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Photo Illustration: Vulture, Cliff Lipson / CBS via Getty Images and YouTube
2020 will fall into infamy for many reasons, but at least, for once, two of them have nothing to do with Taylor Swift. This marked the year that Swift threw out the rulebook and He didn’t give us one, but two surprise albums (not to mention a surprise concert movie for the first time). Increasingly marks her ninth studio album and third in just 16 months, after August 2019 Lover and July folklore. Which means something very specific to Taylor Swift fans: We’ve gotten a third of the mythical track five in less than a year and a half.
Early in her career, a pattern began to emerge on track five denoting the moment on each of her albums when Taylor truly went cathartic. Fans started noticing it around 2012. Red and “All too good” and Taylor acknowledged the phenomenon in one of his Instagram lives before the release of Lover, saying, “I didn’t realize I was doing this, but while making albums, I guess I was just putting on a very vulnerable, personal, honest and emotional song like Track 5. So as you noticed this, I started putting the songs on. that they were really honest, emotional, vulnerable and personal as clue five.“Sure, Taylor explores her feelings in all his songs, that’s his thing, but there is a certain vulnerability that comes with a Taylor Swift track five, and there is always a high level of anticipation for what these songs will contain. Taylor’s songs are always deeply personal, but there is a level of emotional rawness to these tracks that others don’t touch. These are the tracks where you are naked, without armor. While other songs dance around these themes, track five has always tackled them head-on.
But is one track five better than another? If they were classified, what is each one of them like by itself and as part of a set? Would the criteria be lyrical content? Vulnerability? How likely is it that they will make you want to call a therapist because Oh wow, I have a lot to unpack here? All of the above, and something else. Next, I ranked the nine existing Taylor Swift tracks. And to complete such an overwhelming task, I have developed a very scientific point system whereby each song will be judged and ranked based on the following four qualities:
1. Letters (5 points)
2. The level of vulnerability transmitted (5 points)
3. Degree to which the song makes me want to call a therapist (5 points)
4. How much it makes me want to grab a hairbrush and play it dramatically in a mirror with the song (5 points)
For a total of 20 possible points. And so, we began …
Swift’s inaugural runway five. “Cold As You” takes a look at a relationship that wasn’t so great. Not bad. It is not terrible. But taxing in its own way. It’s absolutely the five most country track on the list, and Taylor’s teenage accent really shines through. The lyrics – “And when you drink, you take the best of me. Then I start a fight because I need to feel something, and you do what you want because I am not what you wanted ”- it really reached me when I was 15 years old., but over a decade of experience later, from both the listener and Swift, it definitely stands out as the First track five. It lacks some of the power these tracks acquired as Taylor matured and his composition grew stronger. But there is still something special about it and the mess of a dreamer who wrote it.
Letters: 3/5
Vulnerability: 3/5
Call your therapist: 1/5
Grab that hairbrush: 4/5
Total: 11/20
“White Horse” is when the glass breaks and the realization hits that life may not actually be a fairy tale, and you may have to save yourself. Taylor learned this lesson quite early and, thankfully, she has been generous with that wisdom in her songwriting since her early days. “White House” yells track five that preceded it with the line “I was a dreamer before you and I was disappointed.” And that’s the sentiment written throughout this song: You disappointed me, but whose fault was it? It is absolutely one of the most vulnerable tracks of Bold, but he wouldn’t figure out how to carry that theme to the first act of an album and beyond, not just the fifth song, to his next album, Speak Now.
Letters: 3/5
Vulnerability: 3/5
Call your therapist: 2/5
Grab that hairbrush: 4/5
Total: 12/20
All he had to do was stay. But he didn’t! And then we got this incredible bop. It’s definitely the most optimistic of all the five tracks, but don’t be fooled: “Let me remind you that this was what you wanted. You finished it. You were everything I wanted. But not like this. “The flavor of vulnerability in this song is staying strong when someone you really care about ends things and then comes back, but you stand firm and reject it. This concept shows Taylor’s growth from her first album to his fifth, and reflected in sound. It is synthetic and danceable but with laughter! A great change of pace for track fives fans who want to dance While They cry. Oh. Just me?
Letters: 3/5
Vulnerability: 4/5
Call your therapist: 1/5
Grab that hairbrush: 5/5
Total: 13/20
6. “Delicate” reputation (2017)
One, two, three let’s dance. Another track five that’s more of a pop song than an emotional ballad, but it’s track five. Taylor is essentially standing in front of the person she likes yelling, “IS IT OKAY THAT I LIKE YOU?” and hoping that doesn’t ruin everything. We know now, three years later, that it didn’t actually screw everything up, but at the time you really don’t know. Relationships are so delicate, you know? Is it cool that you said all that?
Letters: 3/5
Vulnerability: 4/5
Call your therapist: 2/5
Grab that hairbrush: 5/5
Total: 14/20
“The Archer” is basically “Anxiety Disorder: The Song” and I’m equally surprised and not surprised that Taylor needed seven albums to face his neurosis head-on. “I wake up at night, I walk like a ghost. The room is on fire, invisible smoke. And all my heroes die alone. Help me hold on to you. “With lyrics like that, it’s no wonder this song is Lover track five. Taylor said he explored different types of love on his seventh album, and “The Archer” really comes home on both the romantic front and the self-love. While the previous two track five were upbeat, this one reverts to the slower, more melodic form that Swift’s track five usually takes.
Letters: 4/5
Vulnerability: 4/5
Call your therapist: 5/5
Grab that hairbrush: 2/5
Total: 15/20
In the recently released Long study sessions in ponds – the Netflix concert movie where Swift and her collaborators perform folklore for the first time – Jack Antonoff says that, for him, folklore It begins with “my tears bounce” as it was the first song he wrote for the album. He also goes on to say, “I think it’s one of the best songs you’ve ever written, and I think that’s why you topped it as a track five.” Taylor responds by saying that picking a track five is a “pressurized decision” (sorry Taylor, you did this to yourself!), But I knew from day one that it probably would. And oh, what track five it is. Can it or not be told from the perspective of a ghost? … Or a superhero? Everything is possible with a track five. This song also contains some of his sharpest lyrics: “And I can go wherever I want, wherever I want. Just not at home. And you can target my heart, go for blood. But you’d still miss me in your bones. “Cold. Every. Hour.
Letters: 5/5
Vulnerability: 3/5
Call your therapist: 4/5
Grab that hairbrush: 5/5
Total: 17/20
Track five newer, but really has a familiar punch. A lingering theme in Taylor’s music from album to album is not being in love enough, whether out of doubt or being with the wrong person, is a recurring presence.. “Tolerate it” is steeped in that idea. It’s track five for those who love more than they are loved, a terrible situation to be in. It’s a track five so deep that there’s really no other track in Increasingly that could fit in its place. Like… “While you were building other worlds, where was I? Where is that man who was throwing blankets on my barbed wire? I made you my temple, my mural, my heaven. Now I’m asking for footnotes on your life story. ” Oh.
Letters: 5/5
Vulnerability: 4/5
Call your therapist: 6/5
Grab that hairbrush: 2/5
Total: 17/20
Oof. Okay. “Dear John.” Where do I begin this song? It’s track five longest, at 6:43, and it’s an emotional marathon. It’s a “Dear John” letter to an older man who manipulated her in a relationship, who is probably her ex John Mayer, and Taylor really lets it all out. Taylor was 20 when Speak Now was released, and it takes a lot of strength to release a song like this, even if it’s not an incredibly popular musician. But it was! Probably! And she received a lot of criticism for that. In hindsight, it is empowering. She calls out the boy in the song for everything he did. She took her matches before the fire could catch her and lit fireworks with them.
Letters: 4/5
Vulnerability: 5/5
Call your therapist: 4/5
Grab that hairbrush: 5/5
Total: 18/20
It’s arguably Taylor Swift’s most famous track, five of them all (so far). “All Too Well” was never a single, but it should have been. Taylor has nagged fans with the existence of a ten-minute version of the song for years, and honestly, it’s time for the teasing to stop. You can find the CD it’s on, Taylor. Maybe it’s right next to the scarf? Lyrically, “All Too Well” is an outstanding track without any. “And you call me again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest” absolutely describes several relationships that I have personally talked about in therapy, and probably would with anyone else with a pulse and past. While the other eight songs on this list are awesome tracks, “All Too Well” is still Taylor’s crowning track and the queen of track five. “All Too Well” feels like Taylor Swift’s heart: it’s pure and honest, narrative and melodic, it’s angry and sad and reminiscent at the same time. And the only reason you don’t get a perfect score in this range is because calling a man much older and very famous (supposedly) in his 20s is maximum “I’m an open book” behavior and the best use of his power. That can’t be beat, not even with “All Too Well”.
Letters: 5/5
Vulnerability: 4/5
Call your therapist: 5/5
Grab that hairbrush: 5/5
Total: 19/20
