1 – Love Story – This made her the woman she is today. I consider it the premiere song of the 21st century (so far, admittedly), as deeply romantic as a girl could ever want to be and as sweetly harmolodic as possible. A short story of true love, filled with loss, doubt, tears and a happy ending: “It’s a love story, baby please say yes…” The first time I heard this, before it was released, I turned to my friend and told her: “This is it, this is the one.”
2 – Blank Space – This is a sister song to “Love Story”, it is so big it changed her life. A crazy, funny, highly addictive EDM pop song, that blasts her teenage years into smithereens and rewrites the story, here she is the biggest star in the world in waiting. Everybody agreed on this one, a major track. The greatest chorus she has ever written.
3 – Tim McGraw – Her first hit and a big one for good reason, it feels major, it feels like a force of country pop and a calling card. The powers that be at Country Music, the elder statesmen, fell immediately and completely in love. These three songs are her career writ small: these are the ones that pushed her higher and higher in the charts.
4 – Safe And Sound – Featuring the Civil Wars, and what this song, a haunting folk track,does is prove is something she doesn’t do too often, that she can write any type of song she chooses to and at will. This is a delicate, upsetting and beautiful song.
5 – State Of Grace – The acoustic version is a vocal tour de force, it is where she became a great singer, the album version is different: it was her first sexually romantic song and she has never dug quite this deep into sex since.
6 – Speak Now – It reminds me a little of “You Belong With Me” -it is another case where outsider Tay goes after another guy, and it is very storytelling as Taylor interrupts a guys wedding: “Don’t say a single vow, you need to hear me out and he said Speak Now”. It makes me very happy.
7 – You Belong With Me – Another game changer. This is how Taylor caught on with the Swifties, she is such an ordinary girl in this song, such an outsider but so much one of the gang, “she wears high heels and I wear sneakers” is like a calling card and the most amazing thing is, she also managed to do that and later, to be the girl in high heels as well.
8 – Today Was A Fairytale – In some ways, this is the end of the first part of her career. It is such a generic Swift, it is exactly what she was doing. It is a blueprint that nobody has managed to copy yet.
9 – Our Song – Despite the fiddle and the plunking guitar and the hee haw, this was a pure pop stroke that stands as a highway sign to the next three years and an instantly romantic song, thanking god for another great day.
10 – Shake It Off – It is hard to remember now but 1989 was not a sure thing, the label was begging for a country track and she was working in a strictly pop world and not compromising. The relief the first time we heard this was immense. It was immediately clear Swift had done what she set out to do, make pure pop for now people.
