With “The Tortured Poets Department” being released tomorrow on Poetry & The Creative Mind Day (April 19), it’s the perfect time to talk about superstar Taylor Swift’s first 10 albums, coming to you from the two self-proclaimed biggest Swifties on campus. …Ready for it?
PLEASE NOTE: IT WAS TORTURE (PUN INTENDED) TO RANK THESE ALBUMS. WE BOTH LOVE THEM ALL. THESE ARE OUR PERSONAL OPINIONS AND WE RECOGNIZE THAT EVERYONE WILL HAVE THEIR OWN OPINION ON HOW THESE ALBUMS SHOULD BE RANKED.
Isaac – Favorite song: “Picture to Burn”
Admittedly, this is the album that I have listened to the least, it’s the one that I have the least exposure to. And I do really appreciate a lot of the songs on it like “Tim McGraw,” “Picture to Burn,” “Teardrops On My Guitar” and “Our Song,” but it’s not one that I go back to nearly as often as the rest. Maybe that is just in part due to the fact that it came out when I was three, but I imagine once the Taylor’s Version comes out it’ll be something that I come back to more.
Winnie – Favorite song: “Should’ve Said No”
I don’t hate this album. It’s amazing but it’s the first album of an amazing artist who was learning how to make music professionally so it’s not as good as everything Taylor has made since. It’s also about being in high school and there aren’t many people I know dying to repeat their high school experience.
Isaac – Favorite song: “You All Over Me (Feat. Marren Morris) (From The Vault)”
I think that this is really where she starts to come into her own as an artist, obviously. It’s her second album. “Speak Now” is really where she began to enter the zeitgeist, but this is where people who knew, knew. For me at least, a lot of these songs are the first songs of hers that I was really exposed to. Like “The Way I Love You,” “You Belong With Me,” “Love Story” and “Fearless.” I also think that these are some of her best choruses too, like the “Fearless” chorus is an earworm.
“Love Story” is obviously still so resonant, it’s arguably her most timeless song. It’s been such a defining song, and you can still see how it permeates in pop culture too, look at its usage in the Richie episode of “The Bear,” which is the best episode of that whole show. And to even move past the original release and look at the vault of the Taylor’s Version. “You All Over Me” might just be my favorite song from the entire vault project. “Mr. Perfectly Fine” feels like it was released on the original album, like, it feels like when I listened to that song for the first time I’d already been listening to it for 10 years.
Winnie – Favorite song: “White Horse (Taylor’s Version)”
This album screams trying new things and finding your own way to me. It’s all about being young and not being jaded by life yet. Hope is everywhere. As Isaac described it, it feels like spring. Watching people freak out whenever she performed songs from this album as surprise songs on The Eras Tour highlights to me how long she has captured how people feel and put it to music for them to process and understand those emotions.
Isaac – Favorite song: “False God”
This is the album that really re-invigorated my love for Taylor, and it wasn’t even when she dropped it. “Lover” kind of came and went for me when it was initially released, but when COVID hit, she didn’t release “folklore” until a couple months in. So I remember how I would just do nothing but go outside to the street and play basketball on the hoop in front of my house, and I recall vividly just bouncing the ball, sweating in the heat and “I Think He Knows” blasting in my ear. It was really formative for me. And you know, the re-emergence of “Cruel Summer” since The Eras Tour has really spoken to how I think this album is going to age, which I think is going to be like wine. The album is a bit sour in hindsight after everything that happened with Joe, and I also think that there are some truly bad songs on this one like “ME!,” but it still has a special place in my heart.
Winnie – Favorite song: “The Archer”
This album was the first pop album of Taylor’s that I fell in love with. It’s such a bop. It made me believe in love even more. It’s weird to listen to this album after the five Apple Music playlists that Taylor released at the beginning of April that are themed on #The5StagesOfHeartbreak. Songs from this album are on three of the five playlists. It adds another layer to these songs for me. Some people say this has ruined them. “The Archer” being on the playlist called “Am I Allowed to Cry?” which Taylor describes in a voice note at the beginning of the playlist as that feeling when “you’re trying to make deals with yourself or someone that you care about” doesn’t change how I feel about that song. It’s hauntingly beautiful about the vulnerability of love.
Isaac – Favorite song: “Dress”
This was the first album of hers where I was really there for the rollout. I remember so vividly being on the tailend of my drive home from school with my Dad the day that “Look What You Made Me Do” dropped and forcing him to listen to the song. I don’t remember what his reaction was, but I do remember how vibrant I was about the song. Removed from the hype-train, that song isn’t incredible, but like the rest of the album, it is a GREAT concert song. Even though I wasn’t able to attend when it happened, the “Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour” movie is a feat of concert filmmaking, and highlights how each of the songs plays in a concert setting.
Beyond that, “…Ready For It?” is one of her best opening tracks to an album and really is a great tone-setter, and I also really think that this was one of the few instances where Taylor absolutely chose the best songs to be singles. “Delicate,” “Gorgeous” and “End Game” are all bangers. “Call It What You Want,” “Dress” and “Getaway Car” are also all some of her ALL-TIME best songs, there’s truly nothing like belting the “Getaway Car” bridge in a car with one of your friends (Shout out Laci).
Winnie – Favorite song: “Call It What You Want”
I have to confess, I didn’t pay much attention when this album dropped. Life was hectic and I was not listening to anything. It’s an amazing album. There’s an aggressive unapologeticness in this album that isn’t seen really in any of her other albums. I love it. The stadium tour video makes it better. These songs were written to have walls of flames pulse to the beat of them.
As a whole, this album isn’t one of the one’s I play on repeat often. There are a couple songs that I listen to fairly often. “I Did Something Bad” and “Delicate” are two of the top ones for me. Again, there is nothing wrong with it, I just have other albums that have merged with my soul and call to me like a siren.
Isaac – Favorite song: “I Wish You Would (Taylor’s Version)”
It pains me to have “1989” this low, but that just speaks to how good the rest of her discography is. I honestly hadn’t even listened to this album in full until a few years ago, but the way that all of the singles from this album permeated in my mind from middle school is remarkable. The four-song opening run of “Welcome To New York,” “Blank Space,” “Style” and “Out Of The Woods” is one of the best runs of her entire career, and “I Wish You Would” might be my absolute favorite pop song of hers.
When Taylor’s Version of “1989” dropped, there were a lot of complaints that the vault tracks sounded too much like “Midnights,” which can be attributed to the presence of one Jack Antonoff, but this isn’t a problem for me. I love “Midnights,” so anything that sounds like that album is okay with me.
Winnie – Favorite song: “Slut! (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)”
This album is amazing. I remember so many people wondering if Taylor could make the transition to pop or if her castles would crumble because she left the country genre. As we all know, she made the transition just fine and popped off with this album.
Summer has never had a better album to represent it and it never will. It’s basically a requirement to drive with the windows down in the car blasting “Now That We Don’t Talk,” “Style,” “Shake It Off” and “Suburban Legends” on a hot, sunny day. “New Romantics” will never not be a good song to listen to for a mood lift.
When “Slut!” was announced as one of the vault tracks, I was expecting another song of the summer. In my mind, it was going to be similar to “Shake It Off” but I was wrong. It’s soft and intimate. I love this style that Taylor has made synonymous with who she is. Her power with the written word leaves me speechless. 13/10
Isaac – Favorite song: “Timeless (Taylor’s Version)”
The absolute perfect blend between Swift as a symbol of a time of youth, and also her growing into her own. There is literally a song called “Never Grow Up.” What does heartbreak, love and romance mean to an adult? She released this album when she was 20, which might be why it resonates with me so much as a 20-year-old myself. Songs like “Sparks Fly,” “Back To December,” “Enchanted,” “Last Kiss” and “Long Live” are so indicative of young love, and also are so good as capturing these fleeting moments that we cling to as we search for love. She really has her electric touch on the pulse of what makes love so enveloping.
Taylor’s Version of this album also has a great array of vault tracks, “Castles Crumbling” and “Timeless” especially standout to me even over some of the original albums best songs.
Winnie – Favorite song: “Back to December (Taylor’s Version)”
This has been my favorite album ever since it was released. I had just turned 15 and “Back to December” was the only song I could afford to buy on iTunes. Boy did I get my money’s worth with the many hours I’ve listened to that 4 minute and 55 second track.
The melancholy present in this album weaves through the soul and leaves stardust in its wake. I adore the reflection of life and love that one who wrote every song by herself before she was 21 logically should not have. The vault tracks only reinforced this. “Foolish One,” “I Can See You,” “Castles Crumbling,” “Timeless” and “When Emma Falls in Love” are perfection.
This album will never not have a piece of my heart. There are albums I love more but none that I’ve loved longer.
Isaac – Favorite song: “Better Man (From The Vault) (Taylor’s Version)”
This is the project where Taylor’s writing begins to feel very lived in. Outside of the two big pop powerhouse bangers “22” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” this album to me is primarily about this young woman really coming to terms with what adult heartbreak looks like and learning to live with that. It’s really tragic. The album is fueled by this overwhelming sense of melancholy that Taylor is feeling which is really put on display in songs like “Treacherous,” “I Almost Do,” “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” “Come Back… Be Here” and of course “All Too Well.”
Taylor’s Version of “Red” is a moment that I will remember for a long time. That album came to me after my freshman year situationship like a bullet train. Everything surrounding the ten-minute version of “All Too Well” just brings me back to a time that I wish I had valued more. The song itself, the incredible short film, and the most important text of all to me: the SNL performance, which I still frequently revisit. What a moment.
Winnie – Favorite song: “I Bet You Think About Me (feat. Chris Stapleton) (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)”
This album for me is about Taylor feeling alone in her emotions while she is processing them. There are high highs and low lows. “All Too Well” and “22” are the epitome of this. The tempo is different, the vibe is different and the bridge is different. But they are two sides of the same coin.
It also is all about being in your early twenties and learning about life after high school. You have more freedom but you also have more responsibilities. It’s our metamorphosis. With this album we have over two hours of just what that is like to experience that transformation.
I love the use of the color red throughout this album. The music videos use red in different shades to convey emotion in a way that’s art all on its own. I especially adore the music video for “I Bet You Think About Me.” Red on white pops in an aggressive way that demands your attention. You can’t miss it.
Isaac – Favorite song: “hoax”
The storytelling and sound of this album is just so appealing, and while I really do appreciate Taylor’s pop sensibilities greatly, I think this is where she begins to enter another stratosphere lyrically which cannot necessarily be conveyed in traditional pop music. Taylor had “shifted” her sound before with “reputation,” but as much as that was a change for her, she was also following the industry and the sound that was dominant at the time. With “folklore,” she’s carving a completely new lane for herself that neither she nor her contemporaries in the pop kingdom had really gone down.
The consistent mood that she puts on display throughout this album is really remarkable. It’s sweet, but it’s also incredibly vulnerable in a way that Taylor hadn’t really explored until this project, and in a way that I am glad to see she seems to have fully embraced. For example, you have the romantic longing and reminiscing of a song like “august,” and then immediately after she throws you in an emotional tornado with “this is me trying.” And the choice to do so via the three characters of James, Betty and Augustine is just a brilliant creative choice. I really hope that the movie she is writing and directing for Searchlight Pictures is some sort of adaptation of that story.
Winnie – Favorite song: “mad woman”
I don’t even know where to start. With everything this album is, it blows my mind that there are ones we consider “better” than it. Every part of this album is magic in written form. It’s all SO good. For me, “the last great american dynasty” and “my tears ricochet” and “illicit affairs” (I can go on with the examples) are just a couple examples of that magic.
When I was first prescribed antidepressants, the line “I’m on some new shit” from “the 1” became my foundation. It gave me peace and power in moments when I felt lost and weak, desperate for change but unsure of everything. And “the 1” is only the first song on this album. There are 16 more songs on the deluxe version of this album.
Boy, do those 16 songs go off. This album is abso-fucking-lutely amazing.
Isaac – Favorite song: “Mastermind”
This album came out right before I went on the trip to Washington, D.C. with a bunch of other student media people, so an already extremely formative trip for me where I really got to connect and grow with a lot of my close friends ended up being nearly completely soundtracked by this album. And outside of that, I was meeting so many amazing new people back here in Ellensburg, and having such incredible experiences, all backtracked by “Midnights.” So to say it is important to me would be an understatement.
But, to talk about the actual music, this is the perfect fusion of the lyricism that Taylor flexed on “folklore” and “evermore” with her pop background, and they come crashing together to create this extremely moody atmosphere that is just addicting. And this collision of sound, lyricism and mood makes the album feel a lot smaller and more intimate than her other pop endeavors. Songs like “Maroon,” “Midnight Rain,” “Labyrinth” and my personal favorite “Mastermind” are just perfect displays of this unique evolution that Taylor has undergone with her sound that I can’t help but be drawn to like a magnet.
Winnie – Favorite song: “Sweet Nothing”
I was really hoping that it would get easier to talk about these albums as we got to the top of these rankings. Joke’s on me.
When this album came out in 2022, I was in a searching phase of life. It became my compass. Every moment had a song from it that fit just right.
Taylor took “1989” and the sister albums, “folklore” and “evermore,” and blended them into a style she hadn’t waltzed through before this album. It has the pronounced pop of “1989” with the intimate and vulnerable introspection of “folklore” and “evermore” that comes together in a sensual essence that goes from ballad to anthem in mere seconds.
The Eras Tour has only reinforced the power of this album with seven of the 13 songs on the initial album being what she closes out each performance with. She knows how good this album is. It leaves you high after you listen to it and it’s a high that you can’t get enough of.
Isaac – Favorite song: “cowboy like me”
Many people — for some unfathomable reason — do not like this album at all. I’ve never understood why. To me, this is so clearly Taylor’s most polished album. From the cohesive sound to the devastating and grounded lyrics, this is Taylor at her peak. She takes the sound she developed on “folklore” and really hones in on it and pressurizes it like a diamond. She’s writing from a place now of real maturity, responsibility, humility and importantly transparency, no longer masquerading behind the fairy tale of “folklore.”
Songs like “champagne problems,” “‘tis the damn season,” “tolerate it,” “ivy” and “right where you left me” really demonstrate Taylor pushing herself, her insecurities and her sins to the forefront in a way that she had previously been averse to. The vulnerability and remorse she writes with is powerful, heartbreaking and agonizing all at once.
I like to listen to Taylor’s music in accordance with the seasons. “1989,” “Lover” and “folklore” in the summer, and “Speak Now” and “Fearless” in the spring, that sort of thing. But I always find myself most anticipating the fall, where I permit myself to really dig deep into “Red” and “evermore.” Where “folklore” plays as a summer bottled in time, forever and always a moment so rooted in the present, “evermore” feels like the reckoning of that high, dealing with the consequences of letting yourself get enveloped in a moment like that. People move on, how will you — Taylor, or listener — cope with that?
Winnie – Favorite song: “tolerate it”
As the sister album of “folklore,” this album goes where “folklore” couldn’t. It’s reflective and melancholy with blunt introspection. That blunt introspective is, in my opinion, why it’s her best album. She sees her weaknesses. But that doesn’t mean that she sees those weaknesses negatively. It’s part of her lived experiences. It makes her whole.
Taylor opens herself up so deeply to the listener with these songs. We can all relate to the things loved ones leave behind undone when they die like in “marjorie.” We all have had moments where we are not seen for our value by those we thought saw it better than anyone else and the pain of that moment in “tolerate it.” We know all too well that feeling of bittersweet reflection of surviving things we weren’t sure we would when we were in the middle of it the way she puts it in “long story short.”
This album feels sacred to me. Taylor gave us hymns with “evermore.” We are called to worship the magic and melancholy of life. I am a devout follower forevermore.
By the students, for the students of Central Washington University
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sorry • Apr 18, 2024 at 9:05 pm
lover at 8 is sickening
