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. Sister Tay may be the last true rock star on the planet, making brilliant moves (or catastrophic gaffes, because that’s what rock stars do). It’s a tribute to her fierce creative energy - in the past couple years she’s released an avalanche of new music, with more on the way. For the Taylor’s Version remakes, both versions count as the same song. Since Taylor loves nothing more than causing chaos in our lives, she’s re-recording her albums, including the outtakes she left in the vault before. (I guarantee you are a more fascinating human than the Twilight guy, though I’m probably not.) All that matters is whether they’re about you and me. But they’re not ranked by popularity, sales or supposed celebrity quotient - just the level of Taylor genius on display, from the perspective of a fan who generally does not give a rat’s nads who the songs are “really” about.

She’s got at least 5 or 6 dozen songs that seem to belong in her Top Ten. The hits, the flops, the deep cuts, the covers, from her raw 2006 debut as a teen country ingenue right up to Folklore, Evermore, and her Taylor’s Version series.Įvery fan would compile a different list - that’s the beauty of it. Let’s break it down: all 206 tunes, counted from the bottom to the top. So with all due respect to Taylor the myth, the icon, the red-carpet tabloid staple, let’s celebrate the real Taylor - the songwriter she was born to be. 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 - and she hasn’t exactly slowed down since then. It’s in her music where she’s made her mark on history - as a performer, record-crafter, guitar hero and all-around pop mastermind, with songs that can leave you breathless or with a nasty scar. But Swift was a songwriter before she was a star, and she’ll be a songwriter long after she graduates from that racket.

Taylor Swift the celebrity is such a magnet for attention, she can distract from Taylor Swift the artist.

Taylor swift today was a fairytale key