Taylor Swift Album Poll

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That was fast. Speak Now by far the best of the ones I listened to, very fond of "Never Grow Up" and "Mine."

folklore

Instead of a poll where you only get to choose one, can we do a proper Artist albums and tracks poll, or are those frowned upon while the artist is still in their prime?

not at all. for instance i have done a Spoon poll a few years back and they are going to be releasing a new album this year. it will be the second since that poll closed.

I voted Fearless, but haven't really listened to her pop albums after 1989 due to her increasingly abhorrent lead singles. Even though I've grown to love Shake It Off and Bad Blood, I don't think I'll ever feel the same way about LWYMMD or Me! I did listen to folklore a few times - liked it at first but every subsequent listening got more bored. Never listened to the follow-up. I'd rectify my negligence if there was a ballot poll on the horizon.

As it stands, I'd probably rank them:

Fearless
1989
Speak Now
Red
Taylor Swift

Speak Now and Red are definitely fighting it out for 3rd because Red definitely has higher highs than Speak Now, but it's incredibly front loaded and I hate the dudes in the duets.

this is impossible

― josh az (2011nostalgia), Thursday, February 11, 2021 9:01 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah...I almost voted for Red and then revisited the second half. Everything through "Stay" is top-notch, but I think I'm going with Fearless. Evermore might be the best yet, but I used to think that about Lover, so I'm going to give it another couple years to brew.

Today, I would rank them:

Evermore
Reputation
Red
Fearless
Lover
1989
Folklore
debut
Speak Now

(that’s pure personal preference)

Red has a few amazing tracks in the final section ("Holy Ground" FFS, but also "Starlight" and "Begin Again", and I rep for "Sad Beautiful Tragic" as a nice game of dress-ups) and is long enough that you can skip the weaker tracks (which in truth are worse on paper than in reality - Gary Lightbody and Ed Sheeran are more useless than they are actively harmful) and still have a substantial album.

Fearless or Lover

xp I like the duets! I like all her duets. (I do sometimes skip "Sad Beautiful Tragic.")

red has no skips! gary lightbody does his best to suck all life out of "the last time", and the deluge of "this is the last time"s towards the end start to sound like a cruel tease, but taylor just about keeps things on track. love the way she sings 'you wear your best apologies - but i was there to watch you leave'.

also "i almost do" > "we are never" > "stay stay stay" > "the last time" is really good sequencing

evermore
red
folklore
speak now
1989
reputation
lover
fearless
taylor swift

the middle 3 especially could all swap around on any given day

clearly I'm missing something about Evermore, which came across as Folklore-lite to me last time I tried

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

bizarre

this is why we can't have nice things!

I think I'd like "The Last Time" more if it was more meta, and Taylor had never written a song again about an ex turning up and asking to be taken back.

As time passes, 1989 is moving past Fearless to settle itself as the most successful album in Taylor Swift‘s career.

her weakest record outside of the s/t won. interesting

1989 is her best Pop album but idk those results are bizarre. it's great if you cut "welcome to new york" and "bad blood" and maybe "shake it off" depending on how you're feeling and throw in "you are in love" and "new romantics" into the album proper but those duds on the official tracklist are truly dreadful

tbf, “I Know Places” is the only true dud. It’s a good album!

Lover 1
reputation 0

^^^ correct, at least

reputation with 0? this board needs more contrarians

i should've voted for reputation

It's so good, and so much fun

I can't even remember if I voted (lmao), but if I did, I should've voted for reputation

would any 1989 voters like to explain themselves?

I voted for Red, but 1989 is probably my second favorite because sequenced synths inna 80s style.

1989 is still really good except for those few duds though

red's weaker tracks aren't anywhere near as bad but i still hate the sequencing jumping all over the place stylistically, my preferred version cuts the three max martin pop hits (which are all underwritten imo), the duets (which aren't terrible but still relatively weak), and "stay stay stay" which is horrible twee grocery store commercial music. that leaves it at a very tight & perfect 10 tracks.

folk-more combined wins tho

“Stay Stay Stay” is amazing though?

otm

would any 1989 voters like to explain themselves?

― winters (josh),

really amused at the total inability of this board to process that her most overall-popular album won for good reasons. it's also obviously her best, the only one I even momentarily considered voting for instead was Folklore. It also has the largest cultural footprint imo, and it has "Style".

i.e. people who aren't fanatics (like me) find 1989 to be the best

I really like 1989 now - even Welcome to New York!

oh totally, good opener

every time i revisit 1989 i like it less... and the transition from "i wish you would" to "bad blood" still makes me want to shut it off. obv i'm a fanatic though, and have come to think of reputation as the better and more interesting pop record (also profoundly misunderstood, which makes me like it more... beneath the "i live 4 the drama" exterior it's almost all love songs)

1989 also def her best ever set of bonus tracks which is also one of my problems with the album lol

petitioning to be admitted into the alternate universe where "wonderland" was a hit instead of "bad blood"

or 'Clean"!!

how do you write a song like "new romantics" and not put it on your album... top 5 t swift song for me

During the mid '10s I listen to her albums less as statements than collections. I skipped around a lot. In 2014, the strength of "Blank Slate" and "Style" as singles reenergized my fandom after Red weakened it. I was wrong about Red and 1989.

1989 is a great album and I'm not surprised at all it won, and yes, all the bonus tracks are great. I'm more surprised that there are 9 people who think Folklore is her best.

i like that fearless and speak now tied. that’s a good result

1989 is very good, but it’s not like it’s her Purple Rain or something.

Lover was way too low. Not saying it should have placed in the top four, but it should have had much more than 1 lousy vote.

Did anybody say that? She doesn't have a Purple Rain anyway.

Lover might be her Graffiti Bridge tho.

We need to do a proper poll for her, damn it

this is probably kind of a good time for it

Did anybody say that?

That's sort of what I took sleeve to be saying; no biggie, I just wouldn't have thought it would be a clear-cut/default choice.

The question is, is Taylor Swift out of her Berlin-era Bowie period?.

I was thinking about this recently, too. I've never seen her live and certainly wouldn't mind more of a theater tour.

But she can't, can she? I mean, Olivia Rodrigo just did a (large) theatre tour, and Lil Nas X is doing that, too, iirc, but of course even though iirc neither has/had toured before they could have just started at arenas if they wanted to. But someone as popular as Swift, if she played small(er) places I think there would be a huge backlash, unless she did, like, 20 nights in every city.

I tried listening to the new song, but I think I wasn’t in the right headspace for that vibe.

Getting a vaguely mid-90s Tori Amos vibe (specifically stuff like "Bells For Her" or "Sister Named Desire") off "Carolina", though I would be very surprised if that was what Taylor shooting for. Something about the way her voice slides between notes and the lyrics forsake narrative coherence for quasi-coherent allusion - it feels like it wanders down the pathway that "Seven" gestured towards.

It makes me think most of "Safe and Sound" tbh, but that may just be the Southern Goth Lite vibe.