Taylor Swift Eras, Ranked 🪩✨
While Taylor Swift has been touring around the US singing her butt of every single weekend since March, I have been having my own Eras tour in my car pretty much every day. I’ve been listening back through Taylor’s discography to rediscover old favorites and check out the fan favorites I somehow missed along the way.
In a seriously unserious fashion, I thought it would be fun to share my album ranking and favorite songs. And I want to hear any of your favorites too, so please leave a comment to share!
Taylor Swift Albums, Ranked
Liz Wisdom on Tiktok created this fun method to figure out your favorite Taylor Swift albums. They made a Google Sheet and used equations (my love language!) to score each album based on how much you enjoy the songs. Instead of giving all songs a score on a 1-10 scale, I chose to use the following method:
1 = It’s a song that I will typically skip
5 = I like this song but I won’t always listen to it
10 = I love this song and listen to it every time it comes on
My ranking ended up being sort of surprising but also not at the same time. So let’s get into it!
10. Red
Favorite songs: State of Grace, The Last Time, Holy Ground, All Too Well (10 Minute Version), I Bet You Think About Me
To me, this was most surprising. I love Red and always have. I think the reason Red scored so low for me is because it’s such a long album. It is a total of 29 songs. Of those 29 songs, 16 are skips for me. This seems bad, but I’m also still listening to 13 others (and that’s only one less than the entire length of Debut). So I skip over half the songs on Red 😬
9. Taylor Swift (aka Debut)
Favorite Songs: Picture to Burn, Teardrops On My Guitar, Should’ve Said No
I have listened to Debut the least over the past few years. There are times I think about it but end up choosing to listen to another earlier album instead. It’s good for a debut album, but it just doesn’t do it for me the way her newer albums do. It’s the album I skip the most. Her songwriting has evolved so much. That said, I am excited to see what she does with the re-recorded version of this album!
8. Evermore
Favorite Songs: Willow, Champagne Problems, Tis The Damn Season, Ivy, Evermore
I want to like Evermore a lot more than I do, but my heart really belongs to Folklore. I couldn’t pull myself away from Folklore long enough when Evermore was released to really get into it. I’ve given it time since then, and I enjoy the album but it’s so wordy that it’s sort of hard for me to get into.
I do have a theory though! We know that Tis The Damn Season and Dorothea are the same story, but I also think that Midnight Rain goes along with that story. I know everyone wants to speculate that Midnight Rain is about Taylor Lautner or Tom Hiddleston, but I think it’s the final chapter of this fictional story she told on Evermore.
7. Fearless
Favorite Songs: Fearless, Love Story, White Horse, You’re Not Sorry, The Way I Loved You, The Best Day, Change
Fearless is just like… nostalgia in my speakers. Give me all the drama from the music videos of Love Story and White Horse now, please. They were so good. To me, these songs and this album are just quintessential Taylor Swift. Love Story and You Belong With Me are the Taylor Swift songs. I don’t listen to this album often which is probably why it ranks so low for me.
6. Lover
Favorite Songs: Cruel Summer, Lover, Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince, Death By A Thousand Cuts, False God
I love Lover, but most of the album is really just songs I like. The skips are definite skips, but there are only six to me on the entire album. Thinking about it now, I don’t know that Lover necessarily did anything for me that makes it stand out. It’s a good album and Cruel Summer and Death By A Thousand Cuts are two of my absolute favorite songs in her entire discography.
5. Speak Now
Favorite Songs: The Story of Us, Never Grow Up, Enchanted, Better Than Revenge, Innocent, Haunted, Last Kiss, Long Live, Electric Touch, I Can See You
Like Fearless, Speak Now is just absolute nostalgia for me and the re-record made me fall in love with the album all over again. I’ve been listening to this one the most lately because it was just re-released and I had forgotten how many of my favorite songs of hers are on this album.
4. Reputation
Favorite Songs: …Ready For It?, Don’t Blame Me, Delicate, Look What You Made Me Do, Getaway Car, Dress
Fun fact: I hate Reputation when it first came out. It’s the album that has most grown on me over the years. I enjoy it, but I also cannot differentiate the songs on Reputation really well. I’ll get there eventually, but it takes me a minute. I do fully believe that Reputation is an album of love songs. And I cannot wait for the vault tracks that come with the re-record.
3. Midnights
Favorite songs: Maroon, Anti-Hero, You’re On Your Own, Kid, Midnight Rain, Bejeweled, Glitch, Would’ve, Could've, Should’ve, You’re Losing Me
I just LOVE Midnights. I think it’s such a solid album. There are only a handful of skips on the entire album including Snow On The Beach, but I will happily listen to Snow On The Beach featuring More Lana Del Rey on repeat. Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve is one of her best songs on the album and I can’t understand why it didn’t make the main album but I’m so happy she released it.
2. 1989
Favorite songs: Blank Space, Style, Out Of The Woods, Wildest Dreams, This Love, I Know Places, Clean, Wonderland, New Romantics
When I first did this little assessment, 1989 was my #1 and I was entirely okay with that. This is the album I have long claimed to be my favorite. It’s such a fun album to me. There are only three skips for me on the entire album and I will give you a chance to guess which ones they are 😆
1. Folklore
Favorite songs: the 1, cardigan, the last great american dynasty, exile, my tears ricochet, august, illicit affairs, invisible string, betty
And my true #1. There is nothing about Folklore that I don’t love. It’s such a strong album. There are 0 skips for me. I have listened to this album all the way through more times than not and I just can’t get enough of it. I think, like many, I formed a deep emotional attachment to the album since it came out during the middle of the pandemic and at a time when I was personally going through major life changes.
I love the overall sound of this album. It flows together so well and I think it’s her strongest work to date. And as much as I love this style, I’m also really happy she didn’t continue it past Evermore and that she continues to play with her sound.
Favorite Songs
While I’d love to give you a ranking of my all-time favorite songs, I think it changes too often. So I’m going to tell you my current favorite songs + my all-time favorites (as of today) in no particular order.
Current Favorites - the songs that are currently on repeat
Clean
I Can See You
Last Kiss
The Way I Loved You
Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve
You’re Losing Me
All-Time Favorites - the songs I will forever and always listen to (as of today)
All Too Well (10 Minute Version)
Blank Space
Cardigan
Champagne Problems
Cruel Summer
Death By A Thousand Cuts
Dress
Invisible String
Last Kiss
Maroon
Out Of The Woods
The Best Day
The Way I Loved You
This Love
Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve