This community is so full of Swifties and I love it! I wasn’t totally sure if people would be interested in reading my rankings of all the songs from each album, but there was such a great response to my folklore rankings, so thank you all so much for that!
Today I am back with part two in the series, starring none other than 1989.
1989 has — in my opinion — some mega hits and some mega misses. The good is so good, but the bad is so bad.
Let’s talk it through…
og songs (deluxe version) + vault tracks
number twenty-two: wonderland
I’m so sorry if you enjoy this song, but I just really do not like it.
Favorite lyrics: I literally like nothing about this song.
number twenty-one: bad blood
The Kendrick version is the only version worth listening to.
Favorite lyrics: Saving it for the Kendrick version.
number twenty: welcome to new york
Cute bop, I’ll sing along if it’s on, but I have never and will never seek it out.
Favorite lyrics: “Everybody here was someone else before.”
number nineteen: how you get the girl
Cute pop song, but it’s never felt super special to me.
Favorite lyrics: “I want you for worse or for better / I would wait forever and ever / Broke your heart, I’ll put it back together.”
number eighteen: all you had to do was stay
Again, a cute pop song to sing along to in the car, but not a masterpiece. That said, when it first came out I definitely used to put this on and think about my ex hahaha.
Favorite lyrics: “People like you always want back / The love they pushed aside / But people like me are gone forever / When you say goodbye.”
number seventeen: i wish you would
Let’s be brutally honest… “How You Get the Girl”, “All You Had to Do Was Stay”, and “I Wish You Would” sound almost identical. But something about “I Wish You Would” has always resonated a smidge more for me.
Favorite lyrics: “Wish you knew that I’d never forget you as long as I’d live / Wish you were right here, right now, it’s all good / I wish you would.”
number sixteen: clean
This is where 1989 starts to get going for me. I love “Clean” and think it is a beautiful song about finally moving on after a tough breakup. When it first came out, I played it all of the time hoping and wishing for the day I would wakeup feeling clean and over my ex.
Favorite lyrics: “Ten months sober, I must admit / Just because you’re clean don’t mean you don’t miss it / Ten months older, I won’t give in / Now that I’m clean, I’m never gonna risk it.”
number fifteen: shake if off
Listen.
Is “Shake It Off” poetic genius? No.
A lyrical masterpiece? No.
Is it a goddamn bop? Yes.
Am I going to sing-scream at the top of my lungs every time I hear it? You bet.
Favorite lyrics: “‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate / Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake.”
number fourteen: i know places
This song makes me feel like I am being chased by the paparazzi and who has never fantasized about being famous enough for a pap chase?
Favorite lyrics: “Somethin’ happens when everybody finds out / See the vultures circling, dark clouds / Love’s a fragile little flame, it could burn out.”
number thirteen: suburban legends
People either love or hate the 1989 vault tracks, there is no in between, and I LOVE them. Every single one of them is so good and, in my humble opinion, belonged on the OG album.
That said, “Suburban Legends” is the vault track I like the least.
Favorite lyrics: “Tick-tock on the clock, I pace down your block / I broke my own heart cause you were too polite to do it / Waves crash to the shore, I dash to door / You don’t knock anymore, and I always knew it / That my life would be ruined.”
number twelve: bad blood feat. kendrick lamar
This is the only version of “Bad Blood” that matters and there will be no changing my mind. Kendrick Lamar and the fabulous music video cast make this the hit that it is. End of discussion.
Favorite lyrics: “Remember when you tried to write me off? (Uh-huh) / Don’t you remember? You thought I wouldn’t need ya / Follow procedure, remember? Oh, wait, you’ve got amnesia? / It was my season for battle wounds, battle scars, body bumped, bruised / Stabbed in the back, brimstone, fire jumpin’ through / Still, all my life, I got money and power / And you gotta live with the bad blood now.”
number eleven: say don’t go
I really start to struggle with my rankings at this point because I love 1989 so much and my favorites are ranked really close to one another. “Say Don’t Go” would probably be ranked higher if it had made the original album, but because some of the 1989 songs are so iconic, I felt like I needed to rank them higher, even though on some days I like “Say Don’t Go” better… Does that make sense or is it just word vomit?
Favorite lyrics: “Why’d you have to (why’d you have to) / Make me want you? (make me want you?) / Why’d you have to (why’d you have to) / Give me nothin’ back? / Why’d you have to (why’d you have to) / Make me love you? (make me love you?) / I said, ‘I love you’ (I said, ‘I love you’), you say nothin’ back.”
number ten: new romantics
“New Romantics” was not an immediate love for me. In fact, for many years it was a skip, but in the past few years it has really grown on me. It’s such a bop!!! So fun to sing in the car or play when I’m getting ready to go out. It makes me feel young and wild and carefree in the best way.
Favorite lyrics: “We’re so young, but we’re on the road to ruin / We play dumb but we know exactly what we’re doin’ / We cry tears of mascara in the bathroom / Honey, life is just a classroom.”
number nine: style
It feels wrong to put such an iconic song at number nine, but alas, this required some cutthroat decisions.
Favorite lyrics: “I say, ‘I heard, oh / That you’ve been out and about with some other girl’ / Some other girl / He says, ‘What you heard is true, but I / Can’t stop thinking ‘bout you and I’ / I said, ‘I’ve been there too, a few times’.”
number eight: slut!
When I first saw there was a vault track titled, “Slut!”, I expected something “Blank Space” or “New Romantics” adjacent. What we got was so much different, but sheer perfection.
Favorite lyrics: “Flamingo Pink, Sunrise Boulevard / Clink, clink, being this young is art / Aquamarine, moonlit swimming pool / What if all I need is you?”
number seven: you are in love
This is another song that took a hot second to grow on me, but now that it has, I’m obsessed. It is such a beautiful and accurate portrayal of that feeling of being newly in love and the way it washes over you in the quiet moments and in the littlest things. Ugh. I love love.
Favorite lyrics: “And you understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars / And why I’ve spent my whole life trying to put it into words / ‘Cause you can hear it in the silence / You can feel it on the way home / You can see it with the lights out / You are in love / True love.”
number six: out of the woods
Oh man. “Out of the Woods” and I go way back. When it first came out, I would play it on repeat while I worked out on the elliptical machine and thought about my ex-boyfriend. Dark times, but the song still hits.
Favorite lyrics: “You took a Polaroid of us / Then discovered (then discovered) / The rest of the world was black and white / But we were in screaming color.”
number five: is it over now?
This song is PEAK petty Taylor and I for one am here for it.
Favorite lyrics #1: "If she’s got blue eyes, I will surmise that you’ll probably date her / You dream of my mouth before it called you a lying traitor / You search in every model’s bed for something greater.”
Favorite lyrics #2: “I think about jumping off of very tall somethings / Just to see you come running / And say the one thing I’ve been wanting, but no.”
number four: wildest dreams
This song and the music video are both stunning. No notes.
Favorite lyrics: “I said, ‘No one has to know what we do’ / His hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room / And his voice is a familiar sound / Nothing lasts forever / But this is getting good now / He’s so tall, and handsome as hell / He’s so bad, but he does it so well / And when we’ve had our very last kiss / My last request, it is / Say you’ll remember me standing in a nice dress / Staring at the sunset, babe.”
number three: now that we don’t talk
“Now That We Don’t Talk” is the ultimate bop. If it had been on the OG album, I know, without a doubt, I would have played it on repeat for a solid year.
Favorite lyrics: “I don’t have to pretend I like acid rock / Or that I’d like to be on a mega-yacht / With important men who think important thoughts / Guess maybe I am better off / Now that we don’t talk.”
number two: this love
I am a sucker for a second chance love story and this is the ultimate second chance love song!!! Everything about it is stunning. The lyrics, the melody, the tempo. One of my favorite Taylor songs of all time.
Favorite lyrics: “Your kiss, my cheek, I watched you leave / Your smile, my ghost, I fell to my knees / When you’re young, you just run / But you come back to what you need.”
number one: blank space
ICONIC.
“Blank Space” is an anthem for every woman who has ever been called crazy by a man. It will forever and always (ha see what I did there?) be one of the greatest Taylor songs of all time.
"Favorite lyrics: “Cherry lips, crystal skies / I could show you incredible things / Stolen kisses, pretty lies / You’re the king, baby, I’m your queen / Find out what you want / Be that girl for a month / Wait, the worst is yet to come, oh, no / Screaming, crying, perfect storms / I can make all the tables turn / Rose garden filled with thorns / Keep you second guessing, like / ‘Oh, my, God, who is she?’ / I get drunk on jealousy / But you’ll come back each time you leave / ‘Cause darling I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”
And that sums up my thoughts on 1989!
I would love to hear from you in the comments! Tell me where you agree, disagree, and also be sure to tell me which album you want to see ranked next.
XOXO,
Maddie
pretty much agree with your ranking!! the top five is chief's kiss
Solid list and you’re not wrong about the worst of the worst 😆 I have such a soft spot for Style but otherwise 100% agree on this ranking!!!