Music / Taylor Swift

Associated acts:

• Selena Gomez, Ed Sheeran, Lorde, Kanye West, John Mayer, Joe Jonas, Max Martin, Harry Styles, Hayley Williams (Paramore), Lana Del Rey, Jack Antonoff (fun. and Bleachers), Aaron Dessner (The National and Big Red Machine), Bon Iver, Haim, Joe Alwyn

Influenced by:

• The Chicks, Shania Twain, Sheryl Crow, Def Leppard, Simon & Garfunkel, Fall Out Boy, Stevie Nicks, Carly Simon, Dolly Parton, Britney Spears, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Bonnie Raitt

Influenced:

• Olivia Rodrigo, Ed Sheeran, Halsey, Phoebe Bridgers, Kelsea Ballerini, Kacey Musgraves, Troye Sivan, Christina Perri, Sabrina Carpenter, Rina Sawayama, Maisie Peters, Maya Hawke, The Vamps, Billie Eilish

"I'm not that complicated. My complications come out in my songs. All you have to do to be my friend is like me … and listen."

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American Singer-Songwriter from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. She has been a defining voice of the American pop music scene since her emergence in the late 2000s, and she was named Artist of the Decade at the 2019 American Music Awards.

Swift found herself interested in poetry and music from an early age, and won a nationwide poetry contest at age nine with a poem called "Monster in My Closet", learned to play guitar from a computer repairman at 10, sang the national anthem at the U.S. Open in 2001 at the age of 11, and was signed by Sony/ATV at age 14. Swift broke into the Top 40 in 2006 with her debut single "Tim McGraw" and subsequently achieved widespread critical and commercial success both in the world of country music and in mainstream pop, fully committing to the latter genre by the release of her fifth album.

Ten albums and six tours into her career, Swift has a claim to being one of (if not the) most successful and influential artists of the 21st century, with her diverse genre experimentation and deeply personal lyrics fostering a massive and devoted international following (and attracting intense tabloid fascination for her personal life). She has won fourteen Grammy Awards, is certified by Nielsen as the most commercially successful country artist ever, and is the most streamed female musician of all time. A full dissection of her discography is beyond the scope of this page and required individual pages for each of her albums.

Swift's early success almost singlehandedly made the independent Big Machine Records label and her early producer Nathan Chapman big names in the country music industry. In 2018, Swift publicly broke off from Big Machine to sign with Republic Records. After being unable to buy back her old masters from Big Machine, Swift set off on rerecording her first six albums, an ambitious project for individual artistic control that only further raised her commercial and critical profile.

In complement to her musical career, Swift has dabbled in acting and directing. Early in her career, she appeared in an episode of CSI as a murder victim, was the musical guest for five episodes of Saturday Night Live (including a season 35 episode where she was both host and musical guest, becoming the second-youngest host/musical guest to appear on the show^note Britney Spears was the first when she appeared on the show's 25th season), appeared As Herself in (and on the soundtrack of) Hannah Montana: The Movie, and was one of the many stars in the film Valentine's Day. Her first leading film role was as the voice of Audrey in the film adaptation of Dr. Seuss's The Lorax. She has since played Rosemary in the film adaptation of The Giver and Bombalurina in Cats. After receiving praise for her direction of several of her music videos, most notably the 10-minute short film for her song "All Too Well", it was announced in 2022 that she would write and direct an upcoming feature film.

After the huge success of the Eras Tour, she was declared a billionaire by Bloomberg in October 2023 with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion. In December of that year, she was named Time Magazine's 2023 Person of the Year , the first entertainer to receive the honour in her own right.

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Discography:

Studio Albums

• Taylor Swift (2006)
• The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (EP) (2007)
• Beautiful Eyes (EP) (2008)^Singles"I Heart ?", "Beautiful Eyes"
• Fearless (2008)
  • "You Belong with Me"
• Speak Now (2010)
  • "Mean"
• Red (2012)
  • "All Too Well"
• 1989 (2014)
• reputation (2017)
• Lover (2019)
• folklore (2020)
• evermore (2020)
• Midnights (2022)
• THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024)

(Taylor's Version) series

• Fearless (Taylor's Version) (2021)
• Red (Taylor's Version) (2021)
• Speak Now (Taylor's Version) (2023)
• 1989 (Taylor's Version) (2023)

Non-album singles

• "Two Is Better Than One" (vocal feature for Boys Like Girls) (2009)
• "American Girl" (Tom Petty cover) (2009)
• "Today Was A Fairytale" (from Valentine's Day) (2010)
• "Half of My Heart" (vocal feature for John Mayer) (2010)
• "Safe and Sound"* (with The Civil Wars, from The Hunger Games) (2012)
• "Eyes Open" (from The Hunger Games) (2012)
• "Ronan" (charity single) (2012)
• "Both of Us" (vocal feature for B.o.B (Rapper)) (2012)
• "Highway Don't Care" (vocal feature for Tim McGraw) (2013)
• "Sweeter Than Fiction"* (from One Chance) (2013)
• "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" (with Zayn for Fifty Shades Darker) (2016)
• "Babe" (vocal feature for Sugarland) (2018)
• "Christmas Tree Farm" (2019)
• "Beautiful Ghosts" (from Cats) (2019)
• "Only the Young" (from Miss Americana) (2020)
• "Gasoline" (vocal feature for Haim) (2021)
• "Renegade" (vocal feature for Big Red Machine) (2021)
• "The Joker and the Queen" (vocal feature for Ed Sheeran) (2022)
• "Carolina"* (from Where the Crawdads Sing) (2022)

Live albums

• Live From SoHo (2008)
• CMT Crossroads: Taylor Swift & Def Leppard (2009)
• Speak Now World Tour Live (2011)
• Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour (2018, concert movie)
• Live from Clear Channel Stripped 2008 (2020, most notably released by her old label without her permission)
• Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions (2020, documentary concert movie)

Headlining Tours

• Fearless Tour (2009–10)
• Speak Now World Tour (2011–12)
• The Red Tour (2013-2014)
• The 1989 World Tour (2015)
• Reputation Stadium Tour (2018)
• The Eras Tour (2023)

Filmography

• Hannah Montana: the Movie (2009) as Herself (cameo)
• Valentine's Day (2010) as Felicia Miller
• Take Two with Phineas and Ferb (2011): Herself
• The Lorax (2012) as Audrey (voice)
• The Giver (2014) as Rosemary
• Cats (2019) as Bombalurina
• Miss Americana (2020) as Herself (documentary)
• Amsterdam (2022) as Elizabeth Meekins

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Tropes relating only to specific albums or songs can be found on their respective pages.

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"It's a trope story, baby, just say yes.":

A-L

• Aborted Arc: During the reputation and Lover era, she often discussed her political activism, especially regarding LGBT issues, feminism, rape culture, and voting; this bled into some of her songs on the latter album and her documentary Miss Americana ("Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince", "Only the Young", "The Man", "You Need To Calm Down"). While some of those feminist themes continue to appear in her post-2020 songs (most blatantly in "the last great american dynasty", "mad woman", "marjorie", "Lavender Haze" and its music video, "Mastermind", "Would've, Could've, Should've"), they largely were reduced to subtext and metaphor, and she became notably less visible and vocal in political activism except for a speech against anti-LGBT legislation during her Eras Tour at the start of June 2023 (which is Pride Month). She even Lampshaded this in "Sweet Nothing":

  And the voices that implore, "You should be doing more"
  To you, I can admit that I'm just too soft for all of it

• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Fairly common in her early work.
  • Combined with a strange line-break, the bridge of "Fearless" is hard to decipher:
    Well, you stood there with me in the door-
    -way, my hands shake, I'm not usually this way...
  • "Teardrops On My Guitar" also counts:
    ''Drew talks to me
    I laugh 'cause it is just so funny^note Somewhat better in the uncensored version, which reads "so damn funny."
• Actor Allusion: Not for Taylor herself, but in her TV spot for #TaylorSwiftNow, Andy Samberg appears... and Taylor kicks him through a wall. On Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Samberg's character Jake is mentioned to be a Taylor Swift fanboy, was once detained at a concert of hers, and apparently isn't allowed within a hundred feet of her.
  Jake: But that was a misunderstanding. (dreamily) She's probably gonna write a song about me.
• Adam Westing: Playing caricatures of herself is one of her long-standing pastimes.
  • Done in the video for rapper T-Pain's parody song, "Thug Story", in which she pokes fun at her squeaky clean image.
  • Done in the song "Blank Space" and even more explicitly in the music video. Taylor's character is the media's perception of her: A girl who lures boys in, dates them for song writing material, gets jealous and clingy, goes Ax-Crazy, and as the current boy escapes, she has another one lined up.
  • The music video for "Look What You Made Me Do" features numerous callbacks to previous music videos and appearances, culminating in a lineup of Taylor Swifts caricaturing herself and trading barbs.
  • During a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live, she crashes Seth Rogen's monologue out of the blue, claiming that Seth was getting upset, and, "Whenever a man shows emotion... I appear." Her "Monologue Song" also saw her play up her tendency to write songs about her exes.
• Advertised Extra:
  • Taylor on John Mayer's "Half of My Heart". She is given a feature credit but is really a glorified backup singer.
  • Taylor herself is guilty of this, especially with female collaborators. Colbie Caillat on "Breathe", Maren Morris on "You All Over Me", and Lana Del Rey on "Snow On the Beach" (though she later acquiesed to fan pressure to release a "More Lana" version). The only male example of this trope in her discography is Chris Stapleton on "I Bet You Think About Me".
• Album Closure: Swift tends to end her albums with tracks that wrap up the themes discussed; "Begin Again" from Red and the title track from Evermore particularly stand out as songs clearly meant to give an ending to the project as a whole. However, Swift's increasing tendency to pile on bonus tracks and multiple versions of both her new and old albums has somewhat undermined this aspect of her story-crafting.
• The Alcoholic: From folklore onward, she repeatedly mentions the use of drinking to numb out insecurity, sadness, and self loathing. While she herself states that folklore and evermore are not autobiographical, Midnights, an explicitly autobiographical work, still retains this trait.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: A frequent motif in her songs, particularly her earlier work.
  • In "The Way I Loved You", though she expresses genuine affection for her new boyfriend (who is very much a Nice Guy) the narrator is still reminiscing passionately about the excitement of "screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain" with her bad-boy ex.
  • Deconstructed in "Dear John," where the narrator learns the hard way that there was a good reason people were trying to warn her off dating the guy.
    I look back in regret, how I ignored when they said
    "Run as fast as you can"
  • "Blank Space" has this line:
    I can make the bad guys good for a weekend
  • The trope is pretty much name-dropped in "Wildest Dreams":
    He's so tall, and handsome as hell
    He's so bad, but he does it so well
• Anti-Love Song: Her later albums have a lot of songs that set themselves up as love songs only to reveal themselves to be much more complicated.
  • Red:
    • "I Almost Do" open with the singer lovingly fantasize about what her lover is doing after a hard day of work... before revealed that they broke up and she was trying so hard to not call them because their relationship has left too many hurt on both side. The aforementioned opening lyrics is repeated at the end, implying that she still thinks about them.
    • "The Moment I Knew" opens with the singer fantasize about how happy she would be when her lover shows up as an event important to her. However, as the song goes on, she realizes that her lover won't show up and the title is referred to her knowing her lover won't show up and that they are not right for her.
    • "The Last Time" opens with the male singer going to the female singer house and show up as her door, with lyrics setting up as an intimate meeting only to reveal that the reason he is going there to beg her for forgiveness.
  • folklore:
    • "august" took this up to eleven, with every verses and chorus started by expressing the singer's longing for the guy... Only to subverted at the end of each verse by concluding that "You aren't mine to lose".
    • "illicit affairs" starts with the singer setting up all the way she and her love interest conducts an affair... right before revealing that all the lies and secrecy has eaten away and exhausted her for the rest of the song and ended the song stating that she can't end the relationship because she loves the man so much.
  • evermore: "ivy" opens with the narrator exclaiming and praising her lover... until the rest of the song revealed that she is very conflicting about this relationship affecting her current one with her husband (which mean either this is an affair or the lover she is exclaiming is dead and she still can't get over them) and compare their love to ivy that will destroy her.
    • "champagne problems" is sung from the point of view of a woman who only realises that she doesn't want to marry her boyfriend when he proposes to her in front of the rest of his family. The song is her feeling bad for her ex-boyfriend, but neither expressing any regret for having broken up with him, nor having any explanation that might make him feel better: "Sometimes you just don't know the answer /'Til someone's on their knees and asks you."
  • Midnights: "Maroon" opens with the first verse painting a very in love couple, but the beat and background music are very dark and downbeat, and it was revealed during the chorus that the couple has broken up and the rest of the song explored their breakdown and the messy legacy her ex-love has left upon her.
• Arc Number: Since 13 is her favorite number, she has set about to make it the Arc Number of her career, hiding it in liner notes, merchandise, and social media handles and scheduling performances and song releases for the 13ths of months. Three days before her 31st birthday, she stated that she always looked forward to turning 31, since it's 13 reversed. That same day, she announced the release of evermore, a "sister album" to its predecessor folklore... and the two albums have 31 tracks between them. The funeral scene in "Anti-Hero" video also has the deceased bequeath a mere 13 cents to her obnoxious heirs. When she won her 13th Grammy (Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights), she announced her 11th album, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT.
• Asshole Victim In "Anti-Hero" the narrator certainly describes the first part, then dreams that she's poisoned for the money her daughter-in-law thinks she'd getting in the will.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Taylor's been going for the bare midriff look to one degree or another since 1989's release. Especially prominent are the cheerleader and hip hop dancer outfits in the "Shake It Off" video..
• Beach Episode: All the photos taken for her cover story in the September 25, 2014 Rolling Stone were shot on a beach. See under Contractual Purity on the Trivia page.
• Be Yourself: She's on record saying, "If you're lucky enough to be different, don't ever change." Her accessibility is seen by many to be her biggest asset and huge reason for her success.
• Breakout Character: Several of Swift's non-singles have emerged with higher stream numbers and fan devotion than those pushed to radio, to the point that they are considered essential parts of her discography and were selected as a part of The Eras Tour's permanent setlist. Likely the biggest example is "All Too Well", which garnered enough critical attention in the years after the release of Red that it was centrally featured in the rollout of the "Taylor's Version" rerelease with a 10-minute version, short film music video, and full performance on Saturday Night Live. Other prominent examples include "Enchanted" (the only song from Speak Now to be played in The Eras Tour until "Long Live" was added to the permanent setlist after the release of the rerecord) and "Cruel Summer" (which would have been pushed to radio were it not for the COVID-19 pandemic and even charted on the Hot 100 four years after its release, convincing Swift to release it as a single).
• Break-Up Song: If you make a Drinking Game out of it, you will die. So much so that she has her own page.
• Censored for Comedy: Taylor and T-Pain's short parody song "Thug Story". The end of the song is censored for comedic effect, with Swift herself protesting "But I didn't even swear."
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action:
  • Inexplicably changes from running shoes to high heels in "Ours".
  • There are five different costume changes in the video for "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", which was shot in one take.
  • She made a costume change mid-song in a live performance of "I Knew You Were Trouble" at the 2012 European Music Awards.
  • This trend started at the 2008 CMA Awards. While performing "Love Story", she changed from a normal dress to a wedding dress on stage.
• Christmas Songs:
  • Sounds of the Season, an EP featuring country-pop renditions of Swift's favorite holiday songs.
  • "Christmas Tree Farm" is also one, inspired by Taylor's real-life childhood growing up on, well, a Christmas tree farm.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Invoked Trope in "Anti-Hero", a song about all of Swift's insecurities and the thoughts that keep her up at night. She wants to be a good person, but she's become convinced that her flaws will keep her from ever being one.
  I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror
  It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero
• Colon Cancer: More like Parentheses Cancer: Her rerecord versions have this in space, especially the "From the Vault" bonus tracks, with all of them has the "(From The Vault)" subtitle in addition to the standard "(Taylor's Version)". Especially egregious with tracks with other featured artist and the track "All Too Well (10 Minutes Version)(From The Vault)(Taylor's Version)".
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: In videos where Taylor competes with another girl for a guy's affections, her rival will usually be brunette.
• Consummate Professional: In her entire career, Swift has only cancelled or postponed three tour dates:
  • The 2014 The Red Tour date in Thailand, when a military coup prevented any foreigners from traveling in the country.
  • In November 2023, the second show of the Buenos Aires, Argentina stop of the Eras Tour had to be postponed two days due to a severe rainstorm flooding the stadium floor.
  • About a week later in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, the second show of the Eras Tour in that city was postponed due to weather-related safety concerns. During the previous night, a historic heat wave and poor stadium planning caused a fan to die of heatstroke while thousands of others fainted and had to be hospitalized during and after the performance. Conditions were bad enough that Taylor and her staff had to personally distribute water to the dehydrated crowd, and Taylor was also seen visibly struggling during her performance due to the heat.
• Continuity Cavalcade: As her career as extended to multiple albums and eras, Swift's concerts, album rollouts, and music videos (especially "Look What You Made Me Do") have become packed with references to her wider discography. Not even the most diehard Swiftie can catch them all on the first viewing.
• The Cover Changes the Gender:
  • When "Teardrops On My Guitar" was arranged as a duet for Crossroads, the verse sung by Joe Elliot had "Drew talks to me" changed to "You talk to me".
  • Swift's cover of "Drops of Jupiter" changes the subject of the song from a woman to a man.
  • On the other hand, Ryan Adams covered 1989—all of it—in a manner that flipped everything to a man's point of view.
• The Cover Changes the Meaning: Luna Halo's song "Untouchable" turns more towards the lust side of attraction. Taylor manages to turn it into a ballad about not being able to admit her love for someone while changing amazingly few of the lyrics on Fearless: Platinum Edition. Nevertheless, the changes were still enough for Luna Halo to give Taylor co-writing credit for her version.
• Cover Version: On her Speak Now tour, at every North American stop Swift would cover a couple well-known songs sung by local bands—everything from Eminem's "Lose Yourself" to the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" to Justin Bieber's "Baby" to Fall Out Boy's "Sugar, We're Goin Down" to Britney Spears "Lucky".
• Crossover: In 2008, Swift appeared on an episode of CMT Crossroads, backed by Def Leppard. Awesomeness ensued.
• Cute Kitten:
  • Swift has designed several greeting cards featuring kittens. She's on record as saying "I feel like kitten cards make everything better, pretty much."
  • Her Diet Coke commercial takes it up to eleven.
  • One appears in a scene the video for "ME!", given to Taylor by duet partner Brendon Urie. In real life, Taylor adopted the kitten, calling him Benjamin Button.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Watch the video for "You Belong With Me" or "Love Story" followed by the video for "I Knew You Were Trouble." You won't believe they're by the same artist.
  • "Speak Now" and "Red", if not exactly Darker and Edgier, are definitely more biting and cynical than her first two albums.
  • "Blank Space" shows Taylor at her most Ax-Crazy.
  • And then, there's "Look What You Made Me Do".
  • reputation as a whole explores more adult themes than her previous albums, with themes sex, lust, obsession and jealousy instead of romance. Her public image and musical style also took this turn with the dawn of that era, though she was back to sparkles and pastels shortly after (albeit still with more edge and more complex morality than in the pre-Reputation days).
  • folklore and evermore blew reputation out of the water in term of darkness. The albums have multiple songs with Precision F-Strike, heavy themes of death, abuse, loss, murder and sexism as well as a lack of definitive happy endings for the characters involved in her songs. Being written during the quarantine of the COVID-19 Pandemic undoubtedly influenced the albums.
  • Midnights musically went to a lighter, slower and more pop-like sound again, but lyrically, it may be Swift's darkest album to date, coupled with a return to the autobiographic type of writing, according to her. Themes include her own insecurities and flaws ("Anti-Hero", which Taylor labeled as one of her most personal songs), emotional abuse and power disparity in a relationship leading to lasting damage ("Would've, Could've, Should've"), her difficulties connecting with peers during childhood ("You're On Your Own, Kid"), the ubiquitous Swiftian theme of a broken relationship ("Maroon", the utter Tear Jerker that is "You're Losing Me"), loss of a loved one whom the narrator has hardly known ("Bigger Than The Whole Sky", hence the common fan interpretation that it may be about a miscarriage) and the very bleak, pessimistic "Dear Reader".
• Demoted to Extra: The Eras Tour is marketed as a celebration of all of her past music up to 2022, but the set list only include 1 song from Speak Now (later 2) and 0 from her self-titled album in the permanent rotation. Several other singles didn't make to the set list: "White Horse", "Fifteen", "Begin Again", "Red", "Everything Has Changed", "The Last Time", "Out Of the Woods", "New Romantics", "Me!", "Endgame", "New Year's Day", "Getaway Car", "no body, no crime"^note This song did replace tis the damn season in shows where HAIM was the opening act and they also performed the song with Swift in those shows., "coney island", "I Bet You Think About Me".
• Deadpan Snarker: Her songs frequently slip in some sarcastic comments.
  • "We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together" is pretty much entirely snark directed at her on-again-off-again partner.
  • Her tongue seems definitely in her cheek with "Shake It Off", certainly where the lyrics referencing criticism against her is concerned. More so in the song's music video.
  • "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" from reputation shows her snarky side as well, as she clearly refuses to take the person who wronged her seriously.
  • In interviews earlier in her career, she was mostly polite, courteous, cheerful and terribly well-behaved. As she's got older and more confident, she's become more this trope:
    Graham Norton: This promises... a new album?
    Taylor Swift: Yah.
    Graham Norton: Do we know when it's on the way?
    Taylor Swift: [gesturing to herself] We do. [gesturing to everyone else] We don't.
• Dead Star Walking: Her role in Amsterdam was set up in the story and the marketing to be substantial... only for her character to be assassinated around 2 scenes after being introduced.
• Digital Piracy Is Evil: Not just digital piracy, but even some legitimate forms of digital media. Taylor has taken stands against music being sold or streamed for free, going so far as to pull her entire catalog off of Spotify and iTunes (the latter being temporary; after Apple returned to a paid streaming model, she put her 1989). Her open letter to Apple Music explains the move as meant to help struggling young artists who can't afford to just give away their art. Taylor has been criticized for this position and justification in some circles, as most signed artists make little-to-no income off of their music, meaning that it is actually the label that is hurt most by free streaming (artists tend to make much more of their money off of merchandise and ticket sales).
• The Diss Track: Taylor frequently uses her songs as vehicles for criticism of those who've wronged her.
  • "Forever & Always" to Joe Jonas. Also, her Saturday Night Live "Monologue Song" to him and Kanye West.
  • "Better Than Revenge," which is about Camilla Belle. She goes through a period of talking about how Belle is haughty towards Taylor, apparently mocking her towards other people, and how she's been misinterpreting the concept of sophistication, likely in one of her best Take That! moments ever. She ends the paragraph with this line:
    But no amount of vintage dresses gives you dignity.
  • Word of God stated that "Mean" is directed towards a critic who she felt did not offer helpful constructive feedback and crossed a line when criticizing her (widely speculated to be Bob Lefsetz).
  • And then there was the one to Harry Styles at the Grammys.
  • "Bad Blood" is a song about an artist who tried to hurt Swift's career. Considering her falling-out with Katy Perry, and the fact that some of her tour dancers were hired out by Perry, most believe the song to be about her. (Another substantial rumor that plagues the song is that she's resentful of Perry's on-off relationship with John Mayer, who also dated Taylor and that she's bitter over someone she thought was a friend is dating her ex.)
  • And then there's the one to Kanye West at the Grammys.
  • "Look What You Made Me Do" jabs at a lot of things, including a few repeat targets.
  • "You Need To Calm Down" is this to several people: men who tell women to smile/how to behave, homophobes, and internet trolls. The homophobic picketers shown in the music video (and referenced in the lyrics) are jabs at the Westboro Baptist Church (known to picket Pride events and funerals of soldiers), and right-wing fundamentalists who have started picketing outside Taylor's concerts, which she confirmed in an interview with Vogue.
  • folklore has this gem in the lyric video for "peace". Especially notable since the album has all lowercase letters in styling and he isn't even the main subject of the song:
    Clowns to the West.
  • "mad woman", "it's time to go", "Vigilante Shit", and "Karma" are targeted towards her old record label boss, Scott Borchetta, and the man he sold her masters to, Scooter Braun. While there might be other songs inspired by this situations, these are the most explicit.
    • "it's time to go" also slides in a diss about a former female friend who betrayed her (widely guessed to be Karlie Kloss).
• Early-Bird Cameo: Before releasing any content of her own, she was featured on "God Bless the Children", a Massive Multiplayer Crossover charity single started by Nashville songwriter Wayne Warner dedicated to adoption awareness. More info here.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Taylor Swift is much closer to mainstream country music than the country-pop style Taylor adopted as early as her second album, or the complete abandonment of country as of 1989. Some of the change in sound may be due to her phasing out Liz Rose as a co-writer—Swift and Rose wrote most of the first album together, but only a couple tracks on the second and only one track on Red. (Swift wrote all of Speak Now herself.)
• Easter Egg: In the liner notes to her first five albums, the lyrics are all lowercase except for a few seemingly random capital letters. When read top to bottom, the capital letters spell out a message (for instance, "Can't tell me nothin'" is the hidden message in the lyrics to "Tim McGraw"), and "Hyannisport" is the hidden message in "Everything Has Changed".
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: Lampshaded in "Monologue Song":
  I like glitter and sparkly dresses but I'm not gonna talk about that in my monologue!
• Epic Rocking: The live version of "Better Than Revenge" ends with a lengthy instrumental outro that allows guitarist Grant Mickelson to show off his chops. Several other songs insert extended musical interludes as well in order to cover Taylor's costume changes. The "From the Vault" version of "All Too Well", clocking in at 10:13, is the longest song to ever reach #1 on the Billboard charts.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Taylor's naturally wavy hair is associated with her time as a country artist, specifically her first three albums. Beginning with Red, she straightened her hair to mark her transition from country to pop.
• Eye Take: She was known for doing this upon winning awards, combined with a Big "WHAT?!" and Jaw Drop.
• Fake Guest Star: "Renegade" billed her as a feature to Big Red Machine, but she sings the whole song and was credited as a songwriter, while the other vocalist, Justin Vernon, is relegated to the background and doesn't have any production or writing credit.
• Fangirl: Taylor is a Joni Mitchell fangirl. So much in fact, that "The Lucky One" may have been written about her. The title of Red (her 4th album) could have been inspired by Joni Mitchell's Blue (Joni Mitchell Album). The album cover for Red closely resembles that of Joni Mitchell's 13th album.
• Femme Fatale: She enjoys playing these from time to time.
  • Her character in "Blank Space" has elements of this, promising her new lover heaven only to turn on him (as the media had portrayed Swift as doing).
  • "I Did Something Bad" portrays a somewhat hammy version of this trope.
    I never trust a narcissist, but they love me
    So I play 'em like a violin
    And I make it look oh-so-easy
    'Cause for every lie I tell them, they tell me three
    This is how the world works
    Now all he thinks about is me
• The Four Chords of Pop: "Tim McGraw" uses a slightly modified Doo-Wop Progression (the V chord is suspended before sounding normally), and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" uses IV-I-V-vi.
• Genre-Prolific Creator: Swift has dabbled in pop country (her debut album, Fearless, Speak Now, Red), folk (folklore and evermore), and pop (the rest of her discography, with reputation even having some hip-hop influences). She notably has won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year for each of the different genres she has dabbled in (Fearless, 1989, folklore).
• Genre Shift: From country to more traditional pop to hip-hop infused Synth-Pop to folk. Red incorporates elements of Arena Rock, bubblegum, Britpop, and dubstep on various tracks. She completed the genre shift with the release of 1989, where there are no acoustic guitar sounds to be found at all, but lots of synthesizers and pop beats. By reputation she was dabbling in R&B and hip-hop, including rapping the verses on "...Ready For It." folklore became her first album to be classified by music services as 'alternative', with it and its sister album also both dabbling in more of a folk sound. Then, afterwards, she pivoted back to pop on Midnights, but of a significantly slower and less glitzy variety than in the 1989 era, with chill-out and dream pop elements, lo-fi production and a quieter, introspective theme.
  • With the "Taylor's Version" re-recordings and their respective "From The Vault" tracks (written at the time of the original album releases, but not included, thus being legitimately new songs), there is the occasional back-and-forth Genre Shift, resulting in a Call-Forward if seen in the context of the original album. A good example are the Vault tracks on 1989 (Taylor's Version): while the re-recordings of the previously released songs are as close to the sound of the originals as possible, down to the smallest details, the new songs, though originally written in 2014 just like the others, are much closer to her style on Midnights (which is a markedly different type of pop) in terms of melody and production.
• Girl Next Door: In both "You Belong With Me" and "Teardrops on my Guitar," Swift sings as the ignored best friend of the boy she's in love with.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Parodied in the video for T-Pain's parody song, "Thug Story", in which she gets bleeped despite not even swearing.
• Grand Romantic Gesture: Taylor confessed her crush on her best friend at her high school talent show through singing "I'd Lie".
  Taylor: It was really awkward and great.
• Grief Song:
  • Her charity single "Ronan," which was inspired by the blog of a mother whose four-year-old son died of cancer and includes quotes from the blog such as "I love you to the moon and back."
  • "Bigger Than The Whole Sky" is a song where the narrator has experienced what many fans have interpreted to be a pregnancy loss.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold:
  • In her early work, she tried to cultivate an image of youth and innocence.
  • In the video for "You Belong With Me", the innocence of the blonde protagonist is contrasted with the brunette vamp—both, naturally, played by Swift.
• Hollywood Board Games: She joked about her family getting her a new Scrabble board plus cat treats for Christmas. It's true that she enjoys the game but those gifts, without context, are what you would get for your grandmother.
• Hotter and Sexier:
  • Red and 1989 explore more overtly sexual themes, and Taylor also began to wear noticeably more revealing outfits on the 1989 World Tour.
  • Then compare "Look What You Made Me Do." Not only the song itself, but the video—especially when she dons a patent-leather suit that might as well be a dominatrix's costume. "...Ready For It" took this trope even further, with both the lyrics and her wearing a nude bodysuit in the video.
  • The Lover album finishes what reputation started, especially in "False God":
    We might just get away with it
    The altar is my hips
    Even if it's a false god
    We'd still worship this love
  • The reputation portion setlist of her The Eras Tours notably feature more revealing outfits than the other sets... with the exception of her performance for "Vigilante Shit", which has Taylor performing a lap dance as choreography.
• Hypocritical Humor: Swift's first appearance on Saturday Night Live had her singing a musical monologue where she talked about various things, ending each verse with "But I'm not gonna talk about X in my monologue."
• In-Joke: Remember those Easter Eggs in her liner notes? The hidden messages for "Stay Beautiful" and "Sparks Fly" are Shake N Bake and Portland, Oregon, respectively.
• Intercourse with You: Her music has gotten progressively Hotter and Sexier over time, but she's always had a few of these on each album.
  • "Sparks Fly" lives and breathes this trope, what with such lyrics as "You touch me once and it's really something / You find I'm even better than you imagined I would be" and the entirety of the bridge ("I'll run my fingers through your hair and watch the lights go wild / Just keep on keeping your eyes on me, it's just wrong enough to make it feel right").
  • "Treacherous" is known for having sexual implications.
  • There's also the "We are alone, just you and me ... " verse from "State of Grace".
  • "His hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room" from "Wildest Dreams".
  • "...Ready For It?" is one of her most blatantly sexual songs.
    In the middle of the night, in my dreams
    You should see the things we do, baby
  • "Dress," which is also absolutely gushing with implications of lesbian romance.
    Carve your name into by bedpost
    'Cause I don't want you like a best friend
    Only bought this dress so you could take it off
  • "So It Goes...": "You know I'm not a bad girl, but I / Do bad things with you", "Scratches down your back now".
  • "False God" strongly implies oral sex.
    The altar is my hips
    Even if it's a false god
    We'd still worship this love
• Jealous Romantic Witness:
  • "Teardrops on My Guitar" is about her crush who keeps discussing his girlfriend with her not knowing about her true feeling.
  • The Bon Iver-Taylor Swift duet "Exile" is about a former couple who encounter each other shortly after their breakup. The man (Iver) sees the woman (Swift) flirting with her new boyfriend and is very upset.
  • The "teenage love triangle" plot of folklore (2020) is kicked off when James comes to a school dance and sees Betty dancing with a guy, gets jealous, and leaves, having a summer fling with August instead. It's unclear whether Betty and James were actually dating or not, but either way, James comes to regret it because of how much it hurt Betty.
  • "Hits Different" is about how she getting sick to the point of throwing up when she imagine the song subject with someone else even after they had broken up.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Taylor's cats got their first lyrical shoutout in "Gorgeous" from reputation and are shown in the music video.
  Guess I'll just stumble on home to my cats
  Alone . . .
  Unless you wanna come along
• Ladykiller in Love: Taylor characterized her then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn as being this, having a reputation as an extremely desirable guy. Of course, this is deconstructed in many songs since it caused her feeling insecure and jealous when they first started their relationship.
• Large Ham: Taylor has a talent for appropriate hamminess.
  • In the latter half of the "Blank Space" music video, where she's playing a psycho who "takes it way too far".
  • Throughout the concert film of the Reputation Stadium Tour, especially during "I Did Something Bad":
    Now all he thinks a-bout is . . . Me! [bats eyelashes and fans herself]
• Love at First Sight: Happens in many of her songs.
  • In "Love Story," like its inspiration Romeo and Juliet, the lovers meet at a party and fall instantly.
  • "Enchanted"
    Walls of insincerity, shifting eyes and vacancy
    Vanished when I saw your face
    All I can say is, it was enchanting to meet you
• Love Makes You Crazy:
  • "My mother accused me of losing my mind" in "Dear John".
  • "Don’t Blame Me" uses this quite a bit.
    Don't blame me, love made me crazy
    If it doesn't, you ain't doin' it right
• Love Nostalgia Song: Has almost as many of these as breakup songs.
  • "Wildest Dreams," where the singer anticipates this:
    You'll see me in hindsight
    Tangled up with you all night
    Burning it down
    Someday when you leave me
    I bet these memories
    Follow you around
  • In "Holy Ground," the singer looks back at an old relationship that ended sadly but was good while it lasted.
    I guess we fell apart in the usual way
    And the story's got dust on every page
    But sometimes I wonder how you think about it now
    And I see your face in every crowd

M-Y

• Manchild: She has wrote and discussed several times about her immature tendencies:
  • In Miss Americana, she discussed this trope by discussing how celebrities became stuck in the age they became famous and she is wondering if that has happened to her.
  • "The Archer":
    I never grew up, it's getting so old
  • "Anti-Hero":
    I have this thing where I got older but just never wiser
• Mood Whiplash: She is somewhat infamous for this trope with her album sequencing:
  • Red has the track "All Too Well" as a slow building heartbreaking Break Up Song followed by the fast paced, vibrant celebratory song "22".
    • For the rerelease of the album, the bonus tracks also has the sequencing of the preppy Love Nostalgia Song "The Very First Night" to the slow building heartbreaking 10 minutes version of "All Too Well"
  • Lover has the infamous sequencing of "London Boy" - a preppy, Silly Love Song about her English boyfriend, to "Soon You'll Get Better" - a devastating song about her mother's battle with cancer and the sadness and denial Taylor went through imagining if her mother doesn't make it, to "False God" - an slow sensual Intercourse with You song.
  • Midnights averted this for the main album, but the 3 AM edition has the moody, heart-shattering Grief Song "Bigger Than The Whole Sky" followed by the preppy upbeat Silly Love Song "Paris".
  • The Eras Tour has the sequencing of the devastating and heartbreaking "Tolerate It" as the closing track to the Evermore segment to the opening song for the Hotter and Sexier reputation segments "...Ready for It?".
• Mundane Made Awesome: In her rap parody "Thug Story" she brags about how she bakes cookies at night, still lives with her parents, and knits sweaters, yo.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Swift was named after musician James Taylor.
• New Sound Album:
  • Speak Now has more of a pop-rock sound than Swift's earlier albums, relying on electric guitars and synth more than acoustic guitar and banjo, and Swift abandons the affected Southern twang she used on her first two albums. Speak Now Live is even more so—the version of "Better Than Revenge" included on it borders on Heavy Metal.
  • Red is even more pop, but also more rock then Speak Now.
  • 1989 is her first official pop album.
  • reputation is all over the map, from grinding techno to synth pop to R&B to dream pop.
  • folklore is a folksy alternative album with Bon Iver and the Dessner brothers from The National as her main collaborators.
• Non-Appearing Title: "Ronan", which was a charity single written for a boy who died of cancer. This is the only example in her repertoire.
• One-Word Title: All of her album titles except for Taylor Swift, Speak Now, and The Tortured Poets Department.
• Ordinary People's Music Video: "Shake It Off" shows a lot of ordinary dancers from various genres putting on a great show, with Swift herself failing hilariously to keep up with them.
• Over-the-Shoulder Carry: Courtesy of Harry Styles.
• Parents as People: She has frequently mentioned parents (either fictional or her actual ones) in her songs and portrays them as having flaws and problems of their own and not always help or resolve all of their children's problems.
  • Speak Now: "Ours" and "Dear John" mentioned her parents disapprove of her relationship with the subject but she still pursue them anyway (which lead to the extreme heartbreak in the second song). "Mine" has her characterize her father as a "careless man" and vow to not repeat her parents mistakes when she and her love interest are arguing, implied that the narrator's parents relationship fell apart.
  • Red (Taylor's Version): The 10-minute version of "All Too Well" has her father disapprove of her love interest but is helpless to stop both the relationship and her subsequent heartbreak.
  • Lover: "Soon You'll Get Better" is about her mom's battle with cancer and how terrified she is that her mom won't make it.
  • folklore: "Cardigan" states that the narrator's father left her when she was young. "seven" implies that her friend's father is "always mad".
• Passed-Over Inheritance: The tag for the music video for "Anti-Hero" shows a scene after Taylor's death when her will is read to her children and it turns out she left them with 13 cents.
• Platonic Life-Partners:
  • Her and Ed Sheeran have been openly associated with each other publicly since 2012, have collaborated on multiple songs with each other, and always speak highly of each other in interviews.
  • Her and Jack Antonoff have been openly collaborators and friends since 2014. She even attended Jack's wedding in 2023.
  • She seems to have the best relationship with Aaron Dessner out of all the members of The Nationals, collaborating most frequently and even described him as her "musical soulmate".
• Piss-Take Rap:
  • Her and T-Pain's parody "Thug Story".
  • Then "Shake It Off" has her actually rapping in a Kesha-like way, tongue firmly in cheek.
    Hey, hey, hey!
    Just think, while you've been getting down and out about the liars
    And the dirty, dirty cheats of the world
    You could've been getting down
    To this. sick. beat.
• Pop Punk: "Better Than Revenge" and "The Story of Us" wouldn't sound out of place in a Paramore album. Some of her aesthetic and themes on reputation also borrow from this genre—see the "Look What You Made Me Do" lyric video.
• Precision F-Strike: Taylor starts off with a squeaky clean Girl Next Door image in country music so her early work contain little if any swearing. Since the official switch to pop with 1989, she has been steadily but increasingly deploy swearing for emphasis on her songs.
  • Not on the actual track, but the music video for "Look What You Made Me Do" has Taylor calling herself a bitch. And then the other Taylor objects to it. (Yeah, it's that kinda video.) Not an f-strike, but still surprising when compared to her previous stuff.
  • Likewise, the line "If a man talks shit, then I owe him nothing" on "I Did Something Bad" surprised many fans.
  • 2020's folklore marks her first album to be given an Explicit tag, with "mad woman" and "betty" each containing uses of the f-word, "the 1" and "peace" each containing uses of "shit", and "the last great American dynasty" having a use of "bitch". evermore continues the tradition with "champagne problems" and "cowboy like me" has one single use of the f-word, "tis the damn season" and "ivy" has damn/goddamn while "gold rush", "tolerate it" and "happiness" has shit.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: Quite a few of Taylor's music videos have her in bare feet from the beginning ("Fifteen", "Safe & Sound", "Out of the Woods", and "cardigan" among others) or appearing without her shoes at some point ("Delicate", "Lover"), and she also tends to be barefoot in photoshoots; while she doesn't regularly take to the stage without shoes, it does happen, with her 2010 VMAs performance being a notable example. Additionally, the Miss Americana documentary has Taylor not wearing shoes indoors at certain points even if the people around her are.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • WE. ARE NEVER. EVER. EVER. GETTING BACK TOGETHER. Discussed on-air on UTV radio stations, and on Real Radio Scotland.
  • "You could've been getting down to THIS. SICK. BEAT."
  • "This is why we can't have nice. Things. Dar. Ling!"
• Quirky Curls: Had extremely curly ringlets hair at the beginning of her career when she most played up her "outsider" status. With the more success she gained, the straighter her hair became. She donned this trope again for her two 2020 quarantine albums, with shades of Loners Are Freaks as a lone storyteller wandering in the folklorian woods.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Swift's songwriting style is famously intimate, and especially in her early albums it could be expected that each song came from real experiences.
  • The lyrics of "Should've Said No" were based on words used by Taylor when she confronted an ex-boyfriend.
  • All of the songs on her album Speak Now are supposedly about her relationships, each relating to one person or event, except for "Speak Now" (based on a dream) and "Mine" (totally hypothetical scenario).
  • folklore and evermore finally averted this trope, with her stating that a majority of them are based on fiction. That hasn't stopped fans from speculating that several songs like "my tears ricochet", "it's time to go", and "mad woman" are about her masters situation with Big Machine.
  • Midnights is purportedly based on various experiences from throughout her life, now with the benefits of more hindsight and distance.
• Red Herring: After the release of 1989 (Taylor's Version), easter eggs were planted all over Swift's social media posts, outfits, interviews, etc. in her usual manner indicating that Reputation (Taylor's Version) would be the next release. Shortly before the 2024 Grammy Awards, her merch website "crashed" with Error 321, a communication error on a fax machine with a poor telephone line connection, referring to the line "I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now" from "Look What You Made Me Do," the lead single on "Reputation." It is then followed by the bolded hneriergrd, which unscrambles as "red herring" - lampshading the fact that the possible release of "Reputation (Taylor's Version)" was a red herring for the real announcement at the Grammys: that a brand new album, The Tortured Poets Department, would be out on April 19, 2024.
• Race Lift: In music videos for songs based on her relationship with her white British boyfriend Joe Alwyn, Swift has sometimes used actors with varying ethnicities to portray her love interest:
  • "Lover" music video has the love interest is portrayed by a Black man, Christian Owens.
  • The love interest for "willow" (and retroactively "cardigan") is portrayed by Korean American Taeok Lee.
  • The love interest for "Lavender Haze" is portrayed by Dominican American Laith Ashley.
• Rearrange the Song: Many of Swift's singles have been heavily remixed for airplay on stations less friendly to country music:
  • The pop mix of "Our Song", used so widely it appeared on one of the Now That's What I Call Music! albums, replaces fiddle with power chords in the intro and all but does away with the banjo and the silly style of the instrumental. There is a country version on Taylor Swift and a pop version on Fearless, it's really obvious.
  • The pop radio version of "Teardrops on My Guitar" completely replaces the country instrumental from the original with electric guitar, keyboards, and a drum machine.
  • "Love Story", in particular, drops the banjo and strings, pushes the bass and drums forward, distorts the vocals more so than the original, and adds a brief electric guitar solo.^note This is also how the song is performed in concert.
  • "You Belong With Me" replaces the banjo with electric guitar.
    • For the Red tour, Swift herself rearranged the song entirely as a doo-wop number.
  • The pop radio versions of "Mine" and "The Story Of Us" similarly drop the country-ish electric guitar from the verse sections in favor of some Power Pop chords.
  • In a variant, she started performing "Sparks Fly" in 2007 and it became a viral hit on YouTube. She released a re-written version of the song on Speak Now in 2010 (it was released as a single the next year) with electric guitar as the lead instrument as opposed to banjo, and slightly more suggestive lyrics.
  • Also seen on the deluxe version of Fearless, where "Forever And Always" appears both as an up-tempo pop song and as a slowed-down solo piano piece.
  • "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" went in the other direction—the pop version made the album, while the country version was a radio-only release.
• Record Producer:
  • Her first three albums, Taylor Swift, Fearless, and Speak Now, were entirely produced by Nathan Chapman.
  • Red continued to feature production from Chapman but also brought a number of other collaborators into the fold, with the notable addition of Top 40 pop hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback for what turned out to be the album's biggest singles. Other producers included Butch Walker, Jacknife Lee, Dan Huff, and Jeff Bhaskar.
  • 1989 featured production from Martin and Shellback on the majority of the tracks, with Chapman reduced to only one final song. The album also featured some of Swift's first work with future regular collaborator Jack Antonoff, plus scattered assistance from Ryan Tedder, Greg Kurstin, Ali Payami, and Imogen Heap. Most significantly, Swift herself also took production credit on several tracks..
  • reputation primarily featured production from Martin, Shellback, and Antonoff, with added assistance from Payami and Oscar Holter.
  • Lover and Midnights was produced primarily by Antonoff and Swift, along with Joel Little, Louis Bell, and Frank Dukes on the former and Sounwave on both.
  • Folklore and Evermore were produced entirely by Aaron Dessner, Antonoff, and Swift herself, with Joe Alwyn also adding production to some of the tracks on the former.
• Revenge Ballad: Taylor is notorious for writing songs-as-revenge.
  Taylor: I always try to tell the audience that I really do try to be a nice person . . . but if you break my heart, hurt my feelings, or are really mean to me, I'm going to write a song about you. [Laughs] This song is the perfect example . . .
  • "Picture to Burn" is about break-up and the revenge she wants to take.
  • "Better Than Revenge", where she admonishes the woman who stole her man, telling her she really should have known better because "There is nothing I do better than revenge". The bridge reveals that the song itself is the revenge. Since at least 2014, Swift has viewed the song as an Old Shame and won't perform it live anymore, realizing in the time since she wrote it at age 18 that no one can take someone from themselves if they don't want to leave.
    You might have him, but I always get the last word
  • Crossing over with Murder Ballad, "No Body No Crime" tells the story of how the narrator's friend was killed by her cheating husband, followed by the narrator taking revenge by killing him and framing his mistress for the crime.
• Romantic Rain: Many of her songs mention dancing, fighting, or kissing in the rain.
  • "Fearless":
    With you I'd dance in a storm
    In my best dress, fearless
  • "Sparks Fly":
    Drop everything now
    Meet me in the pouring rain
    Kiss me on the sidewalk
    Take away the pain
  • "The Way I Loved You" mentions "kissing in the rain" as a high point of the relationship.
  • "Midnight Rain" brutally subverts this trope, with the narrator comparing herself to rain that would "change at midnight" and that was the reason her romance with a nice and normal guy didn't work out.
• Running Gag: Check the end of her first three albums' liner notes:
  • Taylor Swift: "P.S. To all the boys who thought they would be cool and break my heart, guess what? Here are 14 songs written about you. HA."
  • Fearless: "And to the boys who inspired this album, you had fair warning."
  • Speak Now: "P.S. To all the boys who inspired this album, you should've known. :)"
  • This stopped with Red, which just read "THANK YOU'' under the inner CD holder.
• Secret-Keeper: Given that "You're So Vain" is also about a real person, it kind of fits that she's one of only two people in the world who knows for sure who Carly Simon's singing about.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • Taylor does this a lot as part of her performance. During one concert, she said, "I imagine it could be really hard to make a relationship last. I wouldn't know." And "Whenever a man shows emotion, I appear." on SNL.
  • During one verse in "22", you can clearly hear the voice of someone saying "Who's Taylor Swift anyway? Ew!"
  • Used more to highlight her ex's disrespect, but still played for laughs in "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together":
    And you would hide away and find your peace of mind
    With some indie record that's much cooler than mine
  • The video for "Shake It Off" has her surrounded by skilled dancers of all types and her just being... not.
  • At an award show, she happily nodded along to a host saying watch out for her, she'll break up with you and write a song about it.
  • "Blank Space" is one long, sarcastic Self-Deprecation song, based on the media's image of her as a psychotic maneater.
    Got a long list of ex-lovers
    They'll tell you I'm insane
  • All of the celebrities picked the names of the alter egos they played in the "Bad Blood" video themselves. Taylor's alias is "Catastrophe".
  • "Dear Reader" begins with her giving life advice, before immediately telling people not to listen to her because she's a flawed individual.
• Self-Titled Album: Go on, guess what her first album was called.
• Serial Escalation: The release of folklore was a surprise, since it came less than a year after its predecessor Lover. Her next album, evermore, came out less than six months later. (Clearly, Taylor got incredibly bored in quarantine.)
• Signature Style: Intricate, intimate, heavily detailed emotional songwriting. Recurring motifs include the guy's eyes, rain, and Tuesday night (even more specifically, 2am).
• Silly Love Songs: She's known for these in equal measure to her breakup songs. So much so that she got her own page.
• Single Girl Seeks Most Popular Guy: Definitely in her Fearless and Self-Titled Album eras. She has many songs singing about longing for popular football players.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: During her younger years, she is quite public about her dislike of Justin Bieber, her best friend Selena Gomez's then (now ex) boyfriend. This culminated in her calling him out as one of the people who sided with Scooter Braun and Kanye West in making fun of her during the #TaylorIsOverParty as one of the reason for her dislike of Scooter Braun who now owns her masters.
• Slave to PR:
  • Miss Americana has Taylor admits that she is a person whose living philosophy is to let other people perceived her as a nice person. She even outright stated that the #TaylorIsOverParty hurt so much because her reputation used to be "all she had".
  • "You're Losing Me" outright admitted that this is one of the reason her relationship fell apart:
    And I wouldn't marry me either
    A pathological people pleaser
    Who only wanted you to see her
• The Something Song: "The Monologue Song (La La La)".
• Spiders Are Scary: A spider got in her dress driving back from the "Love Story" video shoot. This scenario was then followed by four rapid-fire "Oh my God"s and someone killing the spider with a deluxe Swift CD.
• Stab the Picture: In the video for "Blank Space" Taylor paints a portrait of her new boyfriend then later destroys it with a knife when the relationship sours.
• The Storyteller: Almost all her songs take this form, even the ones that are ostensibly about her personal life. Especially true of the songs on folklore and evermore, many of which are clearly not about her at all.
• Strong Family Resemblance: To her maternal grandmother Marjorie Finlay. Played up in the "Wildest Dream" music video, where she donned a black wig and named herself Marjorie Finn.
• Subdued Section: Featured in several of her songs, particularly on Speak Now: "Sparks Fly", "Back To December", and "Haunted" all feature this. "Red" likewise utilizes this.
• Take That, Critics!:
  • "Mean" calls out those who criticize her singing ability. It was written to one critic, specifically, who gave her an unnecessarily cruel review for a performance at the Grammys.
  • "Shake It Off" goes one step beyond.
    I never miss a beat
    I'm lightning on my feet
    And that's what they don’t see
• Teen Idol: She was sixteen when her first single was released.
• There Are No Therapists: Admitted in Miss Americana that she never has been in therapy.
• 13 Is Unlucky: Inverted. Oh so inverted. Not only is 13 Swift's lucky number, to the point where she will actively seek out any possible instance up to and including the expiration date on milk cartons, she also considers the number 31 an acceptable substitute, because it's "13 backwards." Her birthday being on the 13th of December probably helps to explain a few things.
• Title Drop: There is a page where many are listed, because you can't really fit such a massive discography on this page.
• Title Track: Fearless, Speak Now, Red, Lover, Evermore and "The Tortured Poets Departament" all have one.
• Took a Level in Badass: Taylor took one between 1989 and reputation.
  But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
• Troperiffic:
  • "You Belong with Me" and the accompanying video, which has its own page.
  • "Mean"'s video also has its own entry here.
• Truck Driver's Gear Change:
  • Done in "Love Story" in an unusual fashion: she sings half of the chorus, goes up from C to D, then starts the chorus over again.
  • Shows up in "betty," folklore's Production Throwback to her earliest era. The final chorus shifts up a key to capture its more hopeful mood.
• True Companions: "Change" and "Long Live" imply this relationship between her and her original band, The Agency.
  Long live all the mountains we moved
  I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you
• Turn the Other Cheek:
  • "Innocent," where she chooses to forgive someone who had done her wrong, rather than hold them in contempt.
  • Subverted in "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things."
  And here's to you, 'cause forgiveness is a nice thing to do. [Beat, followed by uproarious laughter] I can't even say it with a straight face!
• Uncommon Time: "tolerate it" is in 10/8.
• Uptown Girl:
  • "I Bet You Think About Me" is about a woman who dated someone wealthier than her, with his resulting snobby attitude contributing to their breakup as he moves to date someone more "suitable".
  • In general, Swift's music from 2017 onward has a theme of her love interest not needing to give her materialistic thing to make her happy. This trend is definitely inspired by her career of being a global famous pop star blowing up post-1989, ensuring that she is in a higher income bracket than most potential romantic prospects.
• Valley Girl: She parodies this from time to time.
  • In We are Never Ever Getting Back Together she has this inflection in her voice.
    Like, ever.
  • Her "ex-man's new girlfriend" apparently speaks like this.
    She's like, "Oh my god"
• Villain Protagonist: In "Anti-hero" the narrator openly says she schemes and that she is the problem.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Ellen Degeneres, who used to give Swift an extremely hard time on all her appearances on her talk show early in Swift's career.
• Weight Woe: Ever since she came out from suffering from bulimia in her 2019 documentary "Miss Americana", Taylor has openly discussed her eating disorder in her music.
  • "Tied Together With A Smile" was written about her anorexic best friend back in high school.
  • The 10-minute version of "All Too Well" alludes that her anorexia worsened in the wake of a break up.
  • "Anti-Hero" music video has her weight being one of the reasons she feels insecure.
  • "You're On Your Own Kid" directly states that her anorexia was the result of her wanting to fit in.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: A recurring theme.
  • Her second EP is called Beautiful Eyes.
  • "Tim McGraw":
    He said the way my blue eyes shined
    Put those Georgia stars to shame that night
    I said, "That's a lie"
  • "I Know Places":
    In the dead of night, your eyes so green
  • "Delicate":
    Oh damn, never seen that color blue ...
    Sometimes when I look into your eyes
    I pretend you're mine all the damn time
  • "Gorgeous":
    Ocean-blue eyes
    Looking in mine
    I feel like I might
    Sink and drown and die
  • "Call It What You Want":
    Starry eyes sparkin' up my darkest nights
  • "gold rush":
    Gleaming, twinkling
    Eyes like sinking
    Ships on waters
    So inviting, I almost jump in
• A Wild Rapper Appears!: Her collab with rapper Kendrick Lamar on "Bad Blood".
• Wrong Genre Savvy: "If This was a Movie" is all about Swift's heartbreak over reality not living up to the expectations made by the movies.

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Meet me at midnight...

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