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All 274 of Taylor Swift’s Songs, Ranked

From teen country tracks to synth-pop anthems and rare covers, a comprehensive assessment of her one-of-a-kind songbook

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift the celebrity is such a magnet for attention, she can distract from Taylor Swift the artist. But Swift was a songwriter before she was a star, and she’ll be a songwriter long after she graduates from that racket. It’s in her music where she’s made her mark on history — as a performer, record-crafter, guitar hero and all-around pop mastermind, with songs that can leave you breathless or with a nasty scar. She was soaring on the level of the all-time greats before she was old enough to rent a car, with the crafty guile of a Carole King and the reckless heart of a Paul Westerberg — and she hasn’t exactly slowed down since then.

So with all due respect to Taylor the myth, the icon, the red-carpet tabloid staple, let’s celebrate the real Taylor — the songwriter she was born to be. Let’s break it down: all 243 tunes, counted from the bottom to the top. The hits, the flops, the deep  cuts, the covers, from her raw 2006 debut as a teen country ingenue right up to Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department. 

Every fan would compile a different list—that’s the beauty of it. She’s got at least 5 or 6 dozen songs that seem to belong in her Top Ten. But they’re not ranked by popularity, sales or supposed celebrity quotient — just the level of Taylor genius on display, from the perspective of a fan who generally does not give a rat’s nads who the songs are “really” about. All that matters is whether they’re about you and me. (I guarantee you are a more fascinating human than the Twilight guy, though I’m probably not.)

Since Taylor loves nothing more than causing chaos in our lives, she’s re-recording her albums, including the outtakes she left in the vault before. So far, she’s up to Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and 1989 For the Taylor’s Version remakes, both versions count as the same song. It’s a tribute to her fierce creative energy — in the past couple years she’s released an avalanche of new music, with more on the way. God help us all.

Sister Tay may be the last true rock star on the planet, making brilliant moves (or catastrophic gaffes, because that’s what rock stars do). These are the songs that sum up her wit, her empathy, her flair for emotional excess, her girls-to-the-front bravado, her urge to ransack every corner of pop history, her determination to turn any chorus into a ridiculous spectacle. So let’s step back from the image and pay homage to her one-of-a-kind songbook — because the weirdest and most fascinating thing about Taylor Swift will always be her music.

From Rolling Stone US

244

“Only the Young” (2019)

“Only the Young” debuted in her excellent doc Miss Americana, a synth-pop tribute to the next generation of political activists. It’s also a clever Swiftian fake-out, giving everyone a totally wrong idea of where she was headed musically — almost like she was announcing, “Nothing to see here, folks. Definitely no keepers left over from the Lover era.” Was she already plotting to catch us off guard with Folklore? Don’t put it past her. But you’d never guess she was about to make an acoustic album full of folk songs about sweaters.Best line: “Up there’s the finish line / Our future is worth the fight.”

243

‘I Hate It Here’ (2024)

A tale of romanticism gone sour, with a precocious child grown into an alienated introvert who escapes to “the secret garden in my mind.” The 1830s line isn’t even the real verbal groaner in this song—that would be “if comfort is a construct,” which wins this album’s The Kind Under Where a Tree Has Grown award. But since “I Hate It Here” connects to “The Lakes,” it’s worth noting the 1830s sucked for Wordsworth and Coleridge. Best line: “I’ll save all my romanticism for my inner life.”

242

“I’d Lie” (2006)

A perky early throwaway about a teenage crush, recorded for her debut and briefly released as a bonus track.Best line: “He loves to argue, born on the 17th.”

241

“Umbrella” (2008)

The Rihanna hit, briefly covered on the Live from SoHo digital album. Her finest Ri tribute remains her 2011 version of “Live Your Life” with T.I. onstage in Atlanta – sadly unreleased, but a duet that deserves to be enshrined for the ages.Best line: “Stand under my umbrella, ella, ella.”

240

“Look What You Made Me Do” (2017)

The reason fans once cared about rap beefs: they inspired great songs, whether it was Queens vs. the Bronx (“The Bridge” vs. “The Bridge Is Over” vs. “Have a Nice Day”) or LL Cool J vs. Kool Moe Dee (“How Ya Like Me Now” vs. “Jack the Ripper” vs. “Let’s Go” vs. “To Da Break of Dawn”). But this just sounds like a trivial time-waster by her standards – Swift’s celebrity feuds are not really one of the hundred most interesting things about her. The main attraction is the retro Panic! at the Disco vibe. “Look What You Made Me Do” turned out to be the lamest track on Reputation, but an impressively perverse head fake – a lead single that ended up having nothing to do with the album, musically or conceptually, making sure her new relationship songs would come as a surprise. To find a comparable stunt, you might have to go back to 1982, when Michael Jackson fooled the world into thinking Thriller was going to be a whole album of “The Girl Is Mine.”Best line: “It’s much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality.” Oh wait – that actually is Panic! at the Disco.

239

“Paris” (2022)

“I wanna brainwash you into loving me forever / I wanna transport you to somewhere the culture’s clever”—for Tay, that means a fantasy of Gay Paree. But the whole point of this song is that you can make your own Paris wherever you are, just by drawing your own dream map on the bedroom ceiling. And if you have an amour to share the dream with, all the better. “All the outfits were terrible, 2003 unbearable”—sounds like Taylor found somebody’s Friendster photo stash of crop tops and trucker hats. “Did you see the photos? / No, I didn’t, but thanks though” is being kind.Best line: “Privacy sign on the door and on my page and on the whole world / Romance is not dead if you keep it just yours.”

238

‘The Joker and the Queen,’ with Ed Sheeran (2022)

An Ed Sheeran ballad, refurbished into a sweet duet with his long-running favorite co-star. The video has the same actors who played Ed and Tay as little kids in the “Everything Has Changed” video — ten years later. Both singers sound right at home with the metaphor of a poker game — Ed can’t see it in her face, but she’s about to play her ace. Best line: “I’ve been played before, if you hadn’t guessed/So I kept my cards close to my foolproof vest.”

237

“September” (2018)

The Earth, Wind & Fire classic, already covered by every wedding band on the planet, becomes a mournful banjo lament. It’s her tribute to the late great Maurice White, a songwriter who shared her knack for building hits out of quirky details. (Changing “the 21st night of September” to the 28th is a very Swiftian touch.) Next she might try “That’s the Way of the World” or “After the Love Has Gone.”Best line: “Love was changing the minds of pretenders.”

236

“Stay Beautiful” (2006)

An early stab at a take-the-high-road breakup song.Best line: “He whispers songs into my window.”

235

“End Game,” with Ed Sheeran & Future (2017)

Future reaffirms her long-running bond with ATLien hip-hop, which goes back to her B.o.B. and T.I. duets. Plus her trusty wingman Ed Sheeran. She offers an update about her lipstick status (still red! good to know) and her relationship with drama: “I swear I don’t love the drama — it loves me!”Best line: “I bury hatchets, but I keep maps of where I put ‘em.”

234

“That’s When” (2021)

A Fearless outtake refurbished as a duet with her old friend Keith Urban. She pleads for forgiveness after crushing a lover’s heart for no particular reason, in the mode of “Back to December” or “Afterglow.”Best line: “I knew my words were hard to hear/And harder to ever take back.”

233

“The Way I Loved You” (2008)

She meets a low-stress boy who doesn’t want love to be torture. Alas, this suitor is toast, because he reminds her how much she misses the manic pixie drama vampire she dated before. Sorry, dude – she loves the players, and she loves the game.Best line: “He respects my space/And never makes me wait.”

232

“Thug Story,” With T-Pain (2009)

The classic T-Pain and Taylor duet from the 2009 CMT Awards, still T-Swizzle’s finest rap performance.Best line: “No, I never really been in a club/Still live with my parents, but I’m still a thug/I’m so gangsta you can find me baking cookies at night/You out clubbing, but I just made caramel delight.”

231

“I Wish You Would” (2014)

One of her many, many songs set at 2 a.m. – clearly the most inspiring hour on Swift Standard Time – with a staccato disco guitar lick.Best line: “We’re a crooked love in a straight line down.”

230

“Big Star,” With Kenny Chesney (2017)

“This song is about a girl who had a dream and followed it,” Kenny Chesney tells the roaring Nashville crowd. One of those girls jumps onstage to sing along. “My friend Taylor Swift showed up on my birthday to surprise me,” Kenny explained. “In a lot of ways, that song and that lyric is Taylor’s journey.” Their touching “Big Star” duet came out on his concert album Live from No Shoes Nation — 10 years after he gave this rookie a break as the opening act on his 2007 summer tour. There is no loyalty like Swift loyalty.Best line: “She signed autographs like she was Garth Brooks in a skirt.”

229

“Stay Stay Stay” (2012)

“Before you, I’d only dated self-indulgent takers” – but here she turns into a self-indulgent taker herself and (surprise!) she likes it, a phone-throwing nightmare dressed like a grocery-shopping daydream.Best line: “You came in wearing a football helmet and said, ‘Okay, let’s talk.’”

228

‘Imgonnagetyouback’ (2024)

A catchy oddity that resembles Olivia Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back,” except Taylor does not meet this guy’s mom just to tell her her son sucks. Best line: “Once you fix your face, I’m going in.”

227

‘Foolish One’ (2023)

Some of the Speak Now vaulties sound like she’s already rehearsing for Red, but “Foolish One” feels totally Fearless. It’s a guileless country ballad about a girl learning to trust her instincts. Can you believe she went from this song to “Shake It Off” in four years? Talk about an upgrade in terms of Voices In My Head content. Love the way she wrote the hook “it’s delicate,” then decided to save that line until she could give it a song all its own. Like a lot of decisions she made in 2010, this was a prescient one.Best line: “When my head is on your shoulder / It starts thinking you’ll come around.”

226

“Message In a Bottle” (2021)

The first song Swift wrote with Max Martin and Shellback — the day she met them. It makes sense she left “Message in a Bottle” off Red, since it sounds so similar to “22”— she chose the right one. But it sounds like she’s already stretching ahead to 1989. “How is it in London?” sounds like a fresh take on the transatlantic rendezvous of “Come Back…Be Here.”Best line: “I became hypnotized by freckles and bright eyes, tongue-tied.”

225

“Say Don’t Go” (2023)

“I would stay forever if you say ‘Don’t go’ / But you won’t.” A 1989 vault outtake co-written with Eighties hitmaker Diane Warren, “Say Don’t Go” is relatively straight-forward and smooth compared to its peers, with echoes of “Mirrorball” in the tightrope imagery.Best line: “We’re a shot in the darkest dark.”