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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

87

“Tolerate It” (2020)

Can you even imagine the songwriter who wrote “White Horse” in her teens was already planning to write “Tolerate It” in her 30s? She might have taken inspiration from Rebecca, but it feels more like a Carole King song from the 1970s — trapped in a dead-end marriage where something inside just died. Taylor called this part of Evermore “the ‘unhappily ever after’ trilogy of marriages gone bad.”Best line: “Now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life.”

86

“Sad Beautiful Tragic” (2012)

She must have heard a Mazzy Star song on the radio that morning and thought, “Hey, this sounds like fun.” All the details are in place, from her woozy Hope Sandoval mumble to the way it nails Sandoval’s exact tambourine sound. Such an underrated Red gem, one she’s almost never sung live, but it was one of her templates for the sound of Folklore — Mazzy Swift rights forever. Would any other songwriter on Earth have the sheer gall to get away with that title? Let’s hope nobody tries.Best line: “You’ve got your demons, and, darling, they all look like me.”

85

<strong>“Lavender Haze</strong>” (2022)

A Nineties R&B trip through the “Lavender Haze,” with two lovers in their own private world, tuning out society and gender roles and social media, blocking out the noise, leaving it all at their door. It’s a kind of love story she’s kept singing about her whole career, from “Ours” to “Holy Ground” to “Call It What You Want.” Taylor rejects “the 1950s shit they want from me,” where “the only kind of girl they see is a one-night or a wife.” Intriguing footnote: At her NYC commencement speech in May, Dr. Swift revealed, “I had a phase where, for the entirety of 2012, I dressed like a 1950s housewife.”Best line: “Staring at the ceiling with you/You don’t ever say too much/And you don’t really read into my melancholia.”

84

“Illicit Affairs” (2020)

A cheating ballad that can turn me into a godforsaken mess any time. The guitar has a wistful “Last Kiss” tinge, except instead of sneaking peeks at an ex’s social-media photos, it’s all sordid meetings in the parking lot, where all getaway cars end up. The muted regret boils over in the bridge, as she snarls: “Don’t call me kid, don’t call me baby.” The definitive version is from The Long Pond Studio Sessions, with Aaron Dessner stretching out on guitar. She does an unforgettably powerful version on the Eras Tour where she simply chants the bridge. Can you imagine how great her Bridges Tour will be? Just four hours of her bridges?Best line: “Take the words for what they are/A dwindling, mercurial high/A drug that only worked the first few hundred times.”

83

“The Lakes” (2020)

Let’s face it: Swift has trained us to expect the unexpected, but nobody guessed she’d crown Folklore with the best song ever about 19th century Romantic poets. (Only competition: Van Morrison’s “Summertime in England.”) In “The Lakes,” she wanders the Windermere Peaks in the footsteps of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s her answer to Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” as she roams the wide open spaces so she can listen to “the still sad music of humanity.” As a Wordsworth fanatic, I’m grateful this song exists (“Peele Castle” Hive, rise!) and Tay should keep it going with the lit fan-fic — maybe Emily Dickinson or Gertrude Stein next?Best line: “I want auroras and sad prose/I want to watch wisteria grow.”

82

“The Man” (2019)

Imagine a timeline where Taylor released this as the first single from Reputation, instead of “Look What You Made Me Do.” It’s safe to say people might have gotten the message faster. “The Man” is the sharpest feminist anthem she’s written (so far). The unspoken subtext: If these dudes had to spend a day in her shoes, they’d crumble like a soggy chunk of feta cheese.Best line: “When everyone believes you, what’s that like?” Listen here.

81

“Cowboy Like Me” (2020)

Taylor never really had a thing for cowboys, even in her country days, so it makes sense she’d rather be the cowboy than rope one for herself. She’s a grifter swindling her sugar daddies, until she falls for a fellow con artist. But they don’t know if they can give up the thrills of the chase — the same old dilemma of “you love the players and you love the game.” Aaron Dessner’s guitar adds the right touch of country-rock. “I’m waiting by the phone like I’m in an airport bar” is one of the best old-media jokes on an album that also has centerfolds and VHS tapes.Best line: “The skeletons in both our closets plotted hard to fuck this up.”

80

‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’ (2024)

Joni Mitchell once summed up her view of men falling out of love with their idealized dream women: “‘My toy is broken!’ And that’s basically the mentality of all the men of my generation that I met, just narcissistic, fair-weather types.” “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” looks at the same syndrome, with a woman in the hands of a lover who sees her only as a disposable doll. As Swift said, it’s about “being somebody’s favorite toy, until they break you, and then don’t want to play with you anymore.” Best line: “Pull the string and I’ll tell you that he runs because he loves me.”

79

“Wildest Dreams” (2014)

You rang, Goth Taylor? At first this might have seemed like a minor pleasure on 1989, but it really sounds stronger and stronger over the years, especially when she hiccups the words “my last request ih-is.” The video features giraffes and zebras.Best line: “He’s so tall and handsome as hell/He’s so bad, but he does it so well.”

78

<strong>“Anti-Hero</strong>” (2022)

Taylor should begin more songs with the line “I have this thing where…”, right? She has LOTS of this thing. “Anti-Hero” addresses her public persona, in the tradition of Taylor Lead Singles, as opposed to her private or creative life, with self-deprecating quips in every verse, and the sing-along chorus: “It’s me! Hi! I’m the problem, it’s me!”Best line: “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby/And I’m the monster on the hill.”

77

“Daylight” (2019)

The finale of Lover, and a passionate sequel to “Clean.” “Daylight” takes off in the final minute when she gives a soliloquy that sounds like one of those 2 a.m. voice memos you forget about until you find them on your phone weeks later. “I wanna be defined by the things I love, not the things I’m afraid of” — it’s an affirmation to believe in.Best line: “I once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden.”

76

“Mine” (2010)

“You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter” is one of those hooks where she seems to cram a whole life story into one line.Best line: “I was a flight risk with a fear of falling.”

75

“You’re On Your Own, Kid” (2022)

A New Order-like synth-pop tale of teenage isolation: another teenage girl from a wasteland of a home town, dreaming of getting out or running away, but using music and art and writing to create her own fantasy world.Best line: “I searched the party of better bodies/Just to learn that my dreams aren’t rare.”