record. But I’ve gone back to “Don’t Blame Me” and still loathe at it, maybe even more so now.
just know that I’m mostly being over the top and don’t mean any harm. It’s kinda funny, because I agree about the bad girl/religious imagery 99.9% of the time (my hot take is that I think False God is one of the worst songs on Lover), but Don’t Blame Me would be my 0.1% exception. Maybe because it’s her best vocal performance recorded and live to date to my ears. It vaulted into my favorites on rep after the rep tour and I was elated it made it back on the Eras tour setlist, haha. I think you should give Dancing another try. She did all acoustic on the rep tour and it still held its own, but it’s some of my favorite instrumentation and programming in her pop catalog. The Getaway Car/Dancing duology about Hiddleston is such a great microcosm of storytelling of a rebound relationship that you both know won’t last.
Dont blame me is mid, it sounds like someone else I can’t put my finger on Dancing is a nice song but also is kinda boring. More w radiodead than not here, though I can’t fathom keeping I did something bad if we’re making cuts
I'm torn on "Don't Blame Me," a song I think is pretty trash lyrically (the trope I hate in that song is "love=drug addiction"; let's collectively agree to put a forever moratorium on that shit) but which is also total fire vocally, with some really satisfying dynamic buildup over the course of the song.