{"id":479632,"date":"2025-10-07T04:48:33","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T04:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/479632\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T04:48:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T04:48:33","slug":"all-ranked-by-rob-sheffield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/479632\/","title":{"rendered":"All Ranked by Rob Sheffield"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taylor Swift<\/a> the celebrity is such a magnet for attention, she can distract from Taylor Swift the artist. But Swift was a songwriter before she was a star, and she\u2019ll be a songwriter long after she graduates from that racket. It\u2019s in her music where she\u2019s made her mark on history \u2014 as a performer, record-crafter, guitar hero and all-around pop mastermind, with songs that can leave you breathless or with a nasty scar. She was soaring on the level of the all-time greats before she was old enough to rent a car, with the crafty guile of a Carole King and the reckless heart of a Paul Westerberg \u2014 and she hasn\u2019t exactly slowed down since then.<\/p>\n

So with all due respect to Taylor the myth, the icon, the red-carpet tabloid staple, let\u2019s celebrate the real Taylor \u2014 the songwriter she was born to be. Let\u2019s break it down: all 286 tunes, counted from the bottom to the top. The hits, the flops, the deep\u00a0 cuts, the covers, from her raw 2006 debut as a teen country ingenue right up to Midnights and The Life of a Showgirl.<\/p>\n

Every fan would compile a different list\u2014that\u2019s the beauty of it. She\u2019s got at least 5 or 6 dozen songs that seem to belong in her Top Ten. But they\u2019re not ranked by popularity, sales or supposed celebrity quotient \u2014 just the level of Taylor genius on display, from the perspective of a fan who generally does not give a rat\u2019s nads who the songs are \u201creally\u201d about. All that matters is whether they\u2019re about you and me. (I guarantee you are a more fascinating human than the Twilight guy, though I\u2019m probably not.)<\/p>\n

Since Taylor loves nothing more than causing chaos in our lives, she\u2019s re-recording her albums, including the outtakes she left in the vault before. (Reputation and her debut are the only ones she hasn\u2019t released\u00a0For the Taylor\u2019s Version remakes, both versions count as the same song. It\u2019s a tribute to her fierce creative energy \u2014 in the past couple years she\u2019s released an avalanche of new music, with more on the way. God help us all.<\/p>\n

Sister Tay may be the last true rock star on the planet, making brilliant moves (or catastrophic gaffes, because that\u2019s what rock stars do). These are the songs that sum up her wit, her empathy, her flair for emotional excess, her girls-to-the-front bravado, her urge to ransack every corner of pop history, her determination to turn any chorus into a ridiculous spectacle. So let\u2019s step back from the image and pay homage to her one-of-a-kind songbook \u2014 because the weirdest and most fascinating thing about Taylor Swift will always be her music.<\/p>\n