My Top 26 Taylor Swift Songs Part 1: The 1st 13

So I first became aware of Vocal from content creator, Lily Kristian, from her Taylor Swift Twitter Polls Account, @TaylorSPolls. So I thought it'd be fun to pay tribute to that and examine my favorite Taylor Songs. For context I am a Straight #GuySwiftie Married to my Wonderful Wife of nearly 6 Years now, so it should be a unique list. But in some ways that's the beauty of it. If every Swiftie put their mind to it to do this list it'd take you a long time to find any identical lists. Way back in the day when we only had Taylor Swift, Fearless, & Speak Now I had a definitive Top 13 Taylor Swift Songs, but as time and albums go on it becomes insanely hard to crack that list. So we've doubled it to 26, and tbh kind of tacked on to 31 with our Runners Up. So without further adieu, and on this subject definitely not Freddy Adu, here's the 5 Runners Up and 1st 13 of the Top 26 in approximate chronological order.

5 Runners Up that would(ve) got us to 31:

Today Was A Fairytale: Unique in being a rare TS Song written into a corner so to speak as it's from the Valentine's Day Soundtrack. People don't appreciate Taylor's Film Career enough. Yes Valentine's Day itself can be a bit cringe-worthy as she's really playing a caricature of her tropes at the time. Ditto with her New Girl Cameo. And to date I haven't seen Cats, which tbh seems like a good thing as not even Tay can get me interested in that weird live-action dress up/CGI? look of the characters.

But Taylor's CSI Episode: Turn, Turn, Turn is top drawer with a great story and a somewhat unique premise with multiple seemingly unconnected crimes spaced out over a year up until those scissors scare the shit out of us, haha. If Tay were gay or bi getting murdered by a woman with scissors would probably be completely hilarious and much more culturally significant. But I digress.

The Lorax is a very underrated and underappreciated kids movie, and it's also the first time Taylor's associated with red hair as far as I remember. Which to digress again stole the show in the Better Man Music Video when we finally got real life red haired Tay.

And finally The Giver is a great masterpiece with a message, and Tay plays her pivotal yet brief part well. Part of me wishes she'd become a television main character sometime to prove once and for all she has the acting chops, perhaps even in Star Trek, one of my other passions (she'd be a great 7 of 9), but at the same time I think we all prefer her current career.

Innocent: This used to be one of my very most favorites, but once you find out it's written about forgiving Kanye for 2009 it's hard to keep up on a pedestal. And that's from before all the new and extra drama even happened. Still when turning your analytical mind off and just listening and appreciating the song it's a great tune.

Ronan: Feel guilty leaving this one out of the Top 26, but the reason it's hard to put it is also why it's so powerful. It wrings so much emotion out of you it's hard for it to be an enjoyable experience. But that's precisely why it's so important as the story of Ronan's brief life is celebrated. And on some level it's also quite personal as my Wife and I have had multiple miscarriages.

Christmas Tree Farm: As funny and sad as it is to say, Christmas Tree Farm is suffering from the COVID-19 Effect as atm all it can represent to my mind is how Christmas Season and the Early Year was the last time the world felt normal. Plus it's kind of hard to justify having two specialty Christmas Songs, haha spoiler, in a Top 26, but it did come very close.

The Last Great American Dynasty: TLGAD is probably suffering a little bit from anti-recency bias, and also...well I already dropped the Christmas Spoiler you'll just have to wait and see.

The 1st 13, CD Disk 1:

#1 Mary's Song (Oh My My My): Again the numbers aren't a measure of quality, as that would be pretty impossible. Instead I'm going in approximate, chronological order. And we start with the story of a lifetime of young love come good. A lot of these early entries are going to be colored by my single life and my single angst as I didn't meet my wife until the Red Era was almost over, Brazil 2014 kicked off, and we wasted Tim Howard's 16 Saves versus Belgium, but at least I met her right before a World Cup so I knew she could handle my worst crazy from the get go, haha. Then we got 1989 that Fall.

#2 Invisible: Very much also from the single angst category. When I first got into Taylor Swift I'd just graduated High School and still had fresh memories of taken girls out of my league.

#3 Christmas Must Be Something More: In Tay's original Christmas Outing she makes up for the album being so short by penning 2 Original Christmas Songs. Christmases When You Were Mine is great, but CMBSM is the far superior track. Of course I guess it's a skip if you're not a Christian, so that's a lot of what's holding it back.

#4 You Belong With Me: "Speaking of World Cups Sports Guy, how did you become a Swiftie in the first place?", you ask. Well this song holds the answer. Well...on June 12th, 2010 the USA had their World Cup Opener versus Rival, England. (Hmm, wonder what Joe Alwyn though of the match, and which Football Club he supports for that matter? ; Glory Glory Manchester United myself.) Don't check out, I promise it's related. Anyways after the frustrations of 2006 and being good enough to be the Future Champions's Only Blemish with that 1-1 draw against Italy, yet not getting out of the Group: I was letting out 4 Years Worth of Frustrations at the poor family tv during another 1-1 draw now that we finally had a new Men's World Cup Campaign to root for and I lost my voice by the end of it. After the final whistle I drove across Oklahoma to my Grandma's. And we were due to pick up my cousins I hadn't seen in forever. When we did pick up my cousins on the 13th, since I couldn't talk we played tunes back and forth. And You Belong With Me grabbed me like no song ever had before. To be fair I was already pretty fond of Stay Beautiful thanks to it's inclusion in a dope Han Solo/Leia YouTube Tribute, but I didn't know it was Taylor or anything about Taylor at the time.

#5 Breathe: "It's 2 a.m. feeling like I just lost a friend." I could be wrong, but I think this is where the Taylor's 2 a.m./1:58 a.m. trend started. And I am a night owl to the core. Plus this track very much fed my single angst.

#6 Untouchable: This is actually my all-time favorite, and that disturbs me. Because it's the only cover song from that entire era, and somehow my dumb soul found it to be the best. I love Taylor's Songwriting Prowess with such a passion, and yet embarrassingly this is my favorite. To get beyond my drama, on some level it makes sense as I appreciate and share a lot of similar musical tastes with Tay, but still.

What makes it so great anyways you ask? Well it was an amazing song about unattainable love at a time when I felt love was very, very much unattainable. And it's something about the beat. I dunno. A long time ago I made a Star Trek: Voyager Janeway/Chakotay Shipping Tribute with it if you're interested. I will have to get the strength to listen to the original band's version someday, but not today.

#7 Mine: Mine is kind of a special crossing over in that I actually was 'in college', but not exactly waiting tables when it came out. It's a classic wishful, bliss tale about imagining what your love will be like when you finally find it. To me anyways, song interpretation is always relative and subjective.

#8 Speak Now: I've never understood how this song wasn't a bigger deal. It's a very well told wish fulfillment story about stopping a wedding. What more do you need. And the CD Liner Art just looks like it's grabbed straight from a Music Video like the Liner Art from Fearless Platinum's Actual Music Video Tracks having Music Video Stills. And clearly from titling the album with this song Tay wanted all of that for it. Given the divorce from Big Machine my inner rage wants to just say the Label didn't want a track promoting such rebellious, disruptive behavior front and center, but maybe it's just me grasping at straws. And probably is. Or is it?

#9 Long Live: No matter where it ranks on your list, Long Live is likely a Track that holds a special place in ever Swiftie's heart as it's Taylor's Song about her relationship with us and her deep appreciation of our support. It perfectly captures the struggles of fandom and the underdog struggles of any performer rising to the top, whether that be music, sport, acting, whatever. It's got a permanent place in my queue for when the USMNT: United States Mens National Team, finally Win A World Cup. Hopefully as the 1st Team from outside Europe & South America, and hopefully with our current young developing generation led by Christian Pulisic, also a young Pennsylvania Legend and Folkhero, albeit with much, much more to prove. Yes a lot of my love for certain songs is how it makes me feel about sports, it's just part of this adventure, haha. Oh and this song does have an undercover, unknown music video from Paula Fernandes's Version that Tay is in. It's just as beautiful a song even when it's half in Portuguese.

#10 If This Was A Movie: The Speak Now Bonus Tracks are all extremely excellent. Ours of course is the one that got the recognition, but it's the other two that make this list and have special places in my heart. Of course my dramatic ass is into ITWAM, it's following the theme of this 1st half perfectly, angsty wish fulfillment.

#11 Superman: Might be strange coming from a straight guy, I get it. But as one who likes to believe he actually does look a little bit like Clark Kent, I've always been into all things Superman. And you have to admit there's a reason some people like to cast Tay as Kara Zor-El in their minds as Melissa Benoist & Laura Vander Voort can consider themselves lucky Tay's primary career is music. Plus the song itself is about how a woman in love sees her ordinary man as her own personal Superman.

And I'm not kidding about Superman Fandom either. I'm still kind of annoyed that Dean Cain is wasted in the Adam West Style Camp Series as his legacy parts in both Smallville & Supergirl are excellent and prove he could've handled the character in a more serious series or films. I'd have probably got through Smallville 3 or 4 extra times by now if we had the commercial-free version of Hulu instead of commercials Hulu, haha. The DCAU is special to my entire generation, and Superman is an amazing part of it. I love geeking out with Static Shock when Superman & the Toy Man crash Dakota City. The movies are really hit and miss though. Superman Returns is tedious, but still redeemable. Man of Steel is very, very odd. 1st Smallville is very much not small at all. I mean at the time Smallville having IHOP destroyed any and all world-building that movie had to me. Then Liberal, Kansas got an IHOP and I was kind of able to get it, but still. Not to mention all of the collateral damage in the battle with Zod that Cavill Soups seemingly doesn't even try to prevent.

If you're wondering, yes Speak Now is the most represented album in the 1st half. Although you could argue it's only because it has the best additions since I picked two bonus tracks.

#12 Stay, Stay, Stay: Just pure fun. Not really a need to say much else. You either love it to death or you don't.

#13 Sad, Beautiful, Tragic: Is hard to explain, but the entire song works together perfectly. Just strong raw emotion lamenting a lost love.