All 274 of Taylor Swift’s Songs, Ranked

A light-hearted ode to childhood innocence, with swingsets and dragonflies.Best line: “Long may you roar at your dinosaurs.”

This Ed Sheeran duet from the Red vault is about two outlaw lovers making an upstate escape in the car — it makes a clever contrast with the drive in “All Too Well (10-Minute Version),” with Taylor at the wheel. This song also has the album’s second-most-memorable cameo from a keychain. Not as dramatic as “Everything Has Changed,” but every bit as intimate. (And if I’m not mistaken, it’s about something good that starts in a getaway car.)Best line: “I could see this view a hundred times/Pale blue sky reflected in your eyes.”

If you were a Taylor fan in 2010, you probably remember some of the mind-blowingly stupid cliches that experts kept saying about her. “Castles Crumbling” shows that she wondered if these experts had a point. (They didn’t.) It’s wild that she wrote this troubled-ingenue lament three years before “Nothing New.” But Taylor was already feeling that Monster On The Hill terror when she was 20. In “Castles Crumbling,” she bonds with Paramore’s Hayley Williams—two peers who grew up in public at the same time, two women who learned early that people throw rocks at things that shine. It makes sense since Taylor loves Paramore almost as much as she loves castle imagery.Best line: “You don’t wanna know me / I will just let you down.”

Subtitle: “So I Sang About You First Thing On My Album.” So yeah, maybe that’s the opposite of forgetting — it’s technically known as “reminding.” Letting go of the past, moving on, calming down — let’s face it, those aren’t exactly topics where you look to Taylor for guidance. That’s why we love her — she never lets go. (She hasn’t forgotten Drew!) But there’s something quintessentially Tay about how she keeps nudging to impress you with how indifferent she is. Her Aubrey Graham shout-out is fitting, since these two are the champion overfeelers of our time.Best line: “In my feelings more than Drake.”

The trad country sound she soon left behind, from her Beautiful Eyes EP.Best line: “Wake up, and smell the breakup/Fix my heart, put on my makeup.”

Taylor officially joins the family as the fourth Haim sister. This anger-and-lust guitar jam was a highlight of their excellent Women In Music, but it gets even better with Sister Swift singing along. It’s funny they didn’t have her do the line “Watching the sun rise from the kitchen counter,” since she’s the one who’s on a mission to have emotional experiences in every square inch of the kitchen.Best line: “You needed ass/Well, what’s wrong with that?”

A gorgeous duet full of low-key nuances – her humming after the first verse, that “sorry, sorry, sorry” fade, the way Colbie’s voice lifts hers.Best line: “It’s tragedy, and it’ll only bring you down.”

A rare case where she retools somebody else’s song on one of her proper albums – the all-but-unknown Y2K-era rock band Luna Halo, who previously opened for Hoobastank. Her Fearless version sounds practically nothing like their original (though both name-check .38 Special’s Eighties classic “Caught Up in You“). In fact, it’s tough to fathom how she heard the original as raw material she could use – now that’s ears.Best line: “In the middle of the night when I’m in this dream/It’s like a million little stars spelling out your name.”

A folksy fingerpicking change of pace on Speak Now, pining for childhood innocence – though it feels more like a leftover from the debut. This has really grown over the years, especially when you hear her adult Taylor’s Version voice sing it.Best line: “You’re mortified your mom’s dropping you off.”

She makes a daring leap into the hair-metal mom market by teaming up with Def Leppard on CMT Crossroads, a move that works almost frighteningly well. Peak glam, especially when she asks the gender-torching question, “Demolition woman, can I be your man?”Best line: “Do you take sugar? One lump or two?”

Taylor writes her own ace lovelorn holiday standard, ambushing her ex with one of those squirm-packed Merry-Christmas phone calls. Awkward question: “When you were putting up the lights this year/Did you notice one less pair of hands?” Eat your heart out, Mariah.Best line: “I bet you got your mom another sweater.”

A bang-up claim on the Tom Petty classic – she used his original as her live entrance music for a while. Then she switched to Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman.”Best line: “Oh yeah! All right!”

A teen ditty about a boy who doesn’t realize she’s alive, from pretty much the last moment in history that was possible. Clever pop-obsessive touch: The final steel-guitar twang echoes Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” If you think that’s an accident…this is Planet Tay. There are no accidents.Best line: “We could be a beautiful miracle, unbelievable, instead of just invisible.”

Ironclad rule of pop music: Songs about jumping are never a bad idea. Dig that “listens to Sublime once” vocal.Best line: “I watch you talk, you didn’tnotice.”

Digging deep in the Nineties modern-rock crates, she does right by a previously obscure (to me) nugget from the New Orleans band Better Than Ezra – from 2005!, 10 years after their MTV hit! – as a charity benefit for the Hope for Haiti Now album.Best line: “I’ll never judge you/I can only love you.”

Welcome to the dawn of the Taylor sports-metaphor era. “When I touch down / Call the amateurs and cut them from the team”? “The Alchemy” feels like her post-Super Bowl “Dropkick Me Travis Through The Goalposts of Life” statement, and this is just the beginning. Best line: “These blokes warm the benches.”

One of the basic rules of stardom is “never punch down”—don’t go after somebody one-thousandth as famous as you—but rules were made to be broken and Taylor is the girl made to break them. Here she goes Bruce Lee on a sexual rival who may or may not be the actress who had Alyssa Milano as her babysitter in the erotic thriller Poison Ivy 2. It’s immature and ridiculous, but she’s smart enough to make herself the real butt of the joke, and as usual with Swift, her self-owns are the funniest part of the song. It was understandable to tweak the “she’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress” line 13 years later, but she was already way beyond moth/flame cliches in 2010.Best line: “She thinks I’m psycho because I like to rhyme her name with things.”

A Big Red Machine ballad sung by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, with Taylor in a supporting role. She adds her celestial harmonies, picking up where the Justin/Taylor duets “Exile” and “Evermore” left off. Aaron Dessner summed up the spirit of the project: “Making music with your friends just to make it.”Best line: “So I beg on knees/Can we share IDs?”

Little-known fact: Did you know Kanye West once went onstage to interrupt Swift’s acceptance speech at the VMAs and threw a misogynist tantrum about how she didn’t deserve an award? Strange but true! “Innocent” was her song publicly forgiving him — over 10 freaking years ago — then they both released brilliant albums and we all moved on with our lives. Dear Lord, if only this story had ended there.Best line: “It’s OK/Life is a tough crowd.”

Swift hits the club with her older boyfriend and gets her pheromones scrambled by the sweet young thing across the room. Dig those Eighties synth tones — straight from the first Howard Jones album. Tragic fact: Seven years after she wrote “Enchanted,” Taylor still has zero “find out if dude has a freaking girlfriend” game. The shout-out to her cats Meredith and Olivia is such a cheap ploy, and you know what? It works brilliantly, as cheap ploys usually do when this is the woman working them. This song could rate higher, except she basically did an even better version with “You Need to Calm Down.”Best line: “You should take it as a compliment that I’m talking to everybody here but you.” Listen here.

“My mind turns your life into folklore” is a clever way to connect Evermore to Folklore, although “Gold Rush” might have sounded more at home on Lover. “Gold Rush” could be a different view of the same torpor as “Happiness” and “Tolerate It,” trying to remember why this relationship once seemed worth the pain.Best line: “My Eagles t-shirt hanging from the door.”

Once upon a time, many Christmases ago, the label made poor Taylor bang out a shoddy quickie holiday album in time for December. She must have wondered, “Why is this happening? Why am I singing ‘Santa Baby’? WTF, shouldn’t I be singing about how in real life I literally grew up on a Christmas tree farm?” It took a few years, but she finally got to jingle all the way, with this impeccably cozy carol.Best line: “Sweet dreams of holly and ribbon / Mistakes are forgiven.”

“You smile that beautiful smile, and all the girls in the front row scream your name.” No relation to the Seventies soft-rock hit by the Carpenters — except they’re both poignant ballads about groupies crushing on distant guitar boys. Well, as Journey warned, lovin’ a music man ain’t always what it’s supposed to be.Best line: “You sing me to sleep every night from the radio.”

Her wintry tribute to Eighties R&B — that sax sounds like it dropped in from a lost Sade album between Promise and Love Deluxe. The highlight of “False God” is the final 30 seconds, where she sings exactly like Drake. She’s showing off, but it’s all right.Best line: “Staring out the window like I’m not your favorite town / I’m New York City.”

Her ballad from Hannah Montana: The Movie, snagging her a cameo in the film. (But the highlight of the soundtrack will always be “Hoedown Throwdown.”) This is where Taylor and Miley crossed light sabers – although they’d meet again. Great title, too – even Taylor might probably admit Miley had her beat in this department, at least until the “Blank Space” video.Best line: “Every sky was your own kind of blue.”

An unsung highlight of the debut – a teen pep talk about self-esteem.Best line: “Seems the only one who doesn’t see your beauty/Is the face in the mirror looking back at you.”

Taylor sings back-up on a piano ballad she co-wrote with her friends in The National, a standout from their first post-Folkmore album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. “The Alcott” is a secret meeting between two ex-lovers in a hotel bar. In the final minute, her voice takes off into a back-and-forth dialogue with singer Matt Berninger.Best line: “Everything that’s mine is a landmine.”

A synth ballad rescued from the Fearless vault, where Taylor bumps into an ex-boyfriend and decides whether she feels like taking the high road or making a scene. Shocker: she makes a scene.Best line: “Hey, I knew I’d run into you somewhere/It’s been a while, I didn’t mean to stare.”

The most “therein” moment on Reputation. Also the only song (after “Look What You Made Me Do”) devoted to the album’s alleged celebrity-complaints concept, though shrewdly playing it for kicks and giggles. “Therein lies the issue” is some quality Swiftian spite content, but it’s that sadistic tongue-clicking “mmm-mmmm” before the second chorus that really brings the Judgement Tay. “Here’s to my mama, had to listen to all this drama” – has your mom met you? She might be used to that by now.Best line: “Feeling so Gatsby for that whole year.”

Nothing could be more contrary to the Taylor worldview than the concept of “closure.” Needless to say, she’s opposed to it.Best line: “Don’t treat me like some situation that needs to be handled/I’m fine with my spite and my tears and my beers and my candles.”

She leaves her window open overnight, just in case her ex falls out of a cloud. There’s a great “oooh” in the second chorus — one of those moments you can tell she’s an Oasis fan. (This song makes you suspect “Don’t Look Back In Anger” is a fave.) One of the Fearless-era tunes that gets a drastic glow-up on Taylor’s Version — it sounds infinitely better when she gets to belt it in her adult voice.Best line: “I could stand up and sing you a song/But I don’t wanna have to go that far.”

Tay does the Wham! legacy proud – she should also cover “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” The ache and quaver of her voice fit the George Michael melancholy; this might be the saddest “Last Christmas” since the original. Plenty of us communed with this version on Christmas 2016, the night we said goodbye to the guy who wrote it. R.I.P., George Michael.Best line: “A girl on a cover but you tore her apart.”