Taylor Swift\u2019s 5 best albums ranked Instagram: taylorswiftTaylor 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 \u201cTim McGraw\u201d to her most recent bangers \u201cAnti-Hero\u201d and \u201cCruel Summer,\u201d 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\u2019re always rooted in the work itself\u2014and across 10 original studio albums, she\u2019s stockpiled a wealth of stories from which to pull. When it comes to selecting the superstars\u2019s best albums, we\u2019ve got our work cut out of ourselves. Here, we\u2019ve compiled Swift\u2019s five best studio albums and ranked them from good to great. Did your favorites make our definitive list? 5. Fearless (Taylor\u2019s Version) Fearless shot Taylor Swift into the stratosphere. Hit singles like \u201cYou Belong with You,\u201d \u201cWhite Horse,\u201d and \u201cLove Story\u201d lifted her career from \u201cjust\u201d 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 (\u201cFifteen,\u201d \u201cThe Best Day,\u201d \u201cToday was a Fairytale\u201d) bolstered her charm as a performer, as she exercised showmanship and allowed her stories to fly even higher. Even in the album\u2019s quieter moments (such as \u201cUntouchable\u201d), she could make you feel every ounce of emotion as though enduring a torrential downpour. The influence of Fearless (Taylor\u2019s Version) can still be felt throughout pop music to this day. The country-pop version of Swift doesn\u2019t get much better than this. 4. Reputation Swift grew exhausted over the media\u2019s narrative about her, so she wrote an entire album addressing headlines. \u201cLight me up!\u201d she sings in the pounding \u201cI Did Something Bad,\u201d 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\u2019s even more, Reputation arrived as Swift\u2019s most musically ambitious record to date (and still is). \u201c\u2026Ready for It?\u201d immediately set up the tone of the record, jangling the eardrums with its startling static puncturing the air. From the Gotye-like \u201cDon\u2019t Blame Me\u201d to the gurgling \u201cGorgeous\u201d and the slinky \u201cThis is Why We Can\u2019t Have Nice Things,\u201d 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\u2019d become known. She let the work speak for itself. It was like an alarm going off in pop music. She\u2019s 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. 3. Speak Now (Taylor\u2019s Version) Entirely written on her own, Speak Now (Taylor\u2019s Version) was a proclamation of her agency in songwriting. From \u201cDear John\u201d to \u201cBack to December,\u201d she was flourishing in ways that shocked a lot of people. Sure, she\u2019d 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: \u201cSparks Fly,\u201d \u201cHaunted,\u201d and \u201cLong Live,\u201d 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. \u201cEnchanted,\u201d for instance, is as magical a performance as any. Speak Now (Taylor\u2019s 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\u2019s Version) Her first mostly-pop record, Red (Taylor\u2019s Version) displayed playful genre adventure, finding her zipping through rockier territory (\u201cState of Grace\u201d) and even chewy dubstep-influenced pop (\u201cI Knew You Were Trouble.\u201d) Guitars led many of the arrangements, such as on \u201cRed,\u201d \u201c22,\u201d and \u201cSad Beautiful Tragic.\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201cAll Too Well,\u201d complete with an accompanying mini-movie\/video starring Sadie Sink as a younger Taylor Swift. Red (Taylor\u2019s 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\u2019t evident before, she finally blossomed into a full-blown pop star. 1. Folklore The first of two pandemic-influenced records, Folklore is Taylor Swift\u2019s lyrical crown jewel. \u201cThe pandemic and lockdown run through this album like a thread,\u201d 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\u2019s role in it. She reconfigured her style, opting for indie\/folk instead of delicious pop or even straight-forward country. \u201cmy tears ricochet,\u201d \u201cinvisible string,\u201d and \u201cbetty\u201d emerged as among her finest moments \u2014 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\u2019s a far more subdued set than what fans had come to expect, but when has Swift ever played by the rules?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taylor Swift\u2019s 5 best albums ranked Instagram: taylorswiftTaylor 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}