it’s been thirteen days by Fatima A. '25

since the Eras Tour began

It has been 13 days since Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour began so in honor of that, I am ranking my favorite three songs (I can’t pick one) in alphabetical order (yes, I cannot pick one) from each of her albums and will be making up more categories as I go. I am excited to see what you think, so talk to me in the comments! 

Reputation

This was the first Taylor album that I started really listening to and liking last summer. It is still my favorite album and I stand by the claim that it has no skippable songs.

  • Ready for It will never not be a banger opening song.
  • I also really liked the I Did Something Bad, Look What You Made Me Do and Don’t Blame Me vibe of songs. The live performances for these songs were incredible but also empowering for Taylor, which is really cool.
  • In poetry, I find it really impressive when people can advance a narrative while still maintaining the poem aspect of the piece. Getaway Car seems to have a story and I think it is really cool to tell a story through a song. ⁠01 in today’s episode of fatima discovers musicals (no but this is different yep)
  • Delicate is a really good one. The music video is also very fun to watch.

I think the love songs on this album are all really good. Someone said that Reputation is not an album about revenge but really, finding love in dark times and I never thought about it like that before. 

New Year’s Day is such a mellow end to this album that is sometimes loving and sometimes vengeful but mostly always loud. 

You squeeze my hand three times in the back of the taxi 

I can tell that it’s gonna be a long road

I’ll be there if you’re the toast of the town, babe 

Or if you strike out and you’re crawling home 

HELLO???

Favorite Songs

Delicate, Don’t Blame Me, New Year’s Day

Lover

Lover was the second album that I started listening to. This album has an overall happy, soft, purple-pink (but in a good way) feel to it. As a writer, it always seems like great tragedies are worth writing. I find it easier to write sadder pieces but I don’t think I have ever done justice to a happy piece so I really appreciate this album for discovering beauty in happiness, sometimes in the most mundane of things, for being golden, like daylight. 

  • Cruel Summer was my most played song last year and what about it. I would scream its bridge (for whatever its worth) every day.

The love songs on this album called Lover are, of course, all so beautiful. Lover itself is such a beautiful song. I love when she uses very overused phrases in her songs in some clever way.

In Lover, she says ‘my heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue, all’s well that ends well to end up with you.’

In The Archer, she says:

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men 

Couldn’t put me together again 

‘Cause all of my enemies started out friends 

which is such a CLEVER reference.

  • Paper Rings, Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince, Death By A Thousand Cuts are all so different and so good in their own ways.
  • Special shoutout to Cornelia Street because I’D NEVER WALK CORNELIA STREET AGAAAAINNN.
  • I have heard a lot of hate on The Man, You Need To Calm Down and ME! but I personally don’t dislike them. Probably not the best, but still pretty good!
  • Daylight and Afterglow are weirdly intertwined but also different IDK. In a sense, the lyrics to Afterglow are very straightforward but it draws its strength from that. It says things which are difficult to say very simply and clearly.
  • On the other hand, I really don’t like False God and London Boy oops. Soon You’ll Get Better is also pretty so-so.

Favorite Songs

Afterglow, Cornelia Street, The Archer

Underrated 

I Think He Knows

(I discovered this song through this Lavender Haze x I Think He Knows mashup) 

folklore

Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die. with my calamitous love and insurmountable grief. folklore arguably has some of Taylor’s most beautiful lyricism.

  • The cardigan, betty, august trilogy goes back to the idea of telling a story through song but now that story is being told through three different perspectives in these three songs. If I had to rank them, I would probably do betty > august > cardigan or august > betty > cardigan and everyone is gonna come for the cardigan hate but I swear I like it, I just like the other ones more, sobbing and crying. 
  • I slept on the 1 for a very long time but I have come to really like it. It also ties with hoax, the last track on the album really well. The transition from 

But it would’ve been fun

If you would’ve been the one

to 

My only one

My smoking gun

My eclipsed sun

This has broken me down

But also, this AAAAAAA

Stood on the cliffside

Screaming, “Give me a reason”

Your faithless love’s the only hoax

I believe in

Don’t want no other shade of blue

But you

No other sadness in the world would do

  • peace is so underrated but one of my favorites off folklore. Like yes, would it be enough if I could never give you peace? would it? would it… I should write my close reading paper for my Modern Poetry class on this song. 
  • mirrorball was one of my most listened to songs last year too. When talking about this song, Taylor says, ‘We have mirrorballs in the middle of a dance floor because they reflect light. They are broken a million times and that’s what makes them so shiny. We have people like that in society too. They hang there and everytime they break, it entertains us. And when you shine a light on them, it is this glittering fantastic thing but then a lot of the time, when the spotlight isn’t on them, they are just still there up on a pedestal but nobody is watching them.’ She mentioned that this song references its time very explicitly. It references the canceling of her shows at the beginning of the pandemic and how she felt that she still had to do something to keep people around.

And they called off the circus

Burned the disco down

When they sent home the horses

And the rodeo clowns

I’m still on that tightrope

I’m still trying everything to get you laughing at me

I’m still a believer but I don’t know why

I’ve never been a natural

All I do is try, try, try

I’m still on that trapeze

I’m still trying everything

To keep you looking at me

  • illicit affairs and invisible string are also some of my favorites.
  • exile always feels like a conversation to me except neither person is being heard which is so heartbreaking.

All this time

I never learned to read your mind (never learned to read my mind)

I couldn’t turn things around (you never turned things around)

‘Cause you never gave a warning sign (I gave so many signs)

So many signs, so many signs

You didn’t even see the signs

  • the lyricism in my tears ricochet is so poetic! instead of saying words, i will just cite (yes, this is very technical) some of her lyrics. 

We gather stones, never knowing what they’ll mean

Some to throw, some to make a diamond ring

And I can go anywhere I want

Anywhere I want, just not home

And you can aim for my heart, go for blood

But you would still miss me in your bones

And I still talk to you (when I’m screaming at the sky)

And when you can’t sleep at night (you hear my stolen lullabies)

I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace

And so the battleships will sink beneath the waves

You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same

Cursing my name, wishing I stayed

You turned into your worst fears

 

And you’re tossing out blame, drunk on this pain

Crossing out the good years

And you’re cursing my name, wishing I stayed

Look at how my tears ricochet

Favorite Songs

hoax, illicit affairs, invisible string, mirrorball, my tears ricochet, peace, this is me trying 

(this is three songs, right? right? modulo 4 yep!) 

evermore

i had a feeling so peculiar that this pain would be for evermore.

I was such a folklore is better girl and Prajna N. ‘25 told me I had bad takes and that I was a disgrace to humanity (I might be paraphrasing that, just a little bit). I started listening to evermore at some point and every song is so beautiful. In its essence, it is a sad album but every song is a different color of sad. Here is a fun(ny) reel to watch.

champagne problems is the story of breaking someone’s heart, tolerate it is about continuously giving in a relationship just to be tolerated in return, happiness is about collecting yourself to find perspective and well, happiness after losing a relationship, coney island is about realizing someone’s value after you lost them, marjorie is mourning the death of a loved one.

It is also a very strong album in terms of its lyricism so as a poet, I am obviously a fan.

  • Now, to put on my literary critic monocle, starting with ivy! 

How’s one to know?

I’d meet you where the spirit meets the bones

In a faith forgotten land

In from the snow

Your touch brought forth an incandescent glow

Tarnished but so grand

And the old widow goes to the stone every day

But I don’t, I just sit here and wait

Grieving for the living

Just this beginning stanza is so poetic. Another one of my favorite lines is ‘My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand.’ 

  • Then, Taylor really breaks my soul in two with coney island. It seems to have the same conversation format as in exile but is a lot more murky in that I really can’t tell who was in the wrong. Noteworthy lyrics:

The question pounds my head

What’s a lifetime of achievement

If I pushed you to the edge

But you were too polite to leave me?

 

Do you miss the rogue

Who coaxed you into paradise and left you there?

Will you forgive my soul

When you’re too wise to trust me and too old to care?

 And when I got into the accident

The sight that flashed before me was your face

But when I walked up to the podium

I think that I forgot to say your name

  • tolerate it is one of my favorite sad songs. It feels deeply intertwined with peace in some way I can’t really place. 
  • willow is very different from all these sad songs but is such a classic and the music video is so good!
  • both the bonus tracks are also incredibly good. just the transition of i am right where you left me to it’s time to go is so witty. 

Favorite Songs

coney island, ivy, tolerate it

Underrated

evermore, gold rush, right where you left me

1989

Given that this might be her most famous album, I came around to it really late. Most of the songs on here are really good. Even just Welcome to New York, it is like listening to a kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats under coats.

  • You have the classics Blank Space, Style, Shake It Off, classics for a reason. 
  • Wildest Dreams was one of the first Taylor Swift songs I really liked and still is one of my favorites.
  • My friends have started making this joke off All You Had To Do Was Stay and started saying All You Had To Do Was Slay which is incredible.

Favorite Songs

Clean, Wildest Dreams, Wonderland

Criminally Underrated 

How You Get the Girl, I Know Places, I Wish You Would, New Romantics

Midnights

It was one sad Friday night as I grinded for my 18.701⁠02 Algebra I midterm that the clock struck midnight. And so, I continued to grind but put on my headphones (and burned no one’s city) and started listening. To be very honest, I was very unimpressed with most of the album at the time.
The next day, I woke up to seven bonus tracks being released, the 3am edition. My first favorites off the album became High Infidelity and Midnight Rain. Soon enough though, I started to really like Maroon, You’re On Your Own Kid, Sweet Nothing, Paris and Dear Reader. Two new favorites are Snow On The Beach and Karma. 

Here is a fun Maroon reel to watch! 

 

Favorite Songs

High Infidelity, Midnight Rain, Sweet Nothing

Red (Taylor’s Version)

It feels so stupid to say that I was kind of skeptical of this album at first, but there are so many good ones here. I will totally not make more categories. 

  • All Too Well (10 Minute Version). Need I say anything else.
  • Holy Ground makes me want to spin like a girl in a brand new dress.
  • Nothing New is such a beautiful song talking about the insecurities of a young adult growing up and the fear of becoming uninteresting.

Classics 

All Too Well (10 Minute Version), I Knew You Were Trouble, We Are Never Getting Back Together 

Favorite Songs

Holy Ground, Nothing New, The Very First Night

Criminally Underrated 

Forever Winter, Message In a Bottle 

Speak Now

SPEAK NOW TAYLOR’S VERSION WHEN

(P.S. if you haven’t watched the 2011 Live version of Haunted, it is LIFE CHANGING. haunting and enchanting at the same time.)

Also, if Taylor plays Long Live on tour, I will die, dead, deceased.

Favorite Songs 

Haunted, Long Live, Sparks Fly 

Fearless (Taylor’s Version)

I have not aggressively listened to Fearless but there are, of course, the classics Love Story, You Belong With Me, Forever And Always and I also like a lot of the From the Vault tracks.

Favorite Songs

Mr. Perfectly Fine, The Way I Loved You, Untouchable

Taylor Swift

I have not listened to a lot of songs on Debut either but I like the ones I listened to. 

Favorite Songs

Our Song, Should’ve Said No

  1. in today’s episode of fatima discovers musicals (no but this is different yep)⁠ ↑
  2. Algebra I⁠ ↑