the TSAR | Introduction

Around 3 weeks ago I watched the eras tour film in theaters with my mom.

The last 3 weeks have been very transformative.

The last 3 weeks I've been in my Taylor Swift obsession.

And this leads me to here:

Taylor Swift Artist Review (TSAR)

No artist has ever had more than 1 post in the Artist Review. I never even thought about it. But Taylor Swift is such a global phenom with such a wide discography, history, and storylines, and I seriously have to split it up into different posts.

So this is your outline, this is your table of contents, for the TSAR.
  1. Introduction
           - Swift's EDM-infused rankings
           - Predicted Album Ranking
           - Other general info
  2. Album Review - Taylor Swift
  3. Album Review - Speak Now
  4. Album Review - Folklore
  5. Album Review - Evermore
  6. Album Review - Midnights
  7. Album Review - Red
  8. Album Review - Lover
  9. Album Review - 1989
  10. Album Review - Fearless
  11. Album Review - Reputation
  12. Conclusion
           - Final Album Ranking
           - Top 10 favorite songs
           - TBD

Swift's EDM-infused Rankings

KEY: Reputation 1989 Lover Red Midnights 

  1. I Did Something Bad
  2. Dancing With Our Hands Tied
  3. King Of My Heart
  4. Vigilante Sh*t
  5. Don't Blame Me
  6. ...Ready For It?
  7. Welcome to New York
  8. The Man
  9. Call It What You Want
  10. Gorgeous
  11. Delicate
  12. Bejeweled
  13. Look What You Made Me Do
  14. Karma
  15. All You Had To Do Was Stay
  16. Lavender Haze
  17. Cruel Summer
  18. Getaway Car
  19. Red
  20. Out Of The Woods
Now I had a lotta fun making this for some reason. This is a top ranking of her tracks based on how EDM-influenced they are. This could include synths, vocoders, vocal chops, trap beats, beat drops, synth breaks, or structure. You can see here that this is pretty Reputation dominant, with a generous sparkle of Midnights and a little bit of 1989, Lover, and even Red just because of how dominant the vocal chops are in the melody. I would say that ranks 1-4 are pretty heavy EDM, then there's a bit of a gap and it starts to head more towards the pop direction while maintaining some EDM elements. I listened to a lot of Reputation when it first came out and I really liked a lot of the songs in there because of how much she used synths in that album. It's her most EDM-influenced album for sure. Now I made this ranking just cuz of respect of my EDM and also cuz it was so fun. Most of her songs, especially her older songs, aren't EDM at all, as you can tell through the lack of her older albums in the ranking. I def missed some songs in this ranking, along with some arguable adjustments you could make but in general I think this ranking is solid. This was quite a random section, I must admit, but very satisfying. Let's move on.

Predicted Album Ranking

Now I have A LOT to talk about here as I try to predict what my album ranking will look like. Over the course of these text TSAR posts, I will thoroughly listen to each Taylor Swift album and gain a better sense of them and thus have a final ranking. But let's see what my current ranking is now, with only like 60 Taylor Swift songs that I consistently listen to. 

I'm (kind of) sure that the top 3 will be something like this:
Fearless
Reputation
1989
Two weeks ago I had Reputation at #1, then I gave 1989 some more thought and listen and realized how incredible of an album it is compared to Reputation, so then I moved 1989 to my favorite Taylor Swift album. But then all of a sudden I discovered "The Best Day" and that just instantly moved Fearless to #1 with no hesitation. Fearless has the big 4: "Fearless", "You Belong With Me", "Love Story", and "The Best Day". I don't know how any of the other songs in the album sound like aside from those 4 and "If This Was A Movie" which is crazy, but that song "The Best Day" is so incredible, it's given me a feeling I've never felt before, that I have to put it at #1. 

And then recently I relistened to Reputation and realized just HOW STACKED IT IS. I genuinely like 12 songs from the album which is a crazy amount and crazy percentage that 1989 doesn't reach. Plus it really made an impact in my oc playlist rotations and also was her most electronic album. I will say that there's no standout song to me from Reputation, a lot of them are really good but none of them are phenomenal, which means something TRULY phenomenal in the context of Taylor Swift because half of her songs are already baseline phenomenal, she just defines a "Taylor Swift phenomenal" metric that is created, and sadly none of the songs from Reputation make me want to give that mark. As of this moment, I give this "Taylor Swift phenomenal" mark to:
  • "Style" 
  • "The Best Day" 
  • "august" 
  • "You Need To Calm Down" 
  • "Teardrops on My Guitar" 
  • "Fearless"
  • "Love Story"
  • "You Belong With Me"
  • "22"
  • "Cruel Summer"
  • "Lover"
  • "Enchanted"
  • "Sparks Fly"
I considered adding "Dancing With Our Hands Tied" and "I Did Something Bad" but they just aren't at this caliber. I had "I Can See You" originally on that list but I had to delete it because it's not on that level tbh. 
Now I'm getting VERY OFFTRACK here LMAO but so I feel like Reputation is above 1989 just because of all those reasons I listened before and stuff. You know, I'll probably remake this "Taylor Swift phenomenal" metric in the Conclusion post, there will probably be like 10 new additions to the list or something.

So let's just rip the bandaid now and do this album ranking.
  1. Fearless
  2. Reputation
  3. 1989
  4. Lover
  5. Speak Now
  6. Red
  7. Midnights
  8. Taylor Swift
  9. Folklore
  10. Evermore
Now there's A LOT OF HESITATION I did when making this list. I could lowkey see Lover and Speak Now overtaking 1989 for some reason, I've been getting a chill from them lately. This whole ranking is so prone to fluctuate, it's so prone to breaking down lmao. There is SO MUCH DOUBT, it's crazy how hard it is to rank these albums. I HAVENT EVEN LISTENED TO MORE THAN LIKE 3 SONGS OUT OF Folklore AND Evermore COMBINED. SO like it will be very interesting to reflect on this in the Conclusion post. 

Other General Info

I think that's all I have that I want to say in this introduction post. For the future album reviews, I will be using Taylor's Version over the original album for obvious purposes, and including the vault tracks as part of the album. I'm not gonna lie half the reason why I made this TSAR was just so I can formally listen to all her music and give myself a confident album ranking. Hopefully that happens.

Taylor Swift is quite incredible. She's done just so much both in the studio and away from the studio. She's bigger than a popstar, she is the music industry, she's a billionare with over half a billion fans, and through the past 3 weeks I've watched a lot of her live performances, old vlogs, music videos, interviews, and behind the scenes. And it's fair to say there's still so much content left for me to see and waste time going into, along with a lot of excitement ahead of her in her career. 


Lyric(s) of the Post: 

"I Can See You" - Taylor Swift


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