The Complete Ranking Of Taylor Swift Albums, From Fearless To Flawless
'Look What You Made Me Do' defenders, this ranking is for you.
It’s very easy to talk around Taylor Swift, rather than about her. After all, the media has been doing it for years now.
Swift has been used as a means of excavating a whole range of trends in modern pop music and contemporary culture, her personas examined as symptoms of the various phases of post-9/11 America. Over the last six years, she’s been described as a blight on country music; an offshoot of America’s aesthetic fetishisation of fascism; and a haughty, furiously apolitical princess cut off from the fans that she claims to support.
It’s not hard to see why the media can’t seem to decide quite who she is. Chameolonic transformations have become part and parcel with the pop process — these days, most mainstream musicians spend their time in the sun trading cliches with each other, Miley Cyrus going country just as Katy Perry goes political just as Billie Eilish goes dark, and on and on, ad infinitum.
But Swift is better at such skin-shedding than almost anyone else. Her shift from country to pop, as controversial as it was, seemed less like a commercial decision, designed to breathe life into her brand, and more like something she genuinely wanted to do; an extension of her art.
In that way, her career is a series of authentic left turns, her music constantly spilling over the boundaries she herself has drawn for it. Of course journalists don’t know who Taylor Swift is — not even Taylor Swift seems to know where she’ll end up in a year’s time.
It’s for that exact reason, however, that all the talking around rather than about her is misguided. You don’t need to extrapolate from her behaviour to learn things about America. Instead, you need just turn to the body of work itself — a thrilling collection of some of the most adventurous, interesting songs American pop has to offer.
Which is exactly what we’re going to do right now, ranking every one of the performer’s six studio albums from ambitious but flawed, to nigh-on perfect.
#6. Speak Now
Swift has spent almost her entire career wholly committing to bold new phases — and Speak Now is the record covered by that “almost”. A strange transition work that sees the performer attempt to continue her shift from country to pop, it doesn’t thoroughly stick either style, coming off as oddly neutered and flat.
Which is weird, given that Swift’s other unsuccessful project still has a lot of life and verve to it — more on that in about 60 words or so — and that her most muddled songs usually still sound like her. But Speak Now sounds like the album that Taylor Swift would write if she had her memory wiped and tried to start again from scratch — a weird, muddled misfire.
That’s with the exception, of course, of ‘Dear John’, an almost seven-minute long masterpiece that’s so full of rage and feeling that it makes the rest of the record seem even more inert.
#5. Reputation
Reputation might be one of Taylor Swift’s most fascinating projects — a collection of disses and self-empowerment ballads that sees the singer getting more acerbic, more risque, than ever before. It’s a heel turn as only Swift can make one — a velvet glove, cast in iron, that’s as pretty as it is poisonous.
That doesn’t mean that it’s totally successful, mind you. The rest of the record never quite lives up to the promise of the Right Said Fred-cribbing ‘Look What You Made Me Do’, settling instead for a lot of songs that are much more bark than bite.
‘..Ready For It?’ might even be the limpest opener of Swift’s entire career, a promise of more fury that the singer never delivers on.
#4. Taylor Swift
Now we’re really cooking with gas. Despite being her most understated album, Taylor Swift is the Rosetta Stone for all of her later preoccupations, stuffed with all the themes that have kept her going for more than a decade now.
It’s got it all, from ruminations on love and self-worth, to devious, plotting break-up anthems, to big slabs of sing-along chorus. After all, “I’m just sitting here planning my revenge,” might be one of the canonical Taylor Swift lines.
No simple country-rock cross-over project, Taylor Swift is one of the boldest pop debuts of the last 15 years. It also gave an early clue for those paying attention that Swift was never going to repeat herself — she’s never made a record like Taylor Swift ever again. And her career is the better for it.
#3. Fearless
If Taylor Swift is Swift hijacking the rules of country music to ruminate over her own obsessions, Fearless is her unabashedly doing the same with singer-songwriter balladry.
Ostensibly a series of guitar-led love songs — ‘Love Story’ might well be the most handsomely stripped-back tune Swift has ever written — the surface level prettiness hides a teeming undercurrent, filled with the performer’s usual boldness and pop experimentation.
That’s most obvious on the astonishing ‘You Belong With Me’, a song that combines driving bluegrass instrumentation with an ’80s-inflected chorus and lyrics that deliberately blur the line between entitlement and infatuation.
No need to make your jokes about Swift being an over-invested romantic partner — ‘You Belong With Me’ does that for you.
#2. Red
Despite arguably being the record that cemented her pop superstardom, Red is verging on being underrated these days. According to its detractors, it’s Swift in commercial autopilot mode, pumping out a series of unrelated singles to hit radio targets rather than creating a cohesive body of work, like she did with her other projects.
But to that I say: bullshit. Red might not have the self-empowerment theme of Fearless, or the self-pitying theme of Reputation, but that’s because its cohesion is tonal, rather than thematic.
These songs might not all be about the same thing, with ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ ruminating on the opening chords of a toxic relationship and ’22’ serving as testament to the great joys of being young. But they are clearly songs produced by the same person — by a performer who values honesty and distrusts liars; who loves the world a lot, and its men significantly less.
In that way, for all the claims it’s a cash-grab, Red might actually be Swift’s most natural record. There’s no straining for an overarching narrative here; no attempts to create a connected universe of songs that overlap with one another. Instead, it’s Swift speaking simply, and plainly, and saying: this is what it is like to be me.
For an artist as chameleonic and ever-changing as her, that’s something to be treasured indeed.
#1. 1989
I’m willing to acquiesce that putting 1989 in the top spot in the safe choice. But sometimes choices are safe because they are correct, and 1989 is so clearly the best album in Swift’s luminous back catalogue that it deserves to sit here, clichés be damned.
Part of that’s due to the way the record is structured, operating both as a grab bag of excellent singles, and also a unified sonic experience. It doesn’t really matter whether you split up the album into repeat plays of its catchiest tunes — ‘Bad Blood’, ‘Blank Space’, ‘Shake It Off’ and ‘Welcome To New York’ — or if you listen to it as one whole, shimmering object; either way, it’s just as fulfilling.
Although some of the pleasures of 1989 can be pinned down, like all pop masterpieces, much of its magic can’t exactly be explained.
And, of course, another part of its success is its lyrical content, which sees the performer perfectly toeing the line between outright hostility and joyous celebrations of self. ‘Bad Blood’ is one of the most parodied pop diss anthems for a reason — it’s funny, as deft and witty as anything that Swift has ever penned, perfectly navigating self-hatred with the good old fashioned desire for revenge. Even ‘Out Of The Woods’, the record’s most uplifting tune, saves some room for put-downs — of both Taylor and her beloved — that make the song glisten with this raw energy all of its own.
Part of what makes i1989 work is its length. In an era where some musicians are convinced more is more, Swift has always had an uncanny ability to hold her tongue when she needs to — never giving the audience more than she is prepared to. 1989‘s true magic trick is that it lasts a mere 50 minutes while feeling simultaneously three hours and three minutes long. It holds so much — so much energy, warmth and intelligence — that it’s as full as a novel, but by the time you’re really getting into its vibe, it’s already done.
But of course, although some of the pleasures of 1989 can be pinned down, like all pop masterpieces, much of its magic can’t exactly be explained. It is a record that lives not in being written about or discussed, but in being experienced — a record that asks nothing of you but that you put it on, and that you listen.
Joseph Earp is a critic and journalist who usually writes about horror movies, post-punk, climate change and weird fiction. You can find him @Joe_O_Earp should you want to admit you too are a ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ defender, because we truth-tellers must stick together.