The incredible career of Taylor Swift is about to get even better
Ranking all of the songs on Fearless ahead of the release of Taylor’s Version
Let’s start by speaking directly to anyone who is one of the following:
A) Someone who doesn’t like Taylor Swift
B) Someone who thinks Taylor Swift is a bad live performer
C) Someone who thinks Taylor Swift is overrated
D) All of the above
Hi, you people, I just want to respectfully say — you’re wrong.
Cool — now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can really get started.
Let’s begin with a few numbers.
Taylor Swift has, in her career, won 382 awards from various organizations for a variety of musical accomplishments. That’s around 41 percent of the total number of awards she’s been nominated for.
She’s recorded and released nine studio albums, including two last year.
She is one of four artists in history, and only woman in history, to win the Grammy Award for album of the year three times.
She is my personal idol, my all-time favorite musical artist, and someone I credit with shaping my understanding of love and all the highs and lows that accompany it.
That brings us to my focus today. Taylor Swift has embarked on a journey that is nothing short of unprecedented. She is rerecording her first five studio albums.
You see, they don’t technically belong to her. I won’t pretend to understand how the music industry works, but I believe the short of it is an experienced recording label took advantage of a young teenage girl who just wanted to sing about her feelings.
It would be one thing if Taylor had missed the mark on her original recordings. They didn’t sell enough, the tours weren’t well attended, she just wanted to do better. But it has absolutely nothing to do with sales or concert tickets or fame. She wants her work to be hers — and more than that, she wants her work to be ours.
Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is revolutionary. It’s the same music, but it’s not the same Taylor.
When she wrote these songs, she was an emotional teenager looking for an outlet to express the frustrations of young love. She was vengeful and confused and unsure how one should navigate the emotions she was feeling — as were the teenagers, like me, scream-singing each and every one of her songs in the car on the way to and from school.
Now, she’s 31 — she’s in love — and her voice and understanding of music have matured in the most beautiful way.
A few weeks ago, my Fiancé and I decided to go through each of Taylor Swift’s albums and ranked all of the songs. The end goal was to put every song in order from best to worst, though I never quite got there. Nevertheless, just for fun, I’ll share my list for Fearless (the original recording) and then once I’ve listened to Taylor’s Version I’ll come back and redo my rankings with the new songs included.
We’ll start at the bottom and work our way up…
18. You’re not sorry
17. Breathe
16. Superstar
15. Come in with the rain
14. Change
13. Untouchable
12. White Horse
11. Jump then fall
10. Hey Stephen
9. The way I loved you
8. The best day
7. The other side of the door
6. Tell me why
5. Fifteen
4. Forever and always
3. Fearless
2. Love story
- You belong with me
It’s important to note I love all of these songs. I just love some of them more than others. I also think this list may change significantly once I hear the re-recording.
I’d love to know what you think of my list, and what you think of Taylor’s quest to re-record her music.
Thank you for reading, except those of you who don’t like Taylor Swift…
Until next time.
