The Taylor Swift Review Saga

thoughts and prayers for my spotify wrapped

June 24, 2024 (Originals posted March 18 - May 10, 2024)

In March of 2024, I decided completely on a whim that I was going to try and listen to every Taylor Swift album in chronological order. I’ve always been sort of an outsider to much of pop culture, which makes the media landscape today really strange, given how much of it is driven by references and nostalgia. Seeing the resurgence of Taylor Swift into the cultural zeitgeist through the Eras tour and her album rereleases made me realize I’d never really listened to pop music before. Of course, I’d heard it on the radio in the car sometimes, and at family events and the like, but it never really interested me.

I wanted to see what exactly made it popular music in the first place, so I made a post on my Instagram story saying I was gonna listen to her discography, and asking whether I should listen to the originals or the rereleases. And it got a lot more traction in my circle than I thought it would. Several friends messaged me saying they were excited to hear my thoughts, and a few chimed in with their takes on which versions to listen to. (My personal favorite was Good luck lmao. It’s a shit show)

Seeing the response, I figured I’d try writing a little summary of my thoughts on each album as I went along to share with others my story. I very quickly found out that I quite enjoy articulating my thoughts through writing, because, as you’re about to see, the reviews began getting progressively more and more in-depth.

A few clarifications before we start: These were originally written in the notes app on my phone, screenshotted, and then posted to my instagram story. I’ll be transcribing them exactly as they were written before, with only grammatical changes, most notably capitalization. Some of my opinions have changed since writing them, but I think it’ll be valuable to keep my initial impressions intact.

Additionally, I gave each one a score out of 10 as I went along, but I decided to drop those from the individual reviews, and instead compile the final scores at the end. So if you see me mention scores in the reviews and are wondering why they’re different than what’s listed at the end, that’s why.

Regarding the originals vs the rereleases, there were arguments on both sides that I respected, so I made a compromise: I’d listen to the originals for the historical context, but any song I might playlist would be from Taylor’s version. I didn’t add many into my actual playlists, but I did adhere to this rule when putting together my Top 70 playlist, with only two exceptions.

Without further ado, here are my thoughts on every Taylor Swift album.

Self Titled (Taylor Swift)

While I don’t typically enjoy country, I didn’t hate this album as much as I thought I would, although I could do without the fiddles and banjo twangs. It’s hard to tell whether or not my qualms with it are just tropes from a genre I dislike, so I feel a little bad about rating it low. Genre aside, I will say that musically a lot of the tracks blend together, and there are a good number of cheesy and weirdly stressed lyrics that took me out of some songs.

Fearless

This album is in a weird place of being almost country, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. There are moments where her voice has that southern twinge to it, and moments where they bust out the banjo, but everything else seems like regular pop rock you’d hear on the radio around that time. Musically it all still feels very commercial though, and while I enjoyed some of the songs here, I’ve yet to find one that I would legitimately return to over and over.

Speak Now

Taylor’s dropping the country tone more here, and I think this album is better for it. It retains a lot of the problems from the last one though, which I think I’d rate a point lower after reconsidering. But hey, going from 2 to 3 to 4 out of 10; that’s an upward trend!

I think I’ve identified my issue with the ballads, and it’s that the appeal of pop music for me is never relatability. If I want to hear a song I can relate to emotionally, I’m not going to someone who emotions were being filtered through her record label and the music industry. (At least at that time, maybe her later stuff will show her authorial voice more. These ones just sound like they’re equating relatable with generic.)

Additionally, while I really respect the kind of storytelling she’s attempting with a lot of the songs, most of the time her lyric writing is just not strong enough to support it. Don’t get me wrong; occasionally she’ll knock it out of the park, like with Our Song, but other times the lines don’t hit hard enough to fully support the narrative, like in the title track Speak Now.

Red

Taylor’s voice was starting to grate on me by the end of the last album, but she sounds a lot more comfortable singing pop music this time around. Or maybe it was the way the last few were mixed, I’m not sure.

This is a very hit-or-miss album for me. Some of the songs are my favorites out of her discography so far (I’d probably give the best like a 7 or 8 out of 10 for reference), and some of them I literally didn’t remember hearing when going through the rerelease for playlisting. It also bears mentioning that my score out of 10 for these is taking the album as a whole listening experience, rather than just the amount of songs I liked, which is why they’ve been so low.

Speaking of which, who’s deciding the track order? Girl At Home is a strange way to close off the album, but maybe track order isn’t as important for pop music. I found out some people put albums on shuffle, even for their first listen, which is blasphemous to me, but maybe it’s more common than I realize.

(As an addendum, this is the first time I have a strong opinion on the OGs vs the rereleases, specifically about WANEGBT and 22. The former’s original release and the latter’s rerelease are the better versions in my eyes.)

1989

I heard a few people say this was her best album, and I can definitely see why. For me, though, it’s somehow even more hit-or-miss than the last one. Red has songs I like mixed with songs I didn’t really care for, while 1989 has songs I actually love mixed with songs I almost can’t stand. The overall like:dislike ratio for me is the best it’s been so far, putting it a ways ahead of the others.

If it wasn’t apparent in my own album, I really enjoy when songs can transport me to a physical space, and while big vocal chants and drums with stupid amounts of reverb are a super cheap way of putting me in a stadium, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love it every single time.

Also very much appreciate the voice memos where she talks about the process a bit, love when artists do stuff like that. (The it’s so annoying I love it, everyone’s gonna kill you at the end of the Blank Space demo got a laugh out of me.)

reputation

Tangent time: there’s a very specific style of EDM that was prevalent in early 2010s pop music, being big room house, that I have a lot of nostalgia for. As the decade progressed, this style began to shift towards the newly emerging genres of trap and future bass. You can actually hear the trend change through The Chainsmokers, specifically going from #SELFIE in 2013 to Closer in 2016. Anyway, this is all to say that when I talked about wanting Taylor’s producers to fully commit to the EDM sound during Red and 1989, I forgot that the monkey’s paw also has a big reputation.

It’s not necessarily bad, but seven years later, this particular sound of pop/dance music producers making heavily commercialized trap beats has definitely overstayed its welcome. Taylor’s voice adapts to it surprisingly well, though, even if I don’t think the lyrics themselves are that great conceptually.

Lover

It’s interesting to think of this album as being a parallel to the last in almost every way. Everything is the opposite, from the tone of the instrumentals, to the way taylor sings, to even the cover art. For some reason, though, they both feel performative to me. It’s like when people try to categorize themselves into aesthetics, like cottagecore or grunge, but by putting themselves in a box, they are being inherently disingenuous.

In this context, reputation and Lover feel like the equivalent of saying I’m in my joker arc and I’m in my self love era respectively, while doing nothing to process why you feel the way you do in that particular period of time. I know that’s a weird analogy, but that kind of thing’s been on my mind lately.

I do think I enjoy reputation more than this, though. At least that one was bold. This one just feels inoffensive to be broadly appealing.

Bonus Producer Nerd Rant: During the 1989 demos, Taylor mentioned her producer Jack Antonoff, who I’d actually heard of before. It may be confirmation bias, but I couldn’t un-hear his influence on this album while listening, and I really wasn’t a fan. I also checked which songs he produced for reputation, and they were almost exactly the songs I didn’t care for. It’s weird, because apparently he did Out of the Woods and I Wish You Would on 1989, whose instrumentals I really enjoyed.

I think I figured out what it is, though. There’s a particular snare drum he uses that’s trying to strike this weird balance between replicating an actual snare drum while also working alongside the standard drum machine hi-hats found in trap/future bass, and it ends up sounding too muffled and too white-noise-y to be either. His kick drums also tend to have the same issue, but it’s not usually as big of a deal as the snares.

The reason those songs from 1989 don’t have this problem even though they still have that muffled snare is because they aren’t going for that style of percussion. Thank you for coming to my TED-Talk.

folklore

Upon sharing these reviews with some musician friends (shoutout to sleepy.zone), one of them told me that folklore and evermore were actually really good. I have much higher hopes for evermore now, because I definitely agree with them on this one. (Positive take and the new album came out today? Huge day for local Swifties)

As far as overall consistency goes, I think this is her best album so far. While it doesn’t hit quite the same highs as 1989, it definitely avoids hitting the same lows; the worst songs were only meh, and the best songs were just really solid all the way through. I think this album has the most songs I’ve added to my Swift Favorites playlist out of all of them, even ignoring the duplicate studio sessions.

I’m strange in that I have trouble parsing lyrics the first time listening to something. Because of the more acoustic instrumentals though, this time I was able to hear the lyrics better, and unfortunately, it really highlighted just how okay her lyric writing is. In her upbeat stuff, it works, at least in that cheesy sort of pop way, but in mellow stuff like this, not as much.

Jack Rant-onoff update: I think part of my initial gripe with the Antonoff Snare™ on the last album is that it sounds very amateurish, like something an independent singer would use alongside their voice and a guitar. In that context, it works, but because Lover is very clearly a professionally made pop album, it feels to me like it’s masquerading as indie to try and manufacture a more intimate artist/audience relationship. Of course, folklore is still professionally produced, but at least this time the mask is a little more authentic.

evermore

I honestly don’t have a ton to say about this one, it’s just really solid all the way through. For some reason, I thought this album was going to sound closer to how folklore does, and vice versa. This one’s a lot more folksy to me.

It’s been kinda neat seeing Taylor in this more low-key style. I imagine it’s partially influenced by the pandemic, and her writing songs at home with a guitar/piano instead of in a studio with her producers, but I think it’s really allowed her to focus more on writing songs as a means of expression rather than as a cog in the music industry.

I refuse to do decimals in my scoring system because I know I’ll end up adding more and more decimal places until it gets to like 5.375 and it’ll make deciding scores way harder. Just know that folklore is on the higher end of a 7, and evermore is on the lower end. I think this one is a better experience as a cohesive album, but I just happen to like more songs on folklore.

Midnights

Maybe it’s because it doesn’t have the novelty of being an older album, but I really don’t like this one. She’s banking on her new, more mature lyrics being relatable, and to me at least, they just aren’t.

I owe reputation an apology, because at least that album had character; this is a sound that’s overplayed. Soft, muted electronic drums and synths, trying to be hip and modern without feeling overly electronic; it’s designed to be cool for kids and inoffensive for adults, and I’m extremely tired of it. It feels like they somehow don’t trust the listener to be able hear Taylor’s voice, so they put everything else way in the background so you can’t miss her.

Also there’s, like, noticeable clipping? I hadn’t heard any in the previous albums, but here it’s everywhere. It kind of defeats the whole mellow atmosphere it’s aiming for when the vocals start getting crunchy out of nowhere.

I’m not going to keep blaming Jack Antonoff for it, because he’s just following a trend (it’s been popular at least since Clairo’s album Immunity), but just because Midnights is moody doesn’t mean it has to be muffled. I know you wanna make room for the sibilants and nuances in Taylor’s voice, but you only need to do that in the quieter sections.

Okay no more producer rants, this time for real.

(…unless?)

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT

I knew when I started this whole thing that Taylor had an album on the way, but, like others, I was surprised to find out it was a double album. That was the first indication I had that something was going to be different about this one. Deep into the era of streaming, where the very idea of listening to a full album is beginning to fall by the wayside, the current biggest name in the music industry drops a double LP? She’s cooking something.

So going into this one, regardless of quality, I expected this to be something Taylor was really proud of. Whether that meant folklore but dire or Midnights but edgy I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t expecting it to end up being both.

Disc 1 falls into the same trap Midnights did, where some of the lyrics feel too manufactured for me to connect with, while disc 2 is so much more authentic that it almost feels like a different album entirely. I think disc 1 is the album Taylor’s team wanted, and disc 2 is the album she wanted.

It helps that, especially in disc 2, this is the most lyrically nuanced she’s ever been. There were a couple times where I went back to a song and found another layer to a metaphor, or a play on words I hadn’t noticed before, which is the first time that’s happened to me in any of her songs.

That being said, lyric pacing is also really important to me, and she’s not the best at it. She tends to do things like stretch out words to fit the melody line, or write lines that rhythmically accent certain syllables in a weird way, so while the lines themselves can be quite good, the way they’re sung in context can sometimes cancel that out for me.

Also, on the whole, Taylor’s producers have been putting way too much emphasis on her voice as of late. I get that she’s supposed to be the main focus, but I think making the instrumentals good even without her voice over them would go a long way. Listen to some of the instrumentals on Fearless and Speak Now, for example, (even the originals) and then do the same for this and Midnights. The formers’ are just so much more compelling, it’s like night and day.

From The Vault & Extras

I figured I’d throw remixed/alt versions in here too, along with some random extras I found. Only ones left out were songs by other artists that had her listed as a feature. If I’m this close to having heard every song, I might as well go all the way. Or maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome.

The songs from the vault are really fleshed out lyrically, despite (presumably) being pushed to the side in favor of other songs. Or yknow, at least as fleshed out as far as Taylor Swift songs go. Even the ones I don’t enjoy are still pretty respectable.

I’m very conflicted on having multiple versions of songs, like with willow (the witch collections). They’re an obvious ploy to appease the algorithms of streaming services and get promoted as a new release, which is really valuable on spotify especially. On the other hand, though, I think it’s kinda neat to having stylistically different versions of the same songs; it lets them shine in a new light, in the same way a remix might.

No dislikes this time. Since these weren’t a part of an album, I listened to them more passively, so I wasn’t as focused on what I didn’t enjoy.

Final Thoughts

I have officially listened to every Taylor Swift song (and some multiple times), over the course of, at minimum, 21 hours. As a result, since I forgot about the private listening session feature, I have completely ruined my Spotify wrapped for this year, and Taylor Swift has earned around $0.96, which is a ludicrously small amount of money for almost a straight day’s worth of streams. Spotify pay your artists more.

Anyways, speaking of tortured poets, maybe it’s because I’ve been reading a bit about her work lately, but I think Taylor Swift is to music what Rupi Kaur is to poetry. Both of their works cover themes that are relatable to a lot of women, and although they are definitely meant for teenagers, I think makes them an excellent gateway into an art medium that is often gatekept by elitism.

That being said, I’ve heard about a lot of people that exclusively listen to Taylor Swift and nothing else, and I think there’s something to be said about exclusively consuming easily digestible media without challenging yourself in any way. (And this goes for any form of art, too.) If you only ever listen to songs you’ve already heard or whatever’s popular, you’re not only missing out on tons of bangers, but you’re also really narrowing your cultural perspective in general.

I don’t want to come off as snobby or pretentious here, because I’m guilty of this, too; it wasn’t until the pandemic that I really began to explore other genres or artists outside the Monstercat circle. I also just don’t watch a lot of TV or movies in general, so my experience there is very limited. But I personally think it’s really important to broaden your horizons and take a chance on things you might not enjoy, rather than, say, exclusively listening to the same favorites playlist on repeat. That goes for Swift haters, too; maybe give evermore a try someday.

Spotify kind of sucks, just in general, but if there’s one thing they do well, it’s their playlists. They’ve got personalized mixes for every genre under the sun, there’s some cool editorials that are updated every so often, and of course, there’s a billion user-created ones to find as well. One day I opened the app and saw a playlist called Pirate Mix, with Pirate music picked just for you, and you know what? It was pretty good!

Anyways, if nothing else, I think it’s good to get in the habit of listening to albums cover-to-cover. Taylor’s might not be the best examples, at least in my opinion, but you lose a lot of the artist’s creative vision when you separate individual songs from their original context. I’m not saying don’t make playlists (I’d be one to talk; I’ve got like a hundred), but maybe consider albums as an ordered playlist in their own right.

One of the things I remember hearing most about Taylor Swift recently is just how she’s gone through so many different styles over the years. Now, I’m no genre expert, (I still don’t really know what alternative rock even means) but if we’re being real, she’s only done like three: country, pop, and folk. Granted, what pop sounds like is always changing, so I’ll give her that, but I think she’s playing it a little too comfortably to be called a chameleon. I wanna see a Taylor Swift Nu Metal era, or a Big Band Swing era; something really wild and out-of-nowhere that’ll challenge her fans and the industry. Pretend I wrote a better segue out of this paragraph.

The day TTPD came out, I saw a car filled with people driving by with the windows down, blasting the album at full volume and singing along. This happened three separate times, and it made me realize something: much of the appeal of pop music isn’t necessarily in the songs themselves, but the social experience of sharing that music with others. Whether it’s talking about the new album that just released, or discussing your favorite songs, or singing along to the classics, it’s never just been about the quality of the music, and I think I’ve been missing out on that aspect of it.

I haven’t seen many popular movies, I can’t match celebrity names to faces, and I know very little music from before the year 2000 (which is definitely something I need to change), and so I’ve often felt like an outsider to the general public consciousness. But when I heard Taylor’s voice coming from those car speakers, and when I went to target and saw they had the TTPD logo covering one of the red spheres, and when I went to the CD store and saw like way too many copies of the 1989 rerelease… I don’t know. I guess I felt included.
And that felt really nice.

I may do this again sometime with another artist (I have a few in mind), but probably not for a while. In the meantime, I know your attention is a hot commodity these days, so if you’ve been keeping up with this little journey of mine, whether it was in the black void of the iOS notes app screenshots or here on my blog, I really appreciate you spending your time reading my dumbass opinions.

Statistics

My Personal Top 70

I also have a Spotify playlist of this you can listen to if you want. At one point in time the list was accurate, but to be honest, it’s probably already shuffled around by now…

  1. I Know Places
  2. Dancing With Our Hands Tied
  3. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
  4. Style
  5. epiphany (long pond studio)
  6. The Prophecy
  7. Lavender Haze (Snakehips Remix)
  8. New Romantics
  9. mirrorball
  10. happiness
  11. illicit affairs
  12. You Belong With Me
  13. august (long pond studio)
  14. The Best Day
  15. Sweeter Than Fiction
  16. willow (moonlit witch version)
  17. I Can See You
  18. Christmas Tree Farm (Old Timey Version)
  19. The Albatross
  20. marjorie
  21. State Of Grace
  22. Out Of The Woods
  23. End Game
  24. Cassandra
  25. cardigan (cabin in candlelight version)
  26. 22
  27. the lakes (long pond studio)
  28. Carolina
  29. When Emma Falls in Love
  30. the last great american dynasty
  31. Getaway Car
  32. Haunted
  33. Starlight
  34. The Very First Night
  35. The Manuscript
  36. I Wish You Would
  37. exile
  38. Say Don’t Go
  39. Mr. Perfectly Fine
  40. Clean
  41. Cruel Summer
  42. right where you left me
  43. Lover (First Dance Remix)
  44. Forever & Always (Piano Version)
  45. ivy
  46. Come In With The Rain
  47. no body, no crime
  48. Bejeweled
  49. mad woman
  50. Message In A Bottle
  51. Our Song
  52. The Way I Loved You
  53. Enchanted
  54. closure
  55. I Look in People’s Windows
  56. seven
  57. evermore
  58. Peter
  59. Wildest Dreams (R3HAB Remix)
  60. Karma (feat. Ice Spice)
  61. Stay Beautiful
  62. ...Ready For It?
  63. hoax
  64. gold rush
  65. The Outside
  66. Is It Over Now?
  67. tolerate it
  68. Love Story (Pop Mix)
  69. Nothing New
  70. Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?

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