Individual rankings: Annabel 7, Andrew 16, Sam 10 Or as Kevin from The Office says: “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?” Sorry-dorky reference for an extremely dorky song. While this song’s subject seems to adhere to that kind of grandiosity, Taylor offers a much more mundane love language that can nevertheless be just as powerful-of sitting around with someone, doing nothing, and still loving it.
Taylor’s first few albums held dear to fairy-tale visions of love: big gestures, poetic proclamations, precise playbooks of how to win someone over. “You took the time to memorize me/ My fears, my hopes, and dreams/ I just like hanging out with you, all the time” “Stay Stay Stay” celebrates the excitement of what everything could be.ĪRC: Annabel, I completely agree with you on that line, except that you left out its all-crucial setup: Yes, it’s a little juvenile, but I love the simple sweetness of it! The bridge perfectly encapsulates that moment when a relationship just clicks: “I just like hanging out with you/ All the time.” So much of Red is looking back on what was. This is a saccharine song that makes me, and I quote, “mad, mad, mad.” Someone please explain why this is on the album instead of “ Better Man.”ĪG: I really think this will be one fans rediscover on Taylor’s Version and realize they were wrong about it. Red is a lyrical masterpiece about the complexities of love. SC: This is one of the rare Taylor Swift songs that I actively dislike. Individual rankings: Annabel 9, Andrew 9, Sam 16 Those rankings were then averaged to create overall rankings-as well as spark some healthy debate among our most devoted fans. In preparation for the album’s re-release, TIME’s biggest Swifties sat down to rank the original 16 songs on Red by each compiling their own individual rankings. Though there were no surprise early releases, a much-anticipated reward awaits: a 10-minute version of the piercing breakup anthem “All Too Well” and an accompanying short film starring Swift, Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink and Teen Wolf’s Dylan O’Brien. Since the announcement of Red’s impending arrival, fans have been furiously dissecting every post Swift has made on social media in an attempt to gather clues about the bonus tracks and whether the musician would release any songs early (her use of a pizza emoji led many to believe a collab with the Jonas Brothers was in the works). It follows her re-release of her 2008 album Fearless in April. “Happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past.”Īs part of her ongoing public effort to own all her masters, Swift is re-releasing the album along with her charity single “Ronan” and 9 bonus tracks featuring Chris Stapleton, Phoebe Bridgers, Mark Foster and Ed Sheeran. “It was all over the place, a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end,” Swift wrote in June 2021 of the album.
When Red debuted she was 22 years old and, through the album, applied a slightly more grown-up lens on love, using the songs to look at relationships with some distance. It contains what many consider to be the best song in her entire catalog (more on that later) and sees her transition from writing songs about sweeping romantic gestures and unrequited crushes to capturing the quieter, more painful moments of falling in and out of love.
The 16 tracks, plus six bonus songs on the deluxe version of the album, telegraphed to listeners everywhere that Swift is much more than a country artist.
Taylor Swift’s Red, her fourth studio album, catapulted the artist into pop stardom.
After months of waiting, it is finally time to grab your favorite scarf, a tissue box and perhaps a maple latte or two because Taylor’s Version of her 2012 album Red is upon us.