8 STORIES
2008 · 00S
A teenage country singer rewrites Shakespeare with a happy ending, accidentally inventing the template for modern pop crossover in the proce…
2014 · 10S
"Bad Blood" is not a breakup song at all. It is about a female friendship that curdled into professional sabotage, and it became famous most…
2014 · 10S
A masterclass in self-aware celebrity, "Blank Space" weaponized tabloid mythology by becoming the very monster the press had been drawing fo…
2014 · 10S
A horn-driven pop confection that doubled as Taylor Swift's public divorce papers from Nashville, "Shake It Off" is less a song about haters…
2014 · 10S
"Style" sounds like a sleek, late-night driving song about fashion and cool, but it is really about a relationship that can never quite end.…
2019 · 10S
It sounds like the most euphoric summer song Taylor Swift ever made, but it is really about the terror of loving someone in secret and the h…
2020 · 20S
"Cardigan" is not a cosy love song about a sweater at all. It is a grown woman looking back on the teenage boy who broke her heart, and admi…
2022 · 20S
The biggest pop song of 2022 is not a love song, a revenge song, or a victory lap — it is a woman with the largest audience on earth calmly …