The Tortured Poets Department Speak Now Midnights Folklore Evermore Fearless 1989 Red The Life of a Showgirl Lover Taylor Swift Reputation I think the only difference here to my last ranking is Red and 1989 have swapped. They're pretty close for me and could easily switch at any time, Red has higher highs but is less consistent although Bad Blood is worse than anything on Red. I think I'd probably still put Red above 1989 if I had to choose.
Red 1989 Folklore Speak Now Fearless Reputation Evermore Lover Taylor Swift The Life of a Showgirl The Tortured Poets Department Midnights
Folklore Reputation Evermore 1989 Red Midnights The Tortured Poets Department Lover The Life of a Showgirl Speak Now Fearless Taylor Swift i think the top 6 i currently enjoy as full albums. tortured poets, lover, and showgirl have great songs but i basically never listen to the full thing if i can help it. speak now, fearless, and s/t are not really the type of music i listen to anymore but i look back on them fondly.
Folklore, Red, 1989 and reputation Lover, Speak Now, Fearless and Midnights Evermore, TTPD, Showgirl and s/t
1. Folklore 2. Evermore 3. Red 4. 1989 5. Lover 6. Speak Now 7. Reputation 8. Fearless 9. The Tortured Poets Department 10. Midnights 11. Taylor Swift 12. The Life of a Showgirl
1. Folklore 2. 1989 3. Evermore 4. Red 5. Lover 6. Reputation 7. The Tortured Poets Department 8. Fearless 9. Speak Now 10. Midnights 11. Taylor Swift 12. The Life of a Showgirl
Speaking of low quality merch… Fans Blast Taylor Swift for “Cheap, Misleading” Merch After $45 Towel Advertised as ‘100% Cotton’ Arrives as 100% Acrylic
I feel like her writing quality has gone down but it's an intentional choice and I'm just not a fan of that. It really struck me when she had that quote about if you're talking about the album or her then it's working. That just feels really cheap and I feel like sometimes she puts in these stupid lyrics knowing that they're stupid and are going to garner headlines or people talking and it's really doing a disservice to her songwriting. Like I tolerated the sexy baby line and I do think as sort of weird and jarring as it is I get what she's saying. "We looked fire" is dumb. "She didn't do it legitly" sounds dumb She can do better than that and it's frustrating as a fan
Even though it’s a clunky couple of lines, the lyric in “Anti-Hero”: “Did you hear my covert narcissism/I disguise as altruism/Like some kind of congressman? (Tale as old as time)” is way more insightful and an attempt at some kind of political commentary than anything on here
I think she got a little high on her own supply as a songwriter in the folklore/evermore era, leading to wordier, clunkier songwriting on subsequent albums. I think she’s still a great songwriter, but there are way more groaner lines for me on the last few albums than on anything she did up through 2020.
My biggest issue, which happens a LOT in the second disc of TTPD, is not necessarily with the wordiness itself, BUT that her vocals don't work with the music. You can tell that Aaron sent her mostly complete music and she just kinda forces lyrics over that music without it really flowing well or melodically meshing. On the flipside, you can tell she builds the music from scratch with Jack, so the twists and turns from the music and the lyrics compliment each other. The verses in How Did It End are one of the worst offenders, but there's a lot on that disc. I feel it here most obviously on "Eldest Daughter"
What would be the Taylor Swift Canon songs at this point? Tim McGraw and Our Song Love Story and You Belong With Me Mine, Enchanted, and Long Live Red, 22, All Too Well Blank Space, Style, and Shake It Off Ready For It and New Year’s Day Death By A Thousand Cuts and The Archer Exile and August Champagne Problems Anti-Hero I Can Do It With A Broken Heart Ruin the Friendship I guess Don’t really feel like this reflects how I’d make it look for me, but maybe general consensus? Idk. Very tough to do. Feels like it leans too single heavy at points, but also hard to argue against most of those singles imo.
It’s interesting that she’s gotten to this point, because that’s just totally not the version of songwriting she cut her teeth doing. Like, people can say what they want about the Nashville country music scene, but those writers rooms are really after precise, economical songwriting. And that’s almost exclusively what you get on her first couple albums, especially the Liz Rose stuff. Speak Now, the track lengths balloon out significantly, but she’s still writing in that Nashville style. And then on Red and 1989 she teams up with Max Martin, who prizes a similar economy of writing for different reasons. I don’t think it’s until Jack becomes her go-to guy that you really start to hear that “fit as many words into this part of the song as possible” habit. Which, I don’t think that approach to writing is bad on its face, but I do feel like there are songs where she’s precise about it (“Death by a Thousand Cuts” is a good example) and songs where it just feels like we got the rough draft (“Eldest Daughter,” which I mostly like, but is frustrating because parts of it seem like she didn’t quite figure out what she wanted to say).
1. Folklore 2. Evermore 3. 1989 4. Reputation 5. Midnights 6. Red 7. Lover 8. The Life of a Showgirl 9. Fearless 10. Speak Now 11. The Tortured Poets Department 12. Taylor Swift Never got into the bottom four so hard to compare and contrast.
1. 1989 2. Reputation 3. The Tortured Poets Department 4. Folklore 5. Evermore 6. Red 7. Speak Now 8. Fearless 9. Midnights 10. The Life of a Showgirl 11. Taylor Swift 12. Lover DEFINITIVE
I like when someone drops a list where my response is just sheer bafflement -- as in "I cannot fathom the internal logic of this ranking." Anyway, @dorfmac just did that.
Haha I knew my list would not make sense to most of this forum. I can offer clarification in the sense that I don’t penalize for bloat. The more the merrier.