All 206 of Taylor Swift’s Songs, Ranked

“Is it cool that I said all that?” A little late for that question, Tay. But “Delicate” is her triumph, a whispery vocoder rush that sums up everything she’s about. She steals away for a late-night hoodie-shrouded rendezvous at her local dive bar, trying to play jaded and cool. But because she’s Taylor, she can’t stop constantly pointing out how chill she’s being, elbowing you in the ribs with those “isn’t it? isn’t it?” chants. (I count 24 “isn’t it”‘s in this song and I am feeling every one of them.) She spends “Delicate” talking herself out of that midnight confession, but when it spills out — “I pretend you’re mine all the damn time” – the moment feels cataclysmic. As ever, the girl sets strict emotional rules for herself and then trashes them all. Let’s face it, Tay will always fail spectacularly at playing it cool, because she will never be able to resist saying way too much of All That. Yet as “Delicate” proves, All That is what she was born to say. Isn’t it?Best line: “Is it chill that you’re in my head?” Listen here.

Taylor shines like the disco ball gazing down on the dance floor, wondering why everybody else looks so confident and imagining how that feels. A seething ballad about a loner feeling a little too loud and a little too bright, afraid everyone’s staring at her flaws yet feeling invisible anyway. “Mirrorball” revisits the party vibe of “New Romantics” from another angle, with Taylor twirling on high heels, spinning like a girl in a brand new dress, hating herself for being so desperate to sparkle for strangers. This is the kind of vulnerable teen sensibility that got her started writing songs in the first place (i.e. most of her debut album). But in classic Swift style, she decides exactly what she’s going to allow herself to feel, then wonders why she feels the exact opposite. She’s the same girl in the swing from “Seven,” grown up yet still feeling like she’s dangling in mid-air, never touching ground. Who else has a songwriting mind like this? Queen of Concept.Best line: “I’m still a believer but I don’t know why / I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try.”

The way Taylor exhales at the end of the line “I’m about to play my ace-aaah” is perhaps the finest moment in the history of human lungs. “New Romantics” is where she takes the Eighties synth-pop concept of 1989 to the bank, with a mirror-ball epiphany that leaves tears of mascara all over the dance floor. She tips her cap to the arty poseurs of the 1980s New Romantic scene – Duran Duran, Adam Ant, the Human League, etc. – yet sounds exactly like her own preposterously emotional self. (One of my weirdest moments of recent years: explaining this song’s existence to the guys in Duran Duran.) “New Romantics” is hardly the first time she’s sung about crying in the bathroom, but it’s the one that makes crying in the bathroom sound like a bold spiritual quest, which (when she sings about it) it is. The punch line: Having written this work of genius, exceeding even the wildest hopes any fan could have dreamed, she left it off the damn album, a very New Romantic thing to do.Best line: “We show off our different scarlet letters/Trust me, mine is better.” Listen here.

So casually cruel in the name of being awesome. This towering ballad is Swift’s zenith, building to peak after peak. For “All Too Well,” she teams up with her songwriting sensei Liz Rose to spin a tragic tale of doomed love and scarves and autumn leaves and maple lattes. And her greatest song just got even greater in the definitive 10-minute version, with Taylor digging up her lost verses, to bring it to a whole new level of All Too Unwell. What kind of artist takes her own masterpiece and tears it all up? This one. Only this one. Result: an even bolder masterpiece.Every version of “All Too Well” tells a different story. There’s the “Sad Girl Autumn” version from Long Pond Studio, with Aaron Dessner on piano. The acoustic-guitar solo version from the theater premiere for her short film. But each version feels like it’s all her, because this isn’t really a song about a boy — never was. It’s about a girl, her piano, her memory, and her refusal to surrender her most painful secrets, even when it’s tempting to forget.It’s full of killer moments: the way she sings “refrigerator,” the way she spits out the consonants of “crumpled-up piece of paper,” the way she chews up three “all”’s in a row. No other song does such a stellar job of showing off her ability to blow up a trivial little detail into a legendary heartache. That scarf should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, though in a way it already is. You can schaeden your freude all over the celebrity she reputedly sings about, but on the best day of your life you will never inspire a song as great as “All Too Well.” Or write one.Best line: “Maybe we got lost in translation/Maybe I asked for too much/Maybe this thing was a masterpiece till you tore it all up/Running scared, I was there, I remember it all too well.” Listen here.