The bridge to Fifteen includes a great, revealing line about a friends lost innocence (And Abigail gave everything/She had to a boy/Who changed his mind/And we both cried), while the playful melody of Hey Stephen captures the essence of what makes for indelible teen-pop. What makes Taylor's first foray into pop so often irresistible is her ability to rise above the genre's preoccupation with recycled hooks and surface level lyrics. For the album ranking, I considered a few factors including cohesiveness, listening experience, the number and quality of standout songs, and if the album is musically interesting or lyrically special. Periodically, Midnights does run into issues of redundancy, which has more to do with Jack Antonoffs deficiencies as a producer than with Swifts skills as a writer and performer. The album plays as a survey course in contemporary pop, and Swift is game to try just about anything, from the uninhibited dance-pop of standout Starlight to the thundering heartland rock of Holy Ground. The tracks that work best are those on which the production is creative and modern in ways that are in service to Swifts songwriting. But Midnights and its seven "3am" bonus tracks are still steeped in singularity, mostly due to its ultra-honest subject matter and intriguing concept parsed out with Taylor's expert execution. When "Midnights" was first announced, Swift described it as "the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life" and invited fans to meet her at midnight the night the album dropped. Expectations were sky high, raising the stakes with them; just how close can Taylor fly to the sun? folklore. "Evermore" takes us deeper into the mystical music-writing forest established by "Folklore," but like many sequels, it doesn't resonate as powerfully as the original. The album's opening, "Ready For It?," is an aptly-titled shockwave to the system compared to her previous work, abandoning instrumental lead-ins for a feel-it-in-your-bones bass machine accelerating into a rap? With the addition of six from the Vault tracks (songs written at the same time as the album, that Swift shared with the re-recorded version), it was like opening a musical time-capsule; with tracks like the emotive Fifteen taking on a new meaning as a poignant tribute to her teenage life. Midnight's answer: she's still soaring. Welcome to the Quantum Realm. Report RESET RANKING RESET TEMPLATE SAVE/DOWNLOAD TIER LIST Template by lucy "Red" and "Lover" remain in the middle of the pack. Taylor Swift started off as a country artist at a time when the genre was both less respectful and accommodating of the voices of women than at any other point in its storied history. What's likely the most famous track on this album, "Teardrops on My Guitar" is a textbook example of a popular Swift trope: a relatable song about a boy punctuated with clever lyrics. It was all over the place, a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end. She's an artist defined by eras (as is the name of her heavily anticipated upcoming tour) a Reputation era for self-defense, a Lover era for romantic solace which her adoring fans latch onto and assign to their own life stages with fervor. Red is filled with top notch tunes: the brilliantly snarky We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Swifts first ever Billboard 100 Number One) and fizzing 22 are stone-cold smashers. Taylor Swift currently has 10 albums, with 2022's "Midnights" being her most recent release. Sal Cinquemani, Midnights is far removed from the folk instrumentation of Folklore and Evermore, coming closest to mirroring 1989s more uptempo electro-pop palette. ", "Ivy," the 10th track on "Evermore," alludes to an illicit affair, which is the name of track 10 on "Folklore.". ", As Craig Jenkins for Vulture put it, "Although the album fixates on big enemies and bad reputations, the buried lede is a quiet romance budding in spite of them. Happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past." It's the product of a prolific mind being forced to slow down, reflect, and create something completely new; A memoirist moved to experiment with a stream-of-consciousness novel. Swift, of course, got her start writing astutely observed country ballads, and these songs bolster her trademark knack for lyric-crafting with maximalist, blown-out pop production courtesy of collaborators Max Martin and Jack Antonoff. October 26, 2022. 2023 Oscars predictions: See who will win at the 95th Academy Awards. Swift shines brightest on these songs, building and developing her story out of economic but evocative turns of phrase.". Thus, her 10th album is at the neutral midpoint on this list, though Midnights' careful metaphors are some of the best mirrors for abstract projection and self-reflection that listeners will find on this list. This Taylor Swift discography is ranked from best to worst, so the top Taylor Swift albums can be found at the top of the list. Copyright 2023 Meredith Corporation. Taylor Swift Drops Trippy Lavender Haze Music Video, Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoffs 20 Best Collaborations. It's hard to say. Swifts most recent release is a glittering return to pure-pop music. After a fiery Twitter storm courtesy of Kanye (though it was far from their first feud), Taylor finally sheds her decade-old, good girl persona for the villain alter-ego curated by the media, opting to settle the score through what she does best: traversing new sonic territory. First contact is a shock, a singe that lingers and radiates energy, next a scab, hardening as it heals, before calming into a scar you carry, listening to, forevermore. But in the meantime, Midnights remains on repeat with high regard. But before expanding on her honeymoon phase, we're treated to the tour-de-force track "Cruel Summer" (not a Bananarama cover), a buzzer-beating, angst-wielding anthem that's among the greatest pop songs her auteur has ever crafted. The worlds defining voice in music and pop culture: breaking whats new and whats next since 1952. But past skeptics be damned, the album has stood the test of time, with many now backpedaling their initial criticisms to revel in her unabashed outbursts of rage and ecstasy and its thematic anchor of tender love and care. But reputation is much more than an extended diss track; It's also a not-so-private ceremony for a new, hush-hush love affair (that years later blossoms into a now-rumored engagement to partner Joe Alwyn). Rather, it recalls the key moments of a love gone awry in arresting detail "I'll get older, but your lovers stay my age" wasting not a single word in confronting a past partner many years her senior (unanimously believed to be Jake Gyllenhaal) nearly 10 years after the fact. "Should've Said No" carries the same torch with a steadier hand, being one of the three songs she penned completely on her own. Despite the pandemic, 2020 was a big year for the artist, who released two surprise albums and secured her first Album of the Year nomination since her 2015 record, 1989. The euphoric Mastermind takes it one step further, where on it Swift admits: No one wanted to play with me as a little kid/So Ive been scheming like a criminal ever since/To make them love me and make it seem effortless/This is the first time Ive felt the need to confess. But on Red, it's "worthwhile fight" and "a ruthless game," never easy but always intoxicating, almost to the point of nausea. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Where her debut guaranteed she was, at the very least, a momentary sensation, it wasn't until 2008's Fearless that the world understood the musical force that Taylor Swift could be. She may be on the outs, but she sure isn't alone. It made sense then for this, her second studio album, which won her four Grammys including Album of the Year, to be the first altar in the "Taylor's Version" re-recording saga. She colors its lyrics and soundscapes between the clear cut, ear candy lines a hint of bubblegum pop, a dash of animated movie-anthem flair (it's a miracle that "ME!" "Fearless" might just be the best opening guitar riff of her applicable albums (Taylor Swift, Speak Now, and Evermore's are less so) fringed with a summer's day twang and immediately infecting the listener with a blissful dose of euphoria, like a spoonful of syrup taken between smiling lips. First emerging as a country-crossover artist, shes since embraced glossy pure pop and indie-folk; but while her sound may have changed, Swifts brilliantly honest lyricism and songwriting talent has remained a keystone in her tunes. Related: Ranking Taylor Swift's 10 Most Viewed Music Videos. It's no exaggeration, then, to say almost every emotion has been articulated by Taylor Swift at some point, whether in broad-stroke breakup anthems or close-to-the-chest confessionals. It isnt the weight of the subject matter alone that makes Folklore feel so vitalits the exemplary caliber of her writing. Having no taste when it comes to state of Grace?) On 2012s Red, Swift began her transition from country crossover artist to creating glossy, mainstream pop; on its 2021 re-record we were reminded just what a superb songwriter Swift has always been. In an album review for Variety, critic Chris Willman wrote, "For some fans, it might take a couple of spins around the block with this very different model to become re-accustomed to how there's still the same power under the hood here. But none are more affecting than "champagne problems," a first-person post-mortem after rejecting a marriage proposal a classic "it's not you, it's me" scenario with simple piano chords accompanying the guilt of walking away and the peril of being mentally unwell ("'She would've made such a lovely bride' / 'What a shame she's fked in the head,' they said"). Though she was praised for her songwriting right out of the gate, what Swifts self-titled debut truly shows in hindsight is how diligently shes worked to hone her craft over the years. Swift released "Reputation" in 2017, three years after "1989," a noticeable gap as she'd previously been debuting albums every two years. Whether it's a song about an ex or someone else who wronged her, Swift's clever, catchy "revenge tracks" have only continued to improve from here. 176. His contributions here are uniformly clean and efficient, but plenty of his signature production tics, even if theyre presented here in a fresh context, are beginning to feel overused. The contrast of that relationship with the one detailed in "Champagne Problems" makes the latter seem even more heart-wrenching. Then there are the hopeful messages embedded in the minor-keys of "marjorie," an homage to her opera-singing grandmother, and "happiness," the chorus of which captures the album's essence best of all: "There'll be happiness after me / But there was happiness because of me.". "Drew looks at me / I fake a smile so he won't see / that I want and I'm needin' / Everything that we should be" was as good as poetry, and a north star to the forlorning that looms in girlhood. I also factored in critic reviews of the albums when deciding on the final ranking. That early nuance and the fact that she wrote this entire album completely on her own is no small feat. The imagery for the album was filled with snakes, and lyrics subtly (and at times, not so subtly) addressed their falling out. Its fantasias are more melancholic, its themes of longing more resentful. So while still an undeniably amazing album, and a true testament to her style's shape-shifting abilities, she can and has done better than 1989 even if it was her second go-around for Album of the Year. The Definitive Ranking of Every Song on Taylor Swift's 1989 Grammy winner's fifth studio album is officially out today, and we cannot stop listening to these top five songs By Jenna Mullins. Though she only first arrived onto (and soon conquered) the popular music scene 16 years ago, the breadth and depth of her work seems more the stuff of a lifelong evolution, spanning multiple genres and breaking industry records almost every time around. There's no question her most recent two albums are related, as "Evermore" has a similar sound and features nods to "Folklore. All in all, reputation is by far Taylor's most misunderstood work though its criticisms aren't without merit. But Swifts most recent three albums are united through their more matured temperament and the stark intimacy of Swifts songwriting, with the comparatively scaled-back nature of her sound serving as a natural extension of this methodology. To make it easy for you, we haven't included Taylor Swift singles, EPs, or compilations - everything you see here should only be studio albums. As ever, Swift deftly pivots from upbeat tracks to sad ballads with devastating bridges that make you want to cry your eyes out. But the true gems of this wildly successful 2021 re-recording (which topped every chart in sight across the globe) are undoubtedly "Love Story," which resurfaces here with heightened sensibilities and deeper convictions, along with several songs "From The Vault," most notably "Mr. Rosen is right this album combines intimate lyrics and incredibly catchy tunes and it is showcased in Swift's hit single "You Belong With Me," an upbeat anthem for those dealing with unrequited love. From Taylor Swift to Midnights, we've ranked all of the singer's studio albums from best to worst. It was the first taste the world got of Swifts deeply confessional songwriting, and from that moment, we were hooked. The Taylor Swift's Albums Tier List below is created by community voting and is the cumulative average rankings from 131 submitted tier lists. The distorted vocal effects and shifts in dynamics on I Knew You Were Trouble heighten the sense of frustration that drives the song, and the driving rhythm section on Holy Ground reflects Swifts reminiscence of a lover who took off faster than a green light, go. Not all of the songs here are so keenly observedState of Grace and I Almost Do lack the specificity thats one of Swifts songwriting trademarks, while the title track underwhelms with its train of pedestrian similes and metaphorsbut if Reds highlights were career-best work for Swift at the time. But as Pitchfork critic Anna Gaca pointed out, the album may be honest and genuine, but it feels uneven with how much it sways from garish pop singles like "ME!" In a statement when her tenth studio album was first revealed Swift explained this project is the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life, meaning its filled with the sorts of realisations that only hit you in the wee hours. The singers first four albums barely scan as country music in a meaningful way, instead embracing her preternatural gifts for pop conventions, and her output has gotten stronger the more openly shes embraced those skills. After embracing folk-flecked sounds on sister albums Folklore and Evermore, for Midnights Swift instead turns to bubbling synths and percussive beats, this sleek production run under the artists late night musings. You could have at least changed RED/FEARLESS to Taylors version. Note: hitting 'no opinion' or 'I like both' frequently will negatively affect your results. It's as if we're sitting round a campfire confiding in one another, sharing painful memories of when our best wasn't good enough, when our savior complex sputtered out, and when we watched them walk away. "Marjorie," track 13 on "Evermore," is about Swift's grandmother. How do you follow-up Reputation, a revenge album filled with vengeance? 1989 instead is sonically joyous without losing dimension or leaning on familiarity. Like folklore, much of evermore is made up of somber soliloquies that materialize like a fine mist over a field in the dead of winter. And on this album, in particular, the stories she tells are about how her narrators choices impact others, often in ways that cause irreparable harm. However, evermore is still occasionally upbeat with an ethereal glow, with cooing strings that glint on "willow" and synthesizers that gleam on "gold rush." Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince, however, is her stock in trade, a richly painted narrative punctuated by cool synth washes and pep-rally chants, while The Archer is quintessential Swift: wistful, minimalist dream pop that displays her willingness to acknowledge and dismantle her own flaws, triggers, and neuroses. document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "ae642da28755683afdf2ec0fe06ed858" );document.getElementById("facec42938").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Between those extremes is a reliable lineup of ultra-catchy mega-hits that infected the cultural consciousness through Top 40 countdowns and, later, TikTok videos. To celebrate Folklore's release, there is not a better time to rank Taylor Swift's albums' discography from the weakest to the best. I'm not using the 5-tier-ranking-scale or whatever because if I did literally half of the list would be a 5/5 yeah music is pretty good rn. The best Taylor Swift's Albums rankings are on the top of the list and the worst rankings are on the bottom. At the time of publishing, we're just over two weeks past our first listen, still internalizing the record's themes of loneliness and loathing, insecurity and insomnia. 40 "Should've Said No" Swift's uptempo. On Swifts second album she still kept things country, but this time the pop edge that defined later releases was more evident. Reputation is, without a doubt, Taylor's most polarizing work to date. In honor of her instant-classic, record-breaking new LP. I'll admit it took me a second to warm up to "Folklore" and realize how sophisticated and masterful it was so much so that it jumped from second-to-last to second place since this ranking was last updated. this includes her entire catalogue/discography and eras debut to evermore. But this is Taylor we're talking about here, and the fact of the matter is, she's at her best at her most singular, when there's zero doubt that anyone but her could have been the creative mind behind the record. ", Big Machine/Republic Records/Republic Records/Big Machine. But "Folklore" has a laid-back vibe that reflects the spontaneity of how this album was created. I don't love the way the writer described some of the albums (saying Taylor sounds like a stay at home mom? When it comes to things other than boys, though, Swift has always preferred to dip her toes in rather than get soaking wet; her transformation from country teen to pop queen was, after all, a decade in the making. Debut. Last Night by Morgan Wallen What once felt (or possibly still feels) like the end of the world is, on "Taylor's Version," also a testament to resilience we'll make it to the other side, and we'll do it again and again. Swift's other albums have hits that I can imagine hearing in a grocery store or on a radio station years from now and immediately recognizing just from the opening chords alone. "Entirely self-penned, sans the collaborations of the previous albums, it's an enormous breakthrough in songwriting maturity, while hardly forsaking the childlike lack of pretense that made earlier efforts such guilt-free ear candy," wrote Willman. Anyway. Entertainment Weekly is a registered trademark of Meredith Corporation All Rights Reserved. It has a piano introduction reminiscent of "New Year's Day," a song about an enduring love. But Evermore finds Swift digging further into her explorations of narrative voice and shifting points of view, taking bigger risks in trying to discover how the newfound breadth of her songwriting could possibly reconcile with the arc of her career. 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