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Taylor Swift’s Most Romantic Love Songs

The pop star is engaged and getting the fairy-tale romance she’s been writing about her entire career

By ROLLING STONE
Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift embrace on football pitch

EZRA SHAW/GETTY IMAGES

Love is one of Taylor Swift’s favorite things. When she was just 25, she admitted that she had already spent her “whole life tryin’ to put it into words.” From her debut album on, audiences have watched the songwriter process love, heartbreak, and everything before, after, and in-between. Her songs were often the perfect way to grapple with pain, but once she began to experience real love, she treated the topic with the same type of precision and passion as her break-up songs.

Now, Swift is newly engaged to partner Travis Kelce, embarking on the type of fairy-tale romance she dreamed of having since she was a girl. To celebrate the happy couple’s future nuptials, here are her 15 most romantic love songs.

7

‘Enchanted’

Prior to Reputation, Swift’s recorded love songs were mostly built on a dream, and “Enchanted” is one of her more mythical. She has a fairytale-esque encounter with a crush that turns into one of her most majestic portraits of romantic yearning. They see each other across a room and share some glances and passing pleasantries that feel so charged she’s awake all night, wondering if he’s in love with someone else. By the bridge, she’s begging for him to want her too, and hopes that they can continue the story one day. The lyrics are the pinnacle of her storybook songwriting era before she grew up and let reality take hold. —B.S.

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6

‘Cornelia Street’

On “Cornelia Street,” Swift pleads for her apartment address to remain associated with home rather than heartbreak. At first, she hesitates to open herself up to love, then runs away, but ultimately turns back and gives in. “I rent a place on Cornelia Street,” she sings, though she’s yearning for something more permanent. “I hope I never lose you, hope it never ends/I’d never walk Cornelia Street again.” Her old building in New York has become something of a Swiftie landmark. It’s where they went to mourn when Swift’s six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn came to an end. The ghosts of relationships past still roam the street, but she isn’t haunted by them anymore. —L.P.

5

‘Love Story’

There’s a reason every headline about her engagement referenced “Love Story.” Swift’s first big crossover hit from country to pop radio is as romantic as it gets. The bold, catchy Fearless single is an audacious reimagining of Romeo & Juliet. Like most of Swift’s early career love songs, her imagination runs wild with images of ball gowns and balconies and all kinds of Elizabethan touches that fill a teen’s dreams. Instead of ending in double-suicide, Swift’s take on the Shakespeare classic ends in a wedding: The two lovers finally have approval from Juliet’s dad and run off into the sunset together. —B.S.

4

‘Delicate’

While making Reputation, Swift stayed out of the public eye, but she spent plenty of time inside her head and in dimly lit dive bars. On “Delicate,” she had a vocoder, a radioactive reputation, and a dream that any preexisting narratives about her wouldn’t stop her new love in its tracks. “Is it cool that I said all that?” she asks. Swift has never been one to ask for reassurance when it comes to falling fast and falling hard. By the time she reaches the bridge, she decides she doesn’t have anything left to lose, so she ditches the cool girl shtick for the confessional one. “Sometimes, when I look into your eyes/I pretend you’re mine all the damn time,” she admits. —L.P.

3

‘Invisible String’

While most songs on Folklore exist in fictional worlds, “Invisible String” stands out as a rare autobiographical moment on the album. Above a finger-plucked guitar riff, Swift wonders if there’s a golden thread tethering her to a lover long before they ever met. She goes back to their youths, where she would dream of meeting someone special while the person she loved worked his part-time job. As it progresses, she gets more meta than usual: hearing “Bad Blood” in a cab and sending her ex’s babies presents. But by the end, she’s showing her lover around the same park she used to dream in, satisfied that the thread connected them after all. —B.S.

2

‘New Year’s Day’

The closing track off reputation is a delicate love song hidden on an album that’s supposed to be all about revenge. On it, Swift paints a glittery New Year’s Eve party to evoke the dichotomy of love and her all-encompassing devotion. She’s not just in this relationship for the thrill of a midnight kiss, she’s promising to stick around even when it gets hard. (Cleaning candle wax off hardwood floors does sound especially arduous.) The singer closes the track with a gentle plea: “Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere.” It’s one of the most vulnerable, precious lines Swift has ever written. —M.G.

1

‘Daylight’

Lover is packed with intimate scenes from a relationship: sneaking around the West Village and London, Christmas lights, paper rings. But the album itself ends with a step back, with Swift reflecting on what real love actually feels like after spending half her life writing about what she wants it to be. “Daylight” is a treat for any longtime fans, full of sly references to the ways in which she’s described romance and lust in the past. The most noticeable is the revelation that she “once believed love would be burning red” only to learn that it’s “golden, like daylight.” The track is tender and subdued, ending with a sobering, spoken epilogue where she declares the importance of being defined by what you love. —B.S.

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