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Every Song on Taylor Swift’s Folklore Ranked

We've ranked all 17 songs from the singer-songwriter's watershed eighth album.

Taylor Swift
Photo: Beth Garrabrant

Over the course of the four releases preceding Folklore, Taylor Swift developed a model of pop album that was seemingly machine-calibrated to please just about everyone. For each fan-favorite deep cut (“All Too Well,” “New Romantics”) there was an equal and opposite radio hit (“22,” “Shake It Off”). The conflict inherent in this structure came to a head on last year’s Lover, which produced pop-centric, radio-friendly singles like “ME!” and “You Need to Calm Down,” as well as the rootsier title track and the lilting “Afterglow.”

Folklore, by contrast, finds Swift at her most masterful and consistent, which makes comparing its songs all the more challenging. None of these songs reach overtly for the theatrics or immediate pop appeal of earlier singles such as “Look What You Made Me Do.” Instead, Swift foregrounds her narrative sensibility and her eye for detail, reminding us of—in case we somehow forgot—her voice-of-a-generation status. See below for our ranking of every song on the singer’s watershed eighth album.


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17. “Epiphany”

It’s commendable that Swift would take a moment on an otherwise introspective album to pay tribute to essential workers and to remind her listeners to wear a mask. The conciseness with which she draws a parallel between medical professionals and soldiers is persuasive, but the device’s neatness and sincerity can feel a bit simple. Still, on such a consistent album, last place isn’t so much a slight as it is a credit to the rest of the album’s songs.


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16. “Cardigan”

For a song about a conventionally comfy piece of clothing, “Cardigan” is surprisingly slinky, its swaying melody and Swift’s gasping vocals elaborating nicely on the dark pop of 2017’s Reputation. The song’s protracted central metaphor, fairy-tale imagery, and idealistic mentions of scars and tattoos risk being uncomplicatedly wide-eyed, but it’s Swift’s established style to employ childlike concepts with a sense of irony. “Cardigan” avoids becoming saccharine when Swift allows it to be sensual, possibly name-dropping one of Rihanna’s steamiest singles (“Kiss It Better”) to seal the whole thing with a kiss.


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15. “Mad Woman”

Swift’s most credible expressions of resentment are typically couched in a tangible conflict (“Mean”) or balanced against self-examination (“Innocent”), but “Mad Woman” is a declaration of anger justified mostly by an interrogation of gender norms. Its lyrics about the weaponization of internalized misogyny signal that Swift has grown since she wrote “You Belong with Me” and “Better Than Revenge,” but her best songs are even more nuanced and tangible than this.

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14. “The Lakes”

Folklore’s tender, self-referential bonus track reveals an important element of the album’s ethos, namely that Swift aims to be remembered as a poet. She seeks to do so here through meta-poetics, naming writerly forms (“Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?”) and building puns around great writers’ names (“I’ve come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze/Tell me what are my words worth”). The song might skew capital-R romantic (“A red rose grew up out of ice-frozen ground/With no one around to tweet it”), but it’s an affectionately detailed testament to the fact that readers can become writers, and writers can become icons.


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13. “This Is Me Trying”

This is one of a small handful of tracks on Folklore that feel less like distinct story beats and more like summations of the album’s broader emotional arc. In fact, “This Is Me Trying” is a fitting coda to Swift’s entire discography, mining both her vulnerability and her ability to do harm on a serene mid-album respite from the lyrical density of “Seven” and “August.” The image of a salt-rusted Swift downing a shot of whiskey between ruminations on her very public youth is jarring next to her self-titled debut, but it feels like an honest comedown from Lover’s shine.


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12. “My Tears Ricochet”

Like “Mad Woman,” “My Tears Ricochet” tells one of Folklore’s most straightforwardly resentful stories, this time grounded narratively in the idea of a toxic lover showing up at their ex’s funeral. Jack Antonoff’s production touches are stirring: The sharp beats of strings on the chorus recall the bridges of early-2010s Swift songs, and the warm echo of Swift “screaming at the sky” on the bridge evokes the thrill of “He looks up, grinning like a devil.”


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11. “The 1”

As one of Folklore’s peppiest tracks, “The 1” is a fitting opener and a smooth transition from Lover’s effervescence. It tells us immediately that Swift’s preoccupation with regret has lasted since Fearless and Speak Now, but she’s got the age and experience to reassure her lover (and herself), that “it’s all right now.” Whereas heartbreak was fresh and monumental on “Fifteen,” nowadays Swift’s approach to love and dating is candid and mature—but wistful enough to avoid being blasé.

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10. “Peace”

“Peace” is among Swift’s most spacious and gorgeous songs, leaving the impression of pillow talk deepened by promises—or threats—of loyalty. While the song deflates somewhat from the predominance of lyrical clichés (“The devil’s in the details, but you got a friend in me,” “I’d swing with you for the fences/Sit with you in the trenches”), Swift delivers every word with intimate urgency. It’s a fitting summation of the tension between the thrill of love and the knowledge that it’s never truly promised, a conflict that’s motivated much of Swift’s music.


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9. “August”

Genre-hopping has always come naturally and authentically to Swift, so it was only a matter of time before her shifting brand of country/pop-rock/Americana would bleed fully into indie folk. On “August,” she sings about a lost summer love with poignant detail, tactile images of sea air and bedsheets adding up to an evocative, impressionistic collage. Whether this story is Swift’s or belongs to a character she created in service of a framing device, “August” is a vivid, convincing tableau of a common consciousness of love.


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8. “Hoax”

While Swift’s outlook on life might be less youthfully, actively unsettled than it was on her early albums, she’s not done figuring things out. She may have the ability to identify bad love, but she’s still susceptible to it. Swift has long been both driven by love (“Back to December”) and driven toward love (“Fearless”), willing to risk it all for love, even if she suspects it will hurt her (“Speak Now”). With some of her most concise verses and Aaron Dessner’s sparse piano-and-voice production, she’s left bare by her hopeless romanticism, ending the album without closing it neatly.


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7. “Illicit Affairs”

Narratively, most of “Illicit Affairs” can be predicted from its title. What’s less expected is the generosity with which Swift portrays her lover’s infidelity, as she elects to imagine an affair from the cheater’s perspective. It’s not an endorsement, of course—rather, she empathizes with the “dwindling, mercurial high” of secrecy, only allowing her underlying hurt to boil over on the bridge. She doesn’t lament that her lover has betrayed her, but that he has wasted the love they built together (“You taught me a secret language I can’t speak with anyone else”). This secret was supposed to be ours, she says. If he could share it with another lover, then she can share it with us.

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6. “Invisible String”

Just as Swift showed on “The 1” that she has come to terms with love’s temporariness, on “Invisible String,” she lets control slip further by inviting new love to turn up by chance. She lets life work for her, unlike on “Enchanted,” where a 20-year-old Swift regretted not announcing a newfound attraction when she had the chance. At this point, she’s mastered dating as the Taylor Swift. She’s deeply accustomed to her celebrity status invading her love, and she’s even sending her exes’ kids gifts. Her incipient enlightenment evokes the calm of Ray of Light-era Madonna, and “Invisible String” sees Swift casually remarking on “mystical time,” a knowing grin secretly spreading across her face.


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5. “Betty”

Possibly the most charming track on Folklore, “Betty” is one of a few songs told from the point of view of a fictional character, here the lovelorn James. He’s a precocious teenager, offering some welcome moments of light humor: “You heard the rumors from Inez/You can’t believe a word she says.” As a song, it’s a crowd-pleasing, upbeat, and provocative addition to Swift’s extensive catalog. Where “Betty” really excels, though, is as a story. Swift’s lyrics are equally detailed and efficient, and her character’s voice is charmingly youthful without sacrificing Swift’s trademark emotional intelligence. “I’m only 17, I don’t know anything/But I know I miss you,” just as easily could be a pair of lines from the perspective of pre-2010 Swift, but its presence here reassures us that this sense of newness hasn’t faded from her music.


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4. “The Last Great American Dynasty”

If “The Man” was Taylor Swift’s first overt feminist statement, then “Mad Woman” was its darker counterpart, the devil on her shoulder channeling her social consciousness through anger. In turn, “The Last Great American Dynasty” frames Swift’s views on womanhood through the lens of historicity; here, she shows us instead of telling us what it means to be a “mad woman.” While many of the other narratives on Folklore are fictional, “The Last Great American Dynasty” recounts the life story of Rebekah Harkness, a 20th-century artist and philanthropist and prior owner of Swift’s Rhode Island Holiday House. Even if Swift didn’t insert herself into the song’s narrative explicitly, it would be clear that she sees herself in Harkness—her ambition, her controversy, her recklessness. This song is Swift’s ode to powerful women maligned for having dared to succeed, herself included.


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3. “Mirrorball”

Generally speaking, adult pop songs about high school fall into one of two modes: wistful recollections of major milestones—prom, graduation, first loves (see SZA’s “Prom” and Mitski’s “Two Slow Dancers”)—or sarcastic, often anti-authoritarian rebukes of the strictures of secondary school. While Swift has occasionally embraced aged longing (“Fifteen”), her typical mode of nostalgia is more biting (“Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince”). “Mirrorball” falls neatly between these categories, picking up where “Miss Americana” left off by setting her love story in a world populated by “masquerade revelers” agog at Swift’s downfall. In any other context, referring to her detractors as clowns would read as bitter, but when it’s the main challenge to a love that Swift conveys with breathless amazement, the romance feels triumphant.

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2. “Seven”

One of Folklore’s most chilling moments arrives on the second verse of “Seven,” when Taylor sings, “I think your house is haunted/Your dad is always mad and that must be why.” Parents, both Swift’s and those of her peers’, have had a constant, looming presence over her music, especially as a young adult forming her sense of self (“The Best Day,” “Never Grow Up,” “Soon You’ll Get Better”). Here, when Swift compares the sharing of love to the passing down of folk songs on the chorus, there’s the subtlest feeling that love also entails trauma. On earlier songs such as “Mine,” she revealed that watching her parents’ relationship struggles imbued her with a mistrust of love, or rather an implicit understanding that love is temporary. While the love on “Seven” is platonic, it captures the same seasonal temporariness of “August” and “Betty” with impressive deftness and sensitivity.


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1. “Exile”

Folklore, as a project, seeks to balance self-respect with unpretentiousness. The album artwork depicts Swift at her smallest, lost among trees, submitting herself to a unifying vision of pop music as popular, populist. “Exile” might be one of her most dramatic exercises in humility, as she allows Justin Vernon of Bon Iver to open the song alone. As on “Illicit Affairs,” Swift centers her partner’s perspective, implicitly acknowledging her own fallibility. She even picks up Vernon’s inflections on later tracks (“Peace”), a mark not only of the lasting love of a partner, but also, metatextually, of her respect for a genre that regards Bon Iver as one of its defining acts. Still, “Exile” is peak Swift, a breakup duet stemming from a desire for the Hollywood ending she’s craved since the aughts (“Love Story,” “White Horse”). But Swift resolves to leave out the side door. She’ll create her own vision of love, one unmoored from the notions of fate that were imposed on her and that plagued her as a young adult, because even exile is a type of freedom.

Eric Mason

Eric Mason studied English at the University of California, Los Angeles, where literature and creative writing classes deepened his appreciation for lyrics as a form of poetry. He has written and edited for literary and academic journals, and when he’s not listening to as many new albums as possible, he enjoys visiting theme parks and rewatching Schitt’s Creek.

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