Rating some Taylor Swift songs
( Skip to ranked list.)
I'm a late convert to Taylor Swift: when the Fearless singles were being played everywhere in 2008/9, her style was almost but not quite to my taste; Speak Now completely passed me by; the goat video captured the extent of my interest in Red.
But after the release of 1989, I was swept up so strongly by the marketing hype and by the quality of Blank Space that I capitalistically enjoyed a CD purchase. I was largely disappointed by the other tracks on the album, but, throwing good money after bad, I sporadically started buying the old Old Taylor albums, completing my set* during the disappointment engendered by Reputation. Now I listen to little else.
*The main ones, not the Christmas album or deluxe editions or EP's or whatever. This post only covers the songs that you'd get if you made the simplest purchases at JB Hifi.
Indulging my semi-completionist instincts, I rate each song and album out of 10 below*. While most music writers pay a lot of attention to lyrics - I suppose it is something that a critic can evaluate in a kind of objective way, taking the basic musical style as given - I often don't hear lyrics, or maybe I hear but don't process them, and my reaction to music is rather a subjective response to the surface-level sound and style. But sometimes I do hear and retain lyrics, and in those cases, it will affect my rating of the song. You may not always know what my criteria were for a particular song, but I knew, when I made the rating.
*MAD is mean absolute deviation.
(YouTube links are supposed to work at the time of writing, but I don't know if they'll stay live, or if there are any geo-restrictions. Some of them are quite recent uploads by UMG.)
Taylor Swift
Swift affects a country southern twang on this album, which on the one hand is interesting, and on the other hand isn't interesting because people usually sing in some standard accent, and country's standard accent is the southern twang.
I was expecting little from what were apparently her pure country days, but I really liked it from my first listen. The sound is a good mix of country and pop: enough country to make the pop sound interesting, but not so much that it sounds like my memories of scrambling to change the radio station because Saturday Night Country had started on the ABC.
Tim McGraw
I Googled Tim McGraw, and it turns out that he's a famous country singer who wears a country singer hat. 8.6/10
Picture to Burn
6.5/10
Teardrops on My Guitar
9/10
A Place in This World
I'm listening to the album as I'm typing this up, and it's just so strong. 8/10
Cold as You
I'll like almost any song with a piano in it, and the rest of the song delivers on the promise of the piano intro. 8.5/10
The Outside
Even the boring songs are pretty good. 7/10
Tied Together With a Smile
This song ends with a fade-out! 7.5/10
Stay Beautiful
I am simple and like this simple song. 8/10
Should’ve Said No
Most of the songs I really like on this album were co-written with Liz Rose, but Swift has sole writing credit for this song, and it's one of her best ever. 10/10
Mary’s Song (Oh My My My)
This song is happy and I love it. I often don't hear lyrics when I'm listening to music, but I hear these ones. 9.7/10
Our Song
6/10
I’m Only Me When I’m With You
Judging by the Wikipedia article, I bought the 2008 re-issue of this album, whose CD contains four bonus tracks. It feels incorrect to include bonus tracks in this post, but I own them, and Perfectly Good Heart makes my top 45, so in they go. I'll omit the bizarre pop version of Teardrops. 6.5/10
Invisible
This is pretty close to a great song, but is let down too much by the chorus, whose sound doesn't quite doesn't quite agree with my ears. 7/10
Perfectly Good Heart
8/10
Mean ± MAD: 7.9 ± 1.0
Holistic score: 9
Fearless
As best I can infer from file creation dates cross-referenced with bank statements, I bought Fearless on a whim in July 2015. I suspect I listened to it once and then forgot about it.
At some point post-Reputation - it took a while - my brain acquired the taste for this album, and now I'm in a curious position where I quite like a lot of the songs on it individually, while retaining a nagging feeling that the album's a bit samey. I don't have the musical vocabulary or sophistication to describe it precisely.
Fearless
The opening and title track defines the samey songs. 8/10
Fifteen
This song is so squarely aimed at a demographic I'm not in, I feel a little strange enjoying it so much. But what am I to do? Often, when it's playing in my head, my brain switches to Listen to What the Man Said at the end of the chorus, at the start of the next G chord. One lyrical aspect I find interesting is the slow, drawn-out 'gonna'. 10/10
Love Story
Great song, great key change. 9.6/10
Hey Stephen
One of the samey songs. 7.5/10
White Horse
There's a piano bit in this song that's the same as in Bruce Springsteen's New York City Serenade, or at least recent-ish live versions thereof: comparison. 8/10
You Belong With Me
There must have been a day when I actually heard the opening lyrics for the first time, but by then I was so hooked on the chorus that I just rolled with it. 9.5/10
Breathe
Samey song? 8/10
Tell Me Why
Ain't nothin' but a heartache Samey song? 7/10
You’re Not Sorry
Has piano, gets my approval. 8.3/10
The Way I Loved You
Samey song? A lyrical point: the rhyme (such as it is) for the line 'All my single friends are jealous' is 'I couldn't ask for anything better', and the 'better' comes half a beat later than expected. It works; just a moment of small tension, quickly resolved. 7/10
Forever & Always
Samey song? 7/10
The Best Day
😭😭😭 My rating scale is calibrated so that only the top 17 songs are at or above 9; that is the rule and I cannot change it. 8.9/10
Change
And we'll sing Halleluuuujaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaah. 8.7/10
Mean ± MAD: 8.3 ± 0.8
Holistic score: 7.5
Speak Now
This album's up and down, but the ups are high.
Mine
There are some nice harmonies in the Hold on lines in the final 40 seconds. 7/10
Sparks Fly
Drop everything now. 9.4/10
Back to December
Just top-notch. 10/10
Speak Now
It's a little surprising that she named the album after this. You wish it was me, don't you. 8/10
Dear John
John Mayer changing chess rules, SMH. The lyrical device of using a word soon followed by its opposite - a device which tickles my brain - is employed in the opening line, Long were the nights when my days once revolved around you. 9.2/10
Mean
In my occasional skimming of other people's lists, this song is routinely rated highly, but the mean just falls flat for me; packs no emotional punch at all. 6.5/10
The Story of Us
Next chapter. 6.5/10
Never Grow Up
About 20 seconds from the end, there's a bit of static in the left audio channel. 8/10
Enchanted
I really like the way the Please don't be in love with someone else bit plays low in the right channel and then gets repeated high in the left channel. 8.5/10
Better Than Revenge
5/10
Innocent
8/10
Haunted
I love the chorus enough to have tried my hand at editing the song in Audacity and tuneR so that it ends in a fade-out. My ear detects one slight slip in the re-cut track (the two other cut points being unnoticeable), but the extra choruses make it worthy enough to put my edit in my Rhythmbox playlist. At first it felt like I was trespassing on Taylor's artistic integrity to put a different version of her song into the album folder, but I'm fine with it now. 9/10 (original), 9.1/10 (my edit)
Last Kiss
8.5/10
Long Live
Just another great song to round out the album. 9.1/10
Mean ± MAD: 8.1 ± 1.1
Holistic score: 9
Red
I bought Red a day after listening to 1989, and I liked it from the get-go. It remains my favourite Swift album.
State Of Grace
I like every track on Red, and it opens with this incredibly solid bit of pop rock. A bit of the production that I like starts 36 seconds from the end, when the chorus, somewhat sythesised(? I don't know the right word) starts playing faintly in the background of the right audio channel. 9/10
Red
9/10
Treacherous
Weakest track on the album? Just takes a bit to get going. 7/10
I Knew You Were Trouble
Once upon a time, a few mistakes ago is a good opening line. And when I fell hard, you took a step back / Without me is also a good line with a nice little play on words. The goat video was the first time I'd posted about Taylor Swift on Facebook. In my head I'd had the idea that the three Max-Martin-and-Shellback songs were the weakest and least interesting part of this album, but I've changed my mind. 8/10
All Too Well
All Too Well is a contender for my favourite song of all time, and it's certainly my favourite Swift song. Your mother's telling stories about you on the tee-ball team / You told me about your past thinking your future was me is a good line that uses the word-and-its-opposite device. The bridge is great. You call me up again just to break me like a promise is a nice little play on words. The subsequent ebb and flow is magnificent. But you keep my old scarf form that very first week / 'Cos it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me.
I recently saw a comment on Reddit saying that All Too Well is "by far a fan favorite". I gradually reached the same opinion independently of the fandom, which makes me want to believe that there's some objective sense in which this is Taylor's best song.
But I have trouble formalising the idea. My best try is that, in a sort of reflective equilibrium reached after listening closely to many Taylor Swift songs, a plurality of people in the relevant cultures and demographics will decide that All Too Well is their favourite. This framing shows the whole process as as much about the commonalities of Taylor Swift fans as about the inherent quality of the song itself, and perhaps it should have been obvious that the two are inextricably linked. 11/10
22
I can't quite take the opening lines seriously, but this has the best Martin/Shellback chorus on the album. 8/10
I Almost Do
8/10
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
I heard this song when it was released and was not encouraged to buy the album, but my enjoyment of the rest of the latter since 2014 means that I've ended up listening to it a lot, and there's a fun pop song underneath the lyrics. And you would hide away and find your peace of mind / With some indie record that's much cooler than mine. 7.5/10
Stay Stay Stay
I enjoy the sibilance in one of the overlaid tracks in the right channel near the end. 7.5/10
The Last Time
7.5/10
Holy Ground
8/10
Sad Beautiful Tragic
8/10
The Lucky One
Now it’s big black cars and Riviera views / And your lover in the foyer doesn't even know you.... / They say you bought a bunch of land somewhere / Chose the rose garden over Madison Square. 8/10
Everything Has Changed
Happy chorus. 8.4/10
Starlight
7.5/10
Begin Again
You said you never met one girl who / Had as many James Taylor records as you / But I do. Here's a video of James Taylor and Taylor Swift singing Fire and Rain. 9.5/10
Mean ± MAD: 8.2 ± 0.7
Holistic score: 10
1989
Where it all began! I may have felt like I'd been duped by hype machine, but I genuinely enjoyed the way half my Twitter feed came together to talk about Taylor Swift for a while, and it was fun to be a part of it. By 2017 published and tweeted opinions on the singer had become viciously polarised on political grounds, but 2014 was a more joyous time.
Welcome To New York
Every now and then I play 1989 start to finish, just to see if my brain has clicked in to this bland modern pop that wasn't released in the 1990's. It has not. 4.5/10
Blank Space
I loved this song from the first drum beat (is it gated reverb?). It was also the gateway to this LJ post, written several years later, and that is something. 10/10
Style
Bland. 6/10
Out Of The Woods
I think of this song as distilling pure pop - repetition of a phrase over a chord progression; this one works. 8/10
All You Had To Do Was Stay
7/10
Shake It Off
Blaaaaaaand. Its ubiquity in 2014-15 didn't manage to make me actively like it, but I do tolerate it better than I did at first. 5/10
I Wish You Would
You know there is actually some decent pop on this album. But when the song's over, I'll forget it quickly again. 7/10
Bad Blood
🤔 A curious mix of catchy hooks and... meh. 7/10
Wildest Dreams
Say you'll see me a-gain has a mis-stressed syllable. 8/10
How You Get the Girl
6.5/10
This Love
At times, I've had a lot of earwax deep in my ears (occasionally to the point of blocking an ear entirely, at which point I take myself to the doctor), and my wild guess is that something in the frequencies of this song is resonant with the wax, because every time it plays into my headphones, my left ear does this sort-of popping thing; I don't know how to describe it. I think there are other songs that do this as well, but I've never made a note of them. If I swap the left and right channels, it's still only my left ear that "pops", but it pops much less frequently. 8/10
I Know Places
6.5/10
Clean
6.5/10
Mean ± MAD: 6.9 ± 1.0
Holistic score: 6
Reputation
I didn't buy this album, not wishing to incentivise the production of songs like the first couple of singles. Sometime recently I learned that UMG had put all of the Reputation songs on YouTube and had also helpfully made them into a playlist. I listened to it hoping that the album songs might be better than the singles, but there's not much there.
...Ready for It?
The chorus is a good pre-chorus; where I expect some rousing chorus to follow, there's only the let-down of the Are you ready for it? and that ghastly bass noise. Let the games begin has a mis-stressed syllable. 4.5/10
End Game
4/10
I Did Something Bad
Why does the sound go in and out? Promising verses, bad chorus. [pigeon meme] Is this modern pop? They're burning all the witches even if is delivered staccato, with equal stress on each syllable, which is one of the more interesting things about this album. 3.5/10
Don't Blame Me
Unpromising verses, great chorus; an inversion of the Reputation formula. 8/10
Delicate
Handsome, you're a mansion with a view has a mis-stressed syllable. 7/10
Look What You Made Me Do
The (great) end of the video can't rescue that woeful chorus. 3.5/10
So It Goes...
Basically I don't like a lot of choruses on Reputation. On the plus side, seeing this title again while editing has reminded me of the Billy Joel song. 4/10
Gorgeous
6.5/10
Getaway Car
In amongst this wasteland, a great pop song that perfectly hits my music tastes. The 'met me' in the first two 'first met me's is wondrous, and my only complaint is that Swift slightly elongated the short vowel on its final repetition. 10/10
King of My Heart
This starts so well, but quickly dashes my briefly high expectations. 4.5/10
Dancing with Our Hands Tied
I don't like the chorus. 4/10
Dress
5.5/10
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
This is fun in a similar way to We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, and it makes sense to me that Taylor's mashing them up for the Reputation tour. 7/10
Call It What You Want
7/10
New Year's Day
No doubt it's a terrific communal moment when she sings this in concert. It ends in a fade-out! 8/10
Mean ± MAD: 5.8 ± 1.7
Holistic score: 4
Ranked list
It's noticeable that there is precisely one song from each album in my top six. This suggests a systematic error in my ratings - faced with the difficulty of comparing 85 songs against one another, I've instead compared songs within each album and then sent my favourites to the top. If Fifteen didn't exist, would I have given Love Story 10/10? I can't rule it out, and I suspect that it's the big Fearless singles that are most likely to have been unfairly demoted by my brain taking short-cuts.
Rk
/10.0
Song
Album
1
11.0
All Too Well
Red
=2
10.0
Should’ve Said No
TS
=2
10.0
Fifteen
F
=2
10.0
Back to December
SN
=2
10.0
Blank Space
1989
=2
10.0
Getaway Car
Rep.
7
9.7
Mary’s Song (Oh My My My)
TS
8
9.6
Love Story
F
=9
9.5
You Belong With Me
F
=9
9.5
Begin Again
Red
11
9.4
Sparks Fly
SN
12
9.2
Dear John
SN
13
9.1
Long Live
SN
=14
9.0
Teardrops on My Guitar
TS
=14
9.0
Haunted
SN
=14
9.0
State Of Grace
Red
=14
9.0
Red
Red
18
8.9
The Best Day
F
19
8.7
Change
F
20
8.6
Tim McGraw
TS
=21
8.5
Cold as You
TS
=21
8.5
Enchanted
SN
=21
8.5
Last Kiss
SN
24
8.4
Everything Has Changed
Red
25
8.3
You’re Not Sorry
F
=26
8.0
A Place in This World
TS
=26
8.0
Stay Beautiful
TS
=26
8.0
Perfectly Good Heart
TS
=26
8.0
Fearless
F
=26
8.0
White Horse
F
=26
8.0
Breathe
F
=26
8.0
Speak Now
SN
=26
8.0
Never Grow Up
SN
=26
8.0
Innocent
SN
=26
8.0
I Knew You Were Trouble
Red
=26
8.0
22
Red
=26
8.0
I Almost Do
Red
=26
8.0
Holy Ground
Red
=26
8.0
Sad Beautiful Tragic
Red
=26
8.0
The Lucky One
Red
=26
8.0
Out Of The Woods
1989
=26
8.0
Wildest Dreams
1989
=26
8.0
This Love
1989
=26
8.0
Don't Blame Me
Rep.
=26
8.0
New Year's Day
Rep.
=46
7.5
Tied Together With a Smile
TS
=46
7.5
Hey Stephen
F
=46
7.5
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
Red
=46
7.5
Stay Stay Stay
Red
=46
7.5
The Last Time
Red
=46
7.5
Starlight
Red
=52
7.0
The Outside
TS
=52
7.0
Invisible
TS
=52
7.0
Tell Me Why
F
=52
7.0
The Way I Loved You
F
=52
7.0
Forever & Always
F
=52
7.0
Mine
SN
=52
7.0
Treacherous
Red
=52
7.0
All You Had To Do Was Stay
1989
=52
7.0
I Wish You Would
1989
=52
7.0
Bad Blood
1989
=52
7.0
Delicate
Rep.
=52
7.0
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Rep.
=52
7.0
Call It What You Want
Rep.
=65
6.5
Picture to Burn
TS
=65
6.5
I’m Only Me When I’m With You
TS
=65
6.5
Mean
SN
=65
6.5
The Story of Us
SN
=65
6.5
How You Get the Girl
1989
=65
6.5
I Know Places
1989
=65
6.5
Clean
1989
=65
6.5
Gorgeous
Rep.
=73
6.0
Our Song
TS
=73
6.0
Style
1989
75
5.5
Dress
Rep.
=76
5.0
Better Than Revenge
SN
=76
5.0
Shake It Off
1989
=78
4.5
Welcome To New York
1989
=78
4.5
...Ready for It?
Rep.
=78
4.5
King of My Heart
Rep.
=81
4.0
End Game
Rep.
=81
4.0
So It Goes...
Rep.
=81
4.0
Dancing with Our Hands Tied
Rep.
=84
3.5
I Did Something Bad
Rep.
=84
3.5
Look What You Made Me Do
Rep.
I'm a late convert to Taylor Swift: when the Fearless singles were being played everywhere in 2008/9, her style was almost but not quite to my taste; Speak Now completely passed me by; the goat video captured the extent of my interest in Red.
But after the release of 1989, I was swept up so strongly by the marketing hype and by the quality of Blank Space that I capitalistically enjoyed a CD purchase. I was largely disappointed by the other tracks on the album, but, throwing good money after bad, I sporadically started buying the old Old Taylor albums, completing my set* during the disappointment engendered by Reputation. Now I listen to little else.
*The main ones, not the Christmas album or deluxe editions or EP's or whatever. This post only covers the songs that you'd get if you made the simplest purchases at JB Hifi.
Indulging my semi-completionist instincts, I rate each song and album out of 10 below*. While most music writers pay a lot of attention to lyrics - I suppose it is something that a critic can evaluate in a kind of objective way, taking the basic musical style as given - I often don't hear lyrics, or maybe I hear but don't process them, and my reaction to music is rather a subjective response to the surface-level sound and style. But sometimes I do hear and retain lyrics, and in those cases, it will affect my rating of the song. You may not always know what my criteria were for a particular song, but I knew, when I made the rating.
*MAD is mean absolute deviation.
(YouTube links are supposed to work at the time of writing, but I don't know if they'll stay live, or if there are any geo-restrictions. Some of them are quite recent uploads by UMG.)
Taylor Swift
Swift affects a country southern twang on this album, which on the one hand is interesting, and on the other hand isn't interesting because people usually sing in some standard accent, and country's standard accent is the southern twang.
I was expecting little from what were apparently her pure country days, but I really liked it from my first listen. The sound is a good mix of country and pop: enough country to make the pop sound interesting, but not so much that it sounds like my memories of scrambling to change the radio station because Saturday Night Country had started on the ABC.
Tim McGraw
I Googled Tim McGraw, and it turns out that he's a famous country singer who wears a country singer hat. 8.6/10
Picture to Burn
6.5/10
Teardrops on My Guitar
9/10
A Place in This World
I'm listening to the album as I'm typing this up, and it's just so strong. 8/10
Cold as You
I'll like almost any song with a piano in it, and the rest of the song delivers on the promise of the piano intro. 8.5/10
The Outside
Even the boring songs are pretty good. 7/10
Tied Together With a Smile
This song ends with a fade-out! 7.5/10
Stay Beautiful
I am simple and like this simple song. 8/10
Should’ve Said No
Most of the songs I really like on this album were co-written with Liz Rose, but Swift has sole writing credit for this song, and it's one of her best ever. 10/10
Mary’s Song (Oh My My My)
This song is happy and I love it. I often don't hear lyrics when I'm listening to music, but I hear these ones. 9.7/10
Our Song
6/10
I’m Only Me When I’m With You
Judging by the Wikipedia article, I bought the 2008 re-issue of this album, whose CD contains four bonus tracks. It feels incorrect to include bonus tracks in this post, but I own them, and Perfectly Good Heart makes my top 45, so in they go. I'll omit the bizarre pop version of Teardrops. 6.5/10
Invisible
This is pretty close to a great song, but is let down too much by the chorus, whose sound doesn't quite doesn't quite agree with my ears. 7/10
Perfectly Good Heart
8/10
Mean ± MAD: 7.9 ± 1.0
Holistic score: 9
Fearless
As best I can infer from file creation dates cross-referenced with bank statements, I bought Fearless on a whim in July 2015. I suspect I listened to it once and then forgot about it.
At some point post-Reputation - it took a while - my brain acquired the taste for this album, and now I'm in a curious position where I quite like a lot of the songs on it individually, while retaining a nagging feeling that the album's a bit samey. I don't have the musical vocabulary or sophistication to describe it precisely.
Fearless
The opening and title track defines the samey songs. 8/10
Fifteen
This song is so squarely aimed at a demographic I'm not in, I feel a little strange enjoying it so much. But what am I to do? Often, when it's playing in my head, my brain switches to Listen to What the Man Said at the end of the chorus, at the start of the next G chord. One lyrical aspect I find interesting is the slow, drawn-out 'gonna'. 10/10
Love Story
Great song, great key change. 9.6/10
Hey Stephen
One of the samey songs. 7.5/10
White Horse
There's a piano bit in this song that's the same as in Bruce Springsteen's New York City Serenade, or at least recent-ish live versions thereof: comparison. 8/10
You Belong With Me
There must have been a day when I actually heard the opening lyrics for the first time, but by then I was so hooked on the chorus that I just rolled with it. 9.5/10
Breathe
Samey song? 8/10
Tell Me Why
Ain't nothin' but a heartache Samey song? 7/10
You’re Not Sorry
Has piano, gets my approval. 8.3/10
The Way I Loved You
Samey song? A lyrical point: the rhyme (such as it is) for the line 'All my single friends are jealous' is 'I couldn't ask for anything better', and the 'better' comes half a beat later than expected. It works; just a moment of small tension, quickly resolved. 7/10
Forever & Always
Samey song? 7/10
The Best Day
😭😭😭 My rating scale is calibrated so that only the top 17 songs are at or above 9; that is the rule and I cannot change it. 8.9/10
Change
And we'll sing Halleluuuujaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaah. 8.7/10
Mean ± MAD: 8.3 ± 0.8
Holistic score: 7.5
Speak Now
This album's up and down, but the ups are high.
Mine
There are some nice harmonies in the Hold on lines in the final 40 seconds. 7/10
Sparks Fly
Drop everything now. 9.4/10
Back to December
Just top-notch. 10/10
Speak Now
It's a little surprising that she named the album after this. You wish it was me, don't you. 8/10
Dear John
John Mayer changing chess rules, SMH. The lyrical device of using a word soon followed by its opposite - a device which tickles my brain - is employed in the opening line, Long were the nights when my days once revolved around you. 9.2/10
Mean
In my occasional skimming of other people's lists, this song is routinely rated highly, but the mean just falls flat for me; packs no emotional punch at all. 6.5/10
The Story of Us
Next chapter. 6.5/10
Never Grow Up
About 20 seconds from the end, there's a bit of static in the left audio channel. 8/10
Enchanted
I really like the way the Please don't be in love with someone else bit plays low in the right channel and then gets repeated high in the left channel. 8.5/10
Better Than Revenge
5/10
Innocent
8/10
Haunted
I love the chorus enough to have tried my hand at editing the song in Audacity and tuneR so that it ends in a fade-out. My ear detects one slight slip in the re-cut track (the two other cut points being unnoticeable), but the extra choruses make it worthy enough to put my edit in my Rhythmbox playlist. At first it felt like I was trespassing on Taylor's artistic integrity to put a different version of her song into the album folder, but I'm fine with it now. 9/10 (original), 9.1/10 (my edit)
Last Kiss
8.5/10
Long Live
Just another great song to round out the album. 9.1/10
Mean ± MAD: 8.1 ± 1.1
Holistic score: 9
Red
I bought Red a day after listening to 1989, and I liked it from the get-go. It remains my favourite Swift album.
State Of Grace
I like every track on Red, and it opens with this incredibly solid bit of pop rock. A bit of the production that I like starts 36 seconds from the end, when the chorus, somewhat sythesised(? I don't know the right word) starts playing faintly in the background of the right audio channel. 9/10
Red
9/10
Treacherous
Weakest track on the album? Just takes a bit to get going. 7/10
I Knew You Were Trouble
Once upon a time, a few mistakes ago is a good opening line. And when I fell hard, you took a step back / Without me is also a good line with a nice little play on words. The goat video was the first time I'd posted about Taylor Swift on Facebook. In my head I'd had the idea that the three Max-Martin-and-Shellback songs were the weakest and least interesting part of this album, but I've changed my mind. 8/10
All Too Well
All Too Well is a contender for my favourite song of all time, and it's certainly my favourite Swift song. Your mother's telling stories about you on the tee-ball team / You told me about your past thinking your future was me is a good line that uses the word-and-its-opposite device. The bridge is great. You call me up again just to break me like a promise is a nice little play on words. The subsequent ebb and flow is magnificent. But you keep my old scarf form that very first week / 'Cos it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me.
I recently saw a comment on Reddit saying that All Too Well is "by far a fan favorite". I gradually reached the same opinion independently of the fandom, which makes me want to believe that there's some objective sense in which this is Taylor's best song.
But I have trouble formalising the idea. My best try is that, in a sort of reflective equilibrium reached after listening closely to many Taylor Swift songs, a plurality of people in the relevant cultures and demographics will decide that All Too Well is their favourite. This framing shows the whole process as as much about the commonalities of Taylor Swift fans as about the inherent quality of the song itself, and perhaps it should have been obvious that the two are inextricably linked. 11/10
22
I can't quite take the opening lines seriously, but this has the best Martin/Shellback chorus on the album. 8/10
I Almost Do
8/10
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
I heard this song when it was released and was not encouraged to buy the album, but my enjoyment of the rest of the latter since 2014 means that I've ended up listening to it a lot, and there's a fun pop song underneath the lyrics. And you would hide away and find your peace of mind / With some indie record that's much cooler than mine. 7.5/10
Stay Stay Stay
I enjoy the sibilance in one of the overlaid tracks in the right channel near the end. 7.5/10
The Last Time
7.5/10
Holy Ground
8/10
Sad Beautiful Tragic
8/10
The Lucky One
Now it’s big black cars and Riviera views / And your lover in the foyer doesn't even know you.... / They say you bought a bunch of land somewhere / Chose the rose garden over Madison Square. 8/10
Everything Has Changed
Happy chorus. 8.4/10
Starlight
7.5/10
Begin Again
You said you never met one girl who / Had as many James Taylor records as you / But I do. Here's a video of James Taylor and Taylor Swift singing Fire and Rain. 9.5/10
Mean ± MAD: 8.2 ± 0.7
Holistic score: 10
1989
Where it all began! I may have felt like I'd been duped by hype machine, but I genuinely enjoyed the way half my Twitter feed came together to talk about Taylor Swift for a while, and it was fun to be a part of it. By 2017 published and tweeted opinions on the singer had become viciously polarised on political grounds, but 2014 was a more joyous time.
Welcome To New York
Every now and then I play 1989 start to finish, just to see if my brain has clicked in to this bland modern pop that wasn't released in the 1990's. It has not. 4.5/10
Blank Space
I loved this song from the first drum beat (is it gated reverb?). It was also the gateway to this LJ post, written several years later, and that is something. 10/10
Style
Bland. 6/10
Out Of The Woods
I think of this song as distilling pure pop - repetition of a phrase over a chord progression; this one works. 8/10
All You Had To Do Was Stay
7/10
Shake It Off
Blaaaaaaand. Its ubiquity in 2014-15 didn't manage to make me actively like it, but I do tolerate it better than I did at first. 5/10
I Wish You Would
You know there is actually some decent pop on this album. But when the song's over, I'll forget it quickly again. 7/10
Bad Blood
🤔 A curious mix of catchy hooks and... meh. 7/10
Wildest Dreams
Say you'll see me a-gain has a mis-stressed syllable. 8/10
How You Get the Girl
6.5/10
This Love
At times, I've had a lot of earwax deep in my ears (occasionally to the point of blocking an ear entirely, at which point I take myself to the doctor), and my wild guess is that something in the frequencies of this song is resonant with the wax, because every time it plays into my headphones, my left ear does this sort-of popping thing; I don't know how to describe it. I think there are other songs that do this as well, but I've never made a note of them. If I swap the left and right channels, it's still only my left ear that "pops", but it pops much less frequently. 8/10
I Know Places
6.5/10
Clean
6.5/10
Mean ± MAD: 6.9 ± 1.0
Holistic score: 6
Reputation
I didn't buy this album, not wishing to incentivise the production of songs like the first couple of singles. Sometime recently I learned that UMG had put all of the Reputation songs on YouTube and had also helpfully made them into a playlist. I listened to it hoping that the album songs might be better than the singles, but there's not much there.
...Ready for It?
The chorus is a good pre-chorus; where I expect some rousing chorus to follow, there's only the let-down of the Are you ready for it? and that ghastly bass noise. Let the games begin has a mis-stressed syllable. 4.5/10
End Game
4/10
I Did Something Bad
Why does the sound go in and out? Promising verses, bad chorus. [pigeon meme] Is this modern pop? They're burning all the witches even if is delivered staccato, with equal stress on each syllable, which is one of the more interesting things about this album. 3.5/10
Don't Blame Me
Unpromising verses, great chorus; an inversion of the Reputation formula. 8/10
Delicate
Handsome, you're a mansion with a view has a mis-stressed syllable. 7/10
Look What You Made Me Do
The (great) end of the video can't rescue that woeful chorus. 3.5/10
So It Goes...
Basically I don't like a lot of choruses on Reputation. On the plus side, seeing this title again while editing has reminded me of the Billy Joel song. 4/10
Gorgeous
6.5/10
Getaway Car
In amongst this wasteland, a great pop song that perfectly hits my music tastes. The 'met me' in the first two 'first met me's is wondrous, and my only complaint is that Swift slightly elongated the short vowel on its final repetition. 10/10
King of My Heart
This starts so well, but quickly dashes my briefly high expectations. 4.5/10
Dancing with Our Hands Tied
I don't like the chorus. 4/10
Dress
5.5/10
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
This is fun in a similar way to We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, and it makes sense to me that Taylor's mashing them up for the Reputation tour. 7/10
Call It What You Want
7/10
New Year's Day
No doubt it's a terrific communal moment when she sings this in concert. It ends in a fade-out! 8/10
Mean ± MAD: 5.8 ± 1.7
Holistic score: 4
Ranked list
It's noticeable that there is precisely one song from each album in my top six. This suggests a systematic error in my ratings - faced with the difficulty of comparing 85 songs against one another, I've instead compared songs within each album and then sent my favourites to the top. If Fifteen didn't exist, would I have given Love Story 10/10? I can't rule it out, and I suspect that it's the big Fearless singles that are most likely to have been unfairly demoted by my brain taking short-cuts.
Rk
/10.0
Song
Album
1
11.0
All Too Well
Red
=2
10.0
Should’ve Said No
TS
=2
10.0
Fifteen
F
=2
10.0
Back to December
SN
=2
10.0
Blank Space
1989
=2
10.0
Getaway Car
Rep.
7
9.7
Mary’s Song (Oh My My My)
TS
8
9.6
Love Story
F
=9
9.5
You Belong With Me
F
=9
9.5
Begin Again
Red
11
9.4
Sparks Fly
SN
12
9.2
Dear John
SN
13
9.1
Long Live
SN
=14
9.0
Teardrops on My Guitar
TS
=14
9.0
Haunted
SN
=14
9.0
State Of Grace
Red
=14
9.0
Red
Red
18
8.9
The Best Day
F
19
8.7
Change
F
20
8.6
Tim McGraw
TS
=21
8.5
Cold as You
TS
=21
8.5
Enchanted
SN
=21
8.5
Last Kiss
SN
24
8.4
Everything Has Changed
Red
25
8.3
You’re Not Sorry
F
=26
8.0
A Place in This World
TS
=26
8.0
Stay Beautiful
TS
=26
8.0
Perfectly Good Heart
TS
=26
8.0
Fearless
F
=26
8.0
White Horse
F
=26
8.0
Breathe
F
=26
8.0
Speak Now
SN
=26
8.0
Never Grow Up
SN
=26
8.0
Innocent
SN
=26
8.0
I Knew You Were Trouble
Red
=26
8.0
22
Red
=26
8.0
I Almost Do
Red
=26
8.0
Holy Ground
Red
=26
8.0
Sad Beautiful Tragic
Red
=26
8.0
The Lucky One
Red
=26
8.0
Out Of The Woods
1989
=26
8.0
Wildest Dreams
1989
=26
8.0
This Love
1989
=26
8.0
Don't Blame Me
Rep.
=26
8.0
New Year's Day
Rep.
=46
7.5
Tied Together With a Smile
TS
=46
7.5
Hey Stephen
F
=46
7.5
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
Red
=46
7.5
Stay Stay Stay
Red
=46
7.5
The Last Time
Red
=46
7.5
Starlight
Red
=52
7.0
The Outside
TS
=52
7.0
Invisible
TS
=52
7.0
Tell Me Why
F
=52
7.0
The Way I Loved You
F
=52
7.0
Forever & Always
F
=52
7.0
Mine
SN
=52
7.0
Treacherous
Red
=52
7.0
All You Had To Do Was Stay
1989
=52
7.0
I Wish You Would
1989
=52
7.0
Bad Blood
1989
=52
7.0
Delicate
Rep.
=52
7.0
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Rep.
=52
7.0
Call It What You Want
Rep.
=65
6.5
Picture to Burn
TS
=65
6.5
I’m Only Me When I’m With You
TS
=65
6.5
Mean
SN
=65
6.5
The Story of Us
SN
=65
6.5
How You Get the Girl
1989
=65
6.5
I Know Places
1989
=65
6.5
Clean
1989
=65
6.5
Gorgeous
Rep.
=73
6.0
Our Song
TS
=73
6.0
Style
1989
75
5.5
Dress
Rep.
=76
5.0
Better Than Revenge
SN
=76
5.0
Shake It Off
1989
=78
4.5
Welcome To New York
1989
=78
4.5
...Ready for It?
Rep.
=78
4.5
King of My Heart
Rep.
=81
4.0
End Game
Rep.
=81
4.0
So It Goes...
Rep.
=81
4.0
Dancing with Our Hands Tied
Rep.
=84
3.5
I Did Something Bad
Rep.
=84
3.5
Look What You Made Me Do
Rep.