best taylor swift album (so far)

red

all of the above

but if I had to

speak now
1989
red
fearless

acc. to my itunes ratings fearless is the most consistent/'strongest' but red has "trouble" so w/e yeah

Speak Now
1989
Fearless
debut
Red

otm

Speak Now
Fearless
Red
1989
debut

I think all of them are at least half-great, but Speak Now is all great, and Fearless is close.

fearless
1989
Red
Speak now
S/t

I haven't heard s/t but Speak Now is easily my favourite of the rest, and the only one I find consistently good.

fearless
speak now
red
taylor swift
1989

the first three are pretty neck and neck - speak now and red maybe seem more perfect to me than they are because the handful of tracks that aren't incredible are bad enough that i deleted them very early on and have all but forgotten them completely by now; they're more ambitious, successfully so, than fearless but it doesn't really have any such songs.

taylor swift is obviously not 100% essential but it does have maybe the two best songs she's ever written (and thus that anyone has ever written in this century) and no aesthetic missteps that make me wince.

suggest ban flag post anyone who argues 1989 is her best or indeed not in the bottom two

Fearless is the best, Speak Now probably the weakest. Dunno, I have all of them on heavy rotation at times.

suggest ban flag post anyone who argues 1989 is not in the top two.

I can't choose. Right now I am just along for the ride. I have been on the journey since the S/T. Hearing her go from Our Song with the lyrics "he's got a one hand feel on the steering wheel/ the other on my.... heart" to Style's "he can't keep his wild eyes on the road/takes me home/lights are off, he's taking off his coat" etc. is fun. The past informing the present makes 1989 my goto listen these days. It's also a pretty good album, with some of her best tracks, Blank Space, Clean, Wildest Dreams, Shake It Off with only one truly horrendous track, Bad Blood.

Red is a nice halfway point between the early stuff and 1989 but it has The Lucky One and Sad Beautiful Tragic on it and I hate those songs. But... Treacherous and Holy Ground!

Anyways, this is too hard.

1989
Red
Speak Now
Fearless
S/T

For a song I don't actually listen to that much, "Our Song" gets stuck in my head a lot.

Red is a clear #1 for me. Surprised there's only one other person that agrees that it's her best.
1989 is probably her least consistent album though I'm not sure I think it's her worst.

Red
Fearless
Speak Now
1989
Taylor Swift

Contemplating whether or not I think her s/t is truly her worst when it has those first three songs + "Our Song"

Like Miranda Lambert's "Kerosene," "Tim McGraw" is so perfect that it's all you need to understand why she's good.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

voted, but forgot to register:

speak now
fearless
s/t
1989
red

red
fearless
speak now
1989
taylor swift

pretty good about this

feel pretty good*

lol results are how i'd rank em

Wonder how many people's #1 is the album where they first got fully on board. (Not mine fwiw -- but that's a pretty normal thing, and in her case I can especially imagine it.)

I first fully got on board with the debut - albeit in 2008 so I didn't have to wait long for the follow-up. Weirdly, even though I loved "Love Story" as a single, for quite a while I was a bit disappointed with Fearless; it didn't seem as feisty as the debut. It strikes me as the better album by some distance now, though I think both suffer from a run of less distinct tracks.

In that regard Red and 1989 are quite different: there are some active missteps which is not the case for the first few albums but there's nothing which I'd describe as indistinct. Speak Now is somewhere in between.

If I had to go with a favourite it would probably be Red on account of how the epic moments cover so much ground between them.

whoa missed this poll

"fearless" is her best record, front to back

I got on board somewhere between Speak Now and Red. The poll results are a good reflection of my own rankings in that I could make the case for any of the 3 most recent albums to be my favourite.

Fearless I acknowledge as a great record but being incognisant (and also a teenager keen for some reason to impress my knowledge and love of bands like Animal Collective for some reason) of her at the time it doesn't have the same memories attached to it as the later records do.

The fuck with ranking 198fucking9 over Fearless.

an outrage tbh

Wonder how many people's #1 is the album where they first got fully on board. (Not mine fwiw -- but that's a pretty normal thing, and in her case I can especially imagine it.)

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Thursday, April 30, 2015 9:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

considering I fully got on board with 1989 and I think everything previous is either boring or actively awful, then yes

i got on board with fearless but every record since has been an improvement (or in the case of 1989 an effective variation) in execution, if not consistency.

If I had to go with a favourite it would probably be Red on account of how the epic moments cover so much ground between them.

otm

I've said elsewhere that Taylor's work grows in intensity for me with each album owing to an accumulative sense of connection with her: the personal bond just thickens with each release.

But part of that dynamic is that her songwriting capacity grows or extends: even if 1989 isn't my favourite album from hers I'm glad that the person who wrote "Hey Stephen" can also write "You Are In Love".

^^ otm

The fuck with ranking 198fucking9 over Fearless.

― how's life, Friday, May 1, 2015 4:48 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

an outrage tbh

― lex pretend, Friday, May 1, 2015 5:26 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wanna see heads on platters

i feel the same way about "fearless", and the critical/popular response to her subsequent work, as i do about beyonce's b'day

I'm ok with this.

Ranking her albums....

I would almost literally reverse those rankings, LOL (would probably put Red at #1 and Reputation at #2)

red
fearless
1989
speak now
taylor swift
reputation

Got a list of T. Swift albums
You may say that I'm insane

everytime i hear delicate on the radio (which is a lot) i strain & cannot really figure out why it is so popular

see I've heard it on the radio but my Clear Channel station has not blasted it like other singles. It's by far her biggest airplay hit since last fall, no doubt.

Dive bar on the East Side, where you at?
Phone lights up my nightstand in the black
Come here, you can meet me in the back

I'm bugged by how an almost good lyric is soured by "...in the black," which is neither an idiomatic nor a poetic way of saying "in the dark"; it's just a clumsy line, b/c she needed a rhyme.

(Also, sleep experts advise that keeping your phone active at your bedside is detrimental to getting proper rest.)

So what? This means she has some acquaintance with the Bernard Sumner Center for Advanced Lyric Writing.