My daughter Lily (6 yrs) is the biggest Swiftie I know. In honor of Taylor’s new album, which we listened to on the way to school this morning, we write about our five favorite Taylor Swift songs.
Did we pick any of your favorites? What did we miss?
LiLy’s picks
5. “I Knew You Were Trouble”
from Red (2012)
It makes me feel excited. I don’t know why it does.
Lyric:
“No apologies, he'll never see you cry
Pretends he doesn't know that he's the reason why
You're drowning”
4. “Love Story”
from Fearless (2008)
This Taylor Swift’s version of Romeo and Juliet. I like how at the beginning she seems calm but then she surprises you and the music gets bigger and louder.
Lyric:
“Romeo, save me,
they're trying to tell me how to feel
This love is difficult, but it's real”
3. “Lavender Haze”
from Midnights (2022)
It feels like dark and purple. I think that’s why she calls the album Midnights and the song “Lavender Haze.”
Lyric:
“All they keep asking me
Is if I'm gonna be your bride
The only kinda girl they see
Is a one-night or a wife”
2. “Bad Blood”
from 1989 (2014)
It feels like it’s fire, and in the video, it is fire. All the girls in the video are actually Taylor Swift’s friends. I like how in some of the parts she talks lower and then the beat becomes bigger and so does her voice.
Lyric:
“Band-aids don't fix bullet holes
You say sorry just for show
If you live like that, you live with ghosts”
1. “Look What You Made Me Do”
from Reputation (2017)
I like it because it’s dark and I like dark things. And I like the melody. I also like how whenever it has a big beat she talks and when the beat stops, she stops.
Lyric:
“But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time”
Caleb’s picks
5. “The Last Great American Dynasty”
from Folklore (2020)
I wasn’t paying enough attention to Taylor Swift until Folklore. The album came out when I was locked down during Covid, so I listened closer than I had previously. The entire collection of songs shook my perception of her (far more than “Shake It Off”). I was expecting self-indulgent pop cliché. Instead, I heard a meticulously crafted indie folk album with songwriting even stronger than that of her collaborators, including Bon Iver, the National, and Jack Antonoff, all of whom I adore.
I could have picked half the songs on this album, but I went with “The Last Great American Dynasty” because it applies the detail (e.g., “she stole the dog and dyed it a key lime green”) that has always made Taylor a great songwriter to an empathetic portrait of philanthropist and Standard Oil heiress, Rebekah Harkness. I love the image of Rebekah—and Taylor—riling Rhode Island royalty with champagne pool parties attended by Salvadore Dali and their “bitch pack friends from the city.”
Lyric:
“There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen
I had a marvelous time ruining everything”
4. “Tim McGraw”
from Taylor Swift (2006)
Before Taylor Swift, I found Eric Church. Rolling Stone made a big deal about him back when I used to care what Rolling Stone made a big deal about, and so I listened to Carolina and Chief on an iPod touch. One track rose above the rest. A nostalgia pixie stick called “Springsteen” in which Church remembers being 17 cruising in a jeep under the stars with a girl on his arm while the Boss sings “like a soundtrack to a July Saturday night.”
When I heard “Tim McGraw,” the first Taylor Swift song to catch my attention, I thought gosh ‘dern, she made Church’s “Springsteen” even better. Then I learned that she wrote “Tim McGraw” five years before the release of “Springsteen.” When she was fourteen years old. In a math class.
“Tim McGraw” is early Taylor at her best: songs about teenage love, lust, longing, and loss that make you feel like you’re fumbling on the backroads in the backseat of his Chevy truck. This song avoids the clunky abstraction that sours me on some of her other early work. Each line hits like Tyson in the 80s, an aged single-malt, or “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.” Even if she never wrote another verse, “Tim McGraw” would qualify Taylor Swift for the songwriting hall of fame.
Lyric:
“When you think happiness
I hope you think that little black dress
Think of my head on your chest
And my old faded blue jeans”
3. “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince”
from Lover (2019)
Taylor has always been a master of the coming-of-age Americana love drama; a lady-Springsteen with an even better ear for a hook. On Lover, and especially on this song, she combines what she does best thematically with post-Lorde delivery, Antonoff production, sad humor (“the damsels are depressed”), and the Swiftiest high school superlative in the yearbook.
Lyric:
“We're so sad, we paint the town blue
Voted most likely to run away with you”
2. “Style”
from 1989 (2014)
Many artists have gone from niche to pop (Fleetwood Mac, Metallica, Goo Goo Dolls, Black Eyed Peas), but none with as much style as Taylor on 1989. The album transformed Taylor Swift from a country pop star to the sun… a 2x1030 kg ball of nuclear fusion around which we all orbit.
And “Style” is my favorite song on the album. It combines Max Martin mathematical melody with Taylor’s insistence on meaning and grammar. It’s sexy and fun and makes me want to jump out of a giant cake wearing only sequins and gold.
Lyric:
“Midnight
You come and pick me up, no headlights
A long drive
Could end in burning flames or paradise”
1. “Betty”
from Folklore (2020)
Betty is the final song in Taylor’s teenage Rashomon love triangle. In it, we get the perspective of James, the 17-year-old boy (or girl?) who was busted by Inez for cheating on Betty. The character development is worthy of Jason Isbell or Craig Finn (my favorite songwriters), the melody is the squishy inside of freshly baked bread, and James’s fragmented self-awareness is pure seventeen. Consider his plea for forgiveness: “Slept next to her, but I dreamt of you all summer long.”
Lyric:
“I'm only seventeen, I don't know anything
But I know I miss you”