Taylor Swift’s latest album, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), has had an enormous impact, as expected. Swift announced her new album on August 9th and released it October 27th. I may be sightly biased but my opinion on the album is that it has zero skips. It was tough to find my top 10, because there are so many amazingly written songs on this album.
My Top 10:
1. Out Of The Woods
This song references Swift’s relationship with Harry Styles. She talks about the snowmobile accident they had gotten into on a ski-trip in Colorado, when Styles “hit the brakes too soon” and needed to get “twenty stitches in a hospital room”. Their relationship went downhill after the accident as you could assume as she notes she “walked out” and was “setting [him] free”. The bridge on this song is arguably one of Swift’s best bridges and it illustrates the intensity that she is feeling with the relationship.
2. All You Had To Do Was Stay
It’s hard to tell who Swift is writing about, but this is one of her only songs on 1989 (Taylor’s Version) where she blatantly rejects a relationship. “People like me are gone forever when you say goodbye”. The high note on “stay” is something that really shows off her style of singing, adding an impeccable personal touch.
3. How You Get The Girl
This track is my personal favorite on the album, and always has been. It essentially gives men a guide on how to get their girl back. “And then you say: ‘I want you for worse or for better, I would wait forever and ever’”. She also notes how they “lost” the girl in the first place.
4. You Are In Love
One of the best love songs made, Swift wrote the song about Jack Antonoff, her friend and songwriter, and his then-girlfriend. “You can hear it in the silence…feel it on the way home…[and] see it with the lights out”. It is evident Antonoff and his partner are in love because he can feel it everywhere.
5. I Wish You Would
‘I Wish You Would’ is a song about this guy who is driving down the street in the middle of the night, and he passes is ex-girlfriend’s house. “He thinks she hates him but she’s still in love with him, very dramatic” as she says in her ‘I Wish You Would (Voice Memo)’ from the stolen version.
6. I Know Places
‘I Know Places’ has one of the best beats on the album. With the added effects it makes the new version so much better, especially with the added growl on “and we run”. It talks about how Swift and her lover found a space away from the public eye.
7. Welcome To New York
This iconic track represents all of the changes Taylor Swift and her music career went through. It is not solely about moving to New York City from Nashville, but about her swap from country music to pop and focusing more on her friends. And she even slips in a bit of her political views, saying that “you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls”.
8. Clean
This song compares the hardships of getting over a relationship to getting over an addiction. She uses symbols of rain to describe the renewal she feels post-relationship. “The rain came pouring down”. However, she still longs for her relationship, like an addiction. “Just because you’re clean don’t mean you don’t miss it”. Or you could assume this song is about Swift’s sexual assault case. David Mueller, a radio DJ, sued her for three million dollars after she claimed he grabbed her butt at a meet-and-greet. “You’re still all over me like a wine stained dress I can’t wear anymore”. The full meaning is up to interpretation, but she recreated the song beautifully.
9. Blank Space
This track is most definitely a fan-favorite and Swift talks about how she could be the “perfect” girlfriend, but turn everything around anytime she wants to, just for the fun of it. “Love’s a game, wanna play?” and “I’m dyin’ to see how this one ends” both show just how much Swift could not care less.
10. New Romantics
The pop-anthem is a very empowering song, referencing her rough patches and experiences in the music industry. “I could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me” and while every day might be “like a battle” Swift makes the best of it and “every night with [her] is like a dream”.
Vault Tracks Ranked:
1. Is It Over Now?
Swift notes she sees it as a sister to ‘I Wish You Would’ and ‘Out Of The Woods’. She references the snowmobile accident saying, “When you lost control, red blood, white snow”, and Swift alludes to when she was seen on a boat leaving the British Virgin Islands without Styles, “blue dress on a boat, your new girl is my clone”. Styles had immediately had a fling with Kimberly Stewart after Taylor Swift. While she knows he cheated, she also claims to have been in a similar situation. “Was it over when he unbuttoned my blouse?” and she even goes to the length to say how “at least [she] had the decency to keep [her] nights out of sight”, completely dragging the ex-One Direction band member.
2. Now That We Don’t Talk
Swift absolutely drags Styles in this song, “you went to a party, I heard from everybody…did you get anxious, though, on the way home?”. The only way he would be “anxious” is if he had something to hide; perhaps another claim he cheated? The man she describes “grew [his] hair long”, which would fit the image he had in 2013-2014 post-relationship. She notes how she can’t even pretend to be his friend because their relationship is not “platonic, it’s just ended”.
3. Say Don’t Go
Another song about Styles? Swift, desperately asks, “Why’d you have to lead me on…[and] twist the knife?” If he asked, she’d never leave. This can be determined as more of a one-sided relationship because she tells us how she “said, ‘I love you,’ [but] you say nothing back”.
4. “Slut!”
This was the most anticipated vault track, given the eye-catching title. Here, she describes how she chose to be in a relationship even though it would draw attention and unwanted scrutiny from the public eye.
19. Suburban Legends
Once again referring to Styles cheating, in this vault track she notes how he “had people who called [him] on unmarked numbers”. But she loved to love him, and she fantasied about everything working out between them. That never happened, though, because she “broke [her] own heart ‘cause [he] was too polite to do it”.
