So, uh, I don’t recommend you listen to this list top to bottom.īut I do recommend sampling as many of these songs as you see fit. What sort of real life can stand up against fantasies like these? Listen to too many and you might ache again at the nagging feeling that those stories of yours have all been a bit uneventful and drab by comparison.

(This aspect of her songwriting matured somewhat with the coming of the Joe Alwyn era, as the love stories got slightly more quotidian, but even those were filled with secret affairs begun in dark bars - a mite more dramatic than Netflix and chill.) Listen to her songs and you’ll ache at the resemblance to the most dramatic moments in your own private history. An unworthy suitor wouldn’t just say something thoughtless he’d skip a birthday party, or leave a teenage girl crying alone in a hotel room. Instead, they showed up at each other’s doors late at night and they kissed in the rain.

On her first five albums, her characters never eased into a relationship. Swift - or at least the version of Swift on her albums - has remained largely the same person since her debut: a thin-skinned, bighearted obsessive, with a penchant for huge romantic moments. Other people say she’s Jewish.Īnd yet, if the word on her has shifted since her debut, it’s because we’ve changed, not her. Some people say she’s a goddess of the alt-right. The world’s most famous serial dater, now settled into a long-term relationship with the guy from The Favourite. She’s been feminism’s worst nightmare, and an advocate for victims of sexual assault. She was a precocious teenager, and the ultimate embodiment of white privilege.

And, outside the legions of fans who eat up everything she puts out, no take on her ever stays solid for long. For more than a decade, a 31-year-old woman from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, has found herself at the center of our national conversations about race, gender, celebrity, victimhood, and even the intricacies of recording contract law. One of them is a massive, multimillion-dollar enterprise filled with violence and betrayal, and the other aired on HBO. In all my years in the business, there have been two subjects that could boost your page views like nothing else: Game of Thrones and Taylor Swift.

Funny christmas spotify playlist names