Taylor Swift has amassed an impressive catalog. Spanning country, indie, and pop, the singer-songwriter has explored an array of stylistic influences. But what are her five best albums?
Taylor Swift brings an excellence to her craft that few have matched in the modern era. From her early days writing about “Tim McGraw” to her most recent bangers “Anti-Hero” and “Cruel Summer,” her self-made identity is woven into the fabric of her work. She makes sense of the world through deeply personal, confessional songwriting.
Drawing upon a vast array of influences, from Carole King to Shania Twain, Swift has built a pop empire that rivals such greats as Madonna and Michael Jackson. Her tours are must-see spectacles; just look at the success of her Eras Tour and its accompanying concert film. Her globe-trotting ventures are not smoke and mirror displays, though. They’re always rooted in the work itself—and across 10 original studio albums, she’s stockpiled a wealth of stories from which to pull.
When it comes to selecting the superstars’s best albums, we’ve got our work cut out of ourselves. Here, we’ve compiled Swift’s five best studio albums and ranked them from good to great. Did your favorites make our definitive list?
5. Fearless (Taylor’s Version)
Fearless shot Taylor Swift into the stratosphere. Hit singles like “You Belong with You,” “White Horse,” and “Love Story” lifted her career from “just” a country singer into a promising pop starlet. Her songwriting began to take shape, highlighting how she could cut right to the heart with a simple lyric.
Other standouts (“Fifteen,” “The Best Day,” “Today was a Fairytale”) bolstered her charm as a performer, as she exercised showmanship and allowed her stories to fly even higher. Even in the album’s quieter moments (such as “Untouchable”), she could make you feel every ounce of emotion as though enduring a torrential downpour.
The influence of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) can still be felt throughout pop music to this day. The country-pop version of Swift doesn’t get much better than this.
4. Reputation
Swift grew exhausted over the media’s narrative about her, so she wrote an entire album addressing headlines. “Light me up!” she sings in the pounding “I Did Something Bad,” drawing comparisons to a witchhunt. She embraced the tabloids (just look at the cover art) and leaned into the persona so erroneously thrust upon her.
What’s even more, Reputation arrived as Swift’s most musically ambitious record to date (and still is). “…Ready for It?” immediately set up the tone of the record, jangling the eardrums with its startling static puncturing the air. From the Gotye-like “Don’t Blame Me” to the gurgling “Gorgeous” and the slinky “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” the album saw Swift swinging for the fences in impressive ways.
Swift also hid away from the world, deciding not to do interviews or promote the album in ways for which she’d become known. She let the work speak for itself. It was like an alarm going off in pop music. She’s always been a disruptor, and Reputation was her call to arms. Working mainly with Jack Antonoff, Max Martin, and Shellback, Swift reinvented herself at the perfect time.
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3. Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)
Entirely written on her own, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) was a proclamation of her agency in songwriting. From “Dear John” to “Back to December,” she was flourishing in ways that shocked a lot of people. Sure, she’d flexed her superstar tendency with Fearless, but it was Speak Now that took everything up a notch.
Musically, Taylor Swift began spreading her wings (see: “Sparks Fly,” “Haunted,” and “Long Live,” for example) and experimenting in exciting ways. Even as her sound slowly morphed, she perfected her songwriting and turned the emotional screws of heartbreak and pain. “Enchanted,” for instance, is as magical a performance as any.
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is still the testament of a young woman trying to navigate budding adulthood and how loss can drastically affect you. Regarding relationships, she began wielding her pen as a way to deal with and cope with breakups in all their forms. Whether they were mere flings or deep, emotionally invested relationships, she learned what it meant to love herself first and foremost.
2. Red (Taylor’s Version)
Her first mostly-pop record, Red (Taylor’s Version) displayed playful genre adventure, finding her zipping through rockier territory (“State of Grace”) and even chewy dubstep-influenced pop (“I Knew You Were Trouble.”) Guitars led many of the arrangements, such as on “Red,” “22,” and “Sad Beautiful Tragic.” Her demonstrations of strong musicality, always stemming from organic instruments, rose front and center on the album and prove her understanding of what works best.
With Taylor’s Version, she showed tremendous growth in her vocal power, particularly in her upper register, and ability to flesh out melodies. Notably, she finally shared the 10-minute version of the best song of her career “All Too Well,” complete with an accompanying mini-movie/video starring Sadie Sink as a younger Taylor Swift.
Red (Taylor’s Version) radiated warmth like a red scarf tied perfectly around your neck. At that point in her career (circa 2012), Red was her most musically ambitious. Having worked in country music, her storytelling strengths served her well. The stories were still ever-present, only now they were dressed up in bolder tones and textures. If it weren’t evident before, she finally blossomed into a full-blown pop star.
1. Folklore
The first of two pandemic-influenced records, Folklore is Taylor Swift’s lyrical crown jewel. “The pandemic and lockdown run through this album like a thread,” the singer-songwriter shared during her Disney+ special, Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions. Nestled between isolation and self-reflection, the album shuffles through the painstaking effort to make sense of the world and one’s role in it.
She reconfigured her style, opting for indie/folk instead of delicious pop or even straight-forward country. “my tears ricochet,” “invisible string,” and “betty” emerged as among her finest moments — compositions that are equally haunting and powerful, almost clobbering you over the head like two-ton anvils.
Folklore fused her standard personal musings with stories and observations about the world. It’s a far more subdued set than what fans had come to expect, but when has Swift ever played by the rules?
