T aylor Swift's new documentary Miss Americana has been released on Netflix, offering an insight into her life and career to date.

2019 marked the release of Swift's seventh album Lover, two years after Reputation, the album where she announced her own death and embraced the characterisations in the media of her as a villain – or a “snake”.

On Lover, she sheds that skin and appears transformed, embracing a sun-drenched pop sound that returns to familiar themes – old-school romance and smart hooks – that often work to her greatest strengths.

Swift has never made the same album twice. While she might revisit certain styles or subjects, each record is immediately recognisable – whether it’s the wide-eyed country of her self-titled debut or the slick, smart pop of 1989.

Here is a ranking of every one of Swift’s original album songs (not including covers or bonus tracks):

100) “Picture to Burn”

In an early incarnation of this song, Swift threatened to tell her ex’s friends that he’s gay. While that was quickly changed, the song itself is still one of her weakest due to muddy production that drowns out her vocals, and a vindictive tone that lacks the maturity and wit Swift would go on to show on later songs.

99) “Tell Me Why”

On this country-fied track from Fearless, Swift has grown tired of her lover’s games and she wants to know what the deal is.

98) “Hey Stephen”

Asides from some excellent humming, this is a nice enough song where Swift shouts out a cute boy all the girls are obsessed with.

98) “A Place in This World“

This frustratingly vague song about not really knowing what’s waiting for you out there in the big wide world is at least backed by sweetly plodding guitars and percussion.

97) “The Last Time”

Swift and Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody’s vocals just don’t work together. It’s likely they were attempting to emulate “Broken Strings” by James Morrison and Nelly Furtado – unfortunately it’s not really a patch on the 2008 hit.

96) “The Outside”

This would have been a great song to open the reality series Laguna Beach, had Hilary Duff’s song “Come Clean” not been picked. That said, it’s virtually unrecognisable from the Swift we know and love.

95) “Everything Has Changed” (ft Ed Sheeran)

Is it a surprise to learn Swift and Sheeran wrote this on a trampoline in her garden? Not really. Both do the “trip down memory lane” song very well, and their voices actually go quite nicely together.

94) “Tied Together with a Smile”

Swift sings to a loved one with low self-esteem: “Seems the only one who doesn’t see your beauty /Is the face in the mirror looking back at you.

The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Show all 40 1 /40 The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), The Velvet Underground It was Andy Warhol who wanted Lou Reed and John Cale to let his beautiful new friend Nico sing with their avant-garde rock band. Truthfully, though, Victor Frankenstein himself couldn’t have sewed together a creature out of more mismatched body parts than this album. It starts with a child’s glockenspiel and ends in deafening feedback, noise, and distortion. Side one track one, “Sunday Morning”, is a wistful ballad fit for a cool European chanteuse sung by a surly Brooklynite. “Venus in Furs” is a jangling, jagged-edge drone about a sex whipping not given lightly. “I’ll Be Your Mirror” is a love song. European Son is rock’n’roll turned sonic shockwave. That’s before you even get on to the song about buying and shooting heroin that David Bowie heard on a test pressing and called “the future of music”. Half a century on, all you have to do is put electricity through The Velvet Underground & Nico to realise that he was right. Chris Harvey The 40 best albums to listen to before you die I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967), Aretha Franklin When Jerry Wexler signed the daughter of a violent, philandering preacher to Atlantic records, he "took her to church, sat her down at the piano, and let her be herself". The Queen of Soul gave herself the same space. You can hear her listening to the band, biding her time before firing up her voice to demand R-E-S-P-E-C-T 50 years before the #MeToo movement. Helen Brown The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Master of Puppets (1986), Metallica Despite not featuring any singles, Metallica’s third album was the UK rock radio breakthrough they’d been looking for. In 1986, they released one of the best metal records of all time, which dealt with the potency and very nature of control, meshing beauty and raw human ugliness together on tracks like “Damage Inc” and “Orion”. This album is about storytelling – the medieval-influenced guitar picks on opener “Battery” should be enough to tell you that. Although that was really the only medieval imagery they conjured up – they ripped Dungeons & Dragons clichés out of the lyrics and replaced them with the apocalypse, with bassist Cliff Burton, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and singer/rhythm guitarist James Hetfield serving as the four horsemen. Roisin O’Connor The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Remain in Light (1980), Talking Heads “Facts are simple and facts are straight / Facts are lazy and facts are late…” sang David Byrne, submerging personal and planetary anxieties about fake news and conspicuous consumption in dense, layers and loops of Afrobeat-indebted funk. Propulsive polyrhythms drive against the lyrical pleas for us to stop and take stock. Same as it ever was. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Catch a Fire (Jamaican version) (1973), Bob Marley and the Wailers The album that carried reggae music to the four corners of the Earth and made Bob Marley an international superstar also set the political tone for many artists to follow. Marley sang of life “where the living is hardest” in “Concrete Jungle” and looked back to Jamaica’s ignoble slaving past – “No chains around my feet but I’m not free”. He packed the album with beautiful melodic numbers, such as “High Tide and Low Tide”, and rhythmic dance tracks like “Kinky Reggae”. Released outside of Jamaica by Island Records with guitar overdubs and ornamentation, the original Jamaican version is a stripped-down masterpiece. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Revolver (1966), The Beatles An unprecedented 220 hours of studio experimentation saw George Martin and The Beatles looping, speeding, slowing and spooling tapes backwards to create a terrifically trippy new sound. The mournful enigma of McCartney’s “For No One” and the psychedelia of Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “She Said, She Said” can still leave you standing hypnotised over the spinning vinyl, wondering if the music is coming out or being sucked back in. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Like a Prayer (1989), Madonna It may be the most “serious” album she’s ever made, yet Like a Prayer is still Madonna at her most accessible – pulling no punches in topics from religion to the dissolution of her marriage. In 1989, Madonna’s personal life was tabloid fodder: a tumultuous marriage to actor Sean Penn finally ended in divorce, and she was causing controversy with the “Like a Prayer” video and its burning crosses. On the gospel abandon of the title track, she takes the listener’s breath away with her sheer ambition. Where her past records had been reflections of the modern music that influenced her – Like a Prayer saw her pay homage to bands like Sly & the Family Stone, and Simon & Garfunkel. The album was also about an artist taking control over her own narrative, after releasing records that asked the audience – and the press – to like her. RO The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Led Zeppelin IV (1971), Led Zeppelin Millennials coming at this album can end up feeling like the guy who saw Hamlet and complained it was all quotations. Jimmy Page’s juggernaut riffs and Robert Plant’s hedonistic wails set the bench mark for all subsequent heavy, hedonistic rock. But it’s worth playing the whole thing to experience the full mystic, monolithic ritual of the thing. Stairway? Undeniable. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Best of the Shangri-Las (1996), The Shangri-Las Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no no, no one ever did teen heartbreak quite like the Shangri-Las. Long before the Spice Girls packaged attitude for popular consumption, songwriter Ellie Greenwich was having trouble with a group of teenagers who had grown up in a tough part of Queen’s – “with their gestures, and language, and chewing the gum and the stockings ripped up their legs”. But the Shangri-Las sang with an ardour that was so streetwise, passionate and raw that it still reaches across more than half a century without losing any of its power. "Leader of the Pack" (co-written by Greenwich) may be their best-known song, but they were never a novelty act. This compilation captures them at their early Sixties peak. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), David Bowie Flamboyance, excess, eccentricity – this is the breakthrough album that asserted Bowie as glam rock’s new icon, surpassing T Rex. He may have come to rue his Ziggy Stardust character, but with it, Bowie transcended artists seeking authenticity via more mundane means. It was his most ambitious album – musically and thematically – that, like Prince, saw him unite his greatest strengths from previous works and pull off one of the great rock and roll albums without losing his sense of humour, or the wish to continue entertaining his fans. “I’m out to bloody entertain, not just get up onstage and knock out a few songs,” he declared. “I’m the last person to pretend I’m a radio. I’d rather go out and be a colour television set.” RO The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Unknown Pleasures (1979), Joy Division In their brief career, ended by the suicide of 23-year-old singer Ian Curtis, Joy Division created two candidates for the best album by anyone ever. Closer may be a final flowering, but Unknown Pleasures is more tonally consistent, utterly unlike anything before or since. The mood is an all-pervading ink-black darkness, but there is a spiritual force coming out of the grooves that is so far beyond pop or rock, it feels almost Dostoevskyan. There are classic songs – "Disorder", "She’s Lost Control" and "New Dawn Fades" – and for those who’d swap every note Eric Clapton ever played for one of Peter Hook’s basslines, the sequence at 4:20 on "I Remember Nothing" is perhaps the single most thrilling moment in the entire Joy Division catalogue. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Hejira (1976), Joni Mitchell Though her 1971 album, Blue, is usually chosen for these kinds of lists, Mitchell surpassed its silvery, heartbroken folk five years later with a record that found her confidently questioning its culturally conditioned expectations of womanhood. Against an ambiguous, jazzy landscape, her deepening, difficult voice weighs romance and domesticity against the adventure of “strange pillows” and solitude. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Body Talk (2010), Robyn The answer to whether Robyn could follow up the brilliance of her self-titled 2005 album came in a burst of releases in 2010, the EPs Body Talk Pt 1, Pt 2 and Pt3, and this 15-track effort, essentially a compilation album. It includes different versions of some tracks, such as the non-acoustic version of “Hang With Me” (and we can argue all night about that one), but leaves well alone when it comes to the single greatest electronic dance track since “I Feel Love”, “Dancing On My Own”. Body Talk is simply jammed with great songs. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Off The Wall (1979), Michael Jackson “I will study and look back on the whole world of entertainment and perfect it,” wrote Jackson as he turned 21 and shook off his cute, controlled child-star imagery to release his jubilant, fourth solo album. Produced by Quincy Jones, the sophisticated disco funk nails the balance between tight, tendon-twanging grooves and liberated euphoria. Glitter ball magic. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Illmatic (1994), Nas How good can rap get? This good. There are albums where the myth can transcend the music – not on Illmatic, where Nas vaulted himself into the ranks of the greatest MCs in 1994, with an album that countless artists since have tried – and failed – to emulate. Enlisting the hottest producers around – Pete Rock, DJ Premier, Q-Tip, L.E.S and Large Professor – was a move that Complex blamed for “ruining hip hop”, while still praising Nas’s record, because it had a lasting impact on the use of multiple producers on rap albums. Nas used the sounds of the densely-populated New York streets he grew up on. You hear the rattle of the steel train that opens the record, along with the cassette tape hissing the verse from a teenage Nasty Nas on Main Source’s 1991 track “Live at the BBQ”: ‘When I was 12, I went to Hell for snuffing Jesus.” RO The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Trans-Europe Express (1977), Kraftwerk This is the album that changes everything. The synthesised sounds coming out of Kraftwerk’s Kling-Klang studios had already become pure and beautiful on 1975’s Radio-Activity, but on Trans-Europe Express, their sophistication subtly shifts all future possibilities. The familiar quality of human sweetness and melancholy in Ralf Hutter’s voice is subsumed into the machine as rhythms interlock and bloom in side two’s mini-symphony that begins with the title track. Released four months before Giorgio Moroder’s "I Feel Love", Trans-Europe Express influenced everything from hip-hop to techno. All electronic dance music starts here. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Kind of Blue (1959), Miles Davis With the sketches of melody only written down hours before recording, the world’s best-selling jazz record still feels spontaneous and unpredictable. Davis’s friend George Russell once explained that the secret of its tonal jazz was to use every note in a scale “without having to meet the deadline of a particular chord”. Kind of Blue is unrepeatably cool. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Astral Weeks (1968), Van Morrison “If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream…” To enter this musical cathedral, where folk, jazz and blue-eyed soul meet is always to feel a sense of awe. Recorded in just two eight-hour sessions, in which Morrison first played the songs to the assembled musicians then told them to do their own thing, Astral Weeks still feels as if it was made yesterday. Morrison’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics within the richness of the acoustic setting – double bass, classical guitar and flute – make this as emotionally affecting an album as any in rock and pop. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die West Side Story Soundtrack (1961) “Life is all right in America / If you're all white in America” yelp the immigrants in this passionate and political musical relocating of Romeo and Juliet to Fifites New York. Leonard Bernstein’s sophisticated score is a melting pot of pop, classical and Latin music; Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics sharp as a flick knife. An unanswered prayer for a united and forgiving USA. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Sign o' the Times (1987), Prince Sign o’ the Times is Prince’s magnum opus from a catalogue of masterworks – a double album spanning funk, rock, R&B and most essentially, soul. It is the greatest articulation of his alchemic experiments with musical fusion – the sum of several projects Prince was working on during his most creatively fruitful year. On Sign o’ the Times, the bass is king – Prince cemented his guitar god status on Purple Rain. There are tracks that drip with sex, and love songs like “Adore”, which remains one of the greatest of all time. Stitched together with the utmost care, as if he were writing a play with a beginning, a middle and an end, the album is a landmark in both pop and in art. RO The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Pet Sounds (1966), The Beach Boys Caught in the psychological undertow of family trauma and all those commercial surf songs, 23-year-old Brian Wilson had a panic attack and retreated to the studio to write this dreamlike series of songs whose structural tides washed them way beyond the preppy formulas of drugstore jukeboxes. Notes pinged from vibraphones and coke cans gleam in the strange, sad waves of bittersweet melody. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Ys (2006), Joanna Newsom Weave a circle round her thrice… Joanna Newsom is dismissed by some as kookily faux-naif, but her second album, before she trained out the childlike quality from her voice, may be the most enchanted record ever made. At times, she sounds other-worldly, sitting at her harp, singing to herself of sassafras and Sisyphus, but then a phrase will carry you off suddenly to the heart’s depths – “Still, my dear, I’d have walked you to the edge of the water”. Ys’s pleasures are not simple or immediate. Newsom’s unusual song structures, with their fragmented melodies, and strange and beautiful orchestral arrangements by 63-year-old Van Dyke Parks, take time to work their magic. But once you’re bewitched, Ys’s spell never wears off. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988), Public Enemy Public Enemy’s second album is hip-hop’s game-changing moment, where a new musical form that arrived fully born after years of development away from meddling outsiders found its radical voice. It Takes a Nation of Millions… is still one of the most powerful, provocative albums ever made, “Here is a land that never gave a damn / About a brother like me,” raps Chuck D on “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”. Producer Hank Shocklee creates a hard-edged sound from samples that pay homage to soul greats such as James Brown and Isaac Hayes, and Flavor Flav gives it an unmistakeable zest. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Pink Floyd It’s easy to knock these white, male, middle-class proggers, with their spaceship full of technology and their monolithic ambitions. But the walloping drums, operatic howls and “quiet desperation” of this concept album about the various forms of madness still resonates with the unbalanced, overwhelmed and alienated parts of us all. Play loud, alone and after dark. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), Lauryn Hill Lauryn Hill raised the game for an entire genre with this immense and groundbreaking work. Flipping between two tones – sharp and cold, and sensual and smoky – the former Fugees member stepped out from rap’s misogynist status quo and drew an audience outside of hip hop thanks to her melding of soul, reggae and R&B, and the recruitment of the likes of Mary J Blige and D’Angelo. Its sonic appeal has a lot to do with the lo-fi production and warm instrumentation, often comprised of a low thrumming bass, tight snares and doo-wop harmonies. But Hill’s reggae influences are what drive the album’s spirit: preaching love and peace but also speaking out against unrighteous oppression. Even today, it’s one of the most uplifting and inspiring records around. RO The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971), Serge Gainsbourg The great French singer-songwriter provocateur probably wouldn’t get too many takers today for a concept album about a tender love between his middle-aged self and a teenage girl he knocks off her bicycle in his Rolls-Royce. But, musically, this cult album is sublime, an extraordinary collision of funk bass, spoken-word lyrics and Jean-Claude Vannier’s heavenly string arrangements. “Ballade de Melody Nelson”, sung by Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, is one of his most sublimely gorgeous songs. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die In My Own Time (1971), Karen Dalton There’s nothing contrived about Karen Dalton’s ability to flip out the guts of familiar songs and give them a dry, cracked folk-blues twist. Expanding the emotional and narrative boundaries of songs like Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman is just what she did. Why has it taken the world so long to appreciate her? HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Let England Shake (2011), PJ Harvey “Goddamn Europeans, take me back to beautiful England.” PJ Harvey may have sounded like she was channelling Boris and Nige when she made this striking album in 2015, but few Brexiteers would want to take this journey with her. Let England Shake digs deep into the soil of the land, where buried plowshares lie waiting to be beaten into swords. Death is everywhere, sometimes in its most visceral form: “I’ve seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat,” she sings on “The Words That Maketh Murder”, “Arms and legs are in the trees.” Musically, though, it’s ravishing: Harvey employs autoharp, zither, rhodes piano, xylophone and trombone to create a futuristic folk sound that’s strikingly original yet could almost be from an earlier century. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Boy in da Corner (2003), Dizzee Rascal It’s staggering to listen back to this album and remember Dizzee was just 18-years-old when he released it. Rising through the UK garage scene as a member of east London’s Roll Deep crew, the MC born Dylan Mills allegedly honed his skills in production after being excluded from every one of his classes, apart from music. If you want any sense of how ahead of the game Dizzee was, just listen to the opening track “Sittin’ Here”. While 2018 has suffered a spate of half-hearted singles playing on the listener’s sense of nostalgia for simpler times, 15 years ago Dizzee longed for the innocence of childhood because of what he was seeing in the present day: teenage pregnancies, police brutality, his friends murdered on the streets or lost to a lifestyle of crime and cash. Boy in da Corner goes heavy on cold, uncomfortably disjointed beats, synths that emulate arcade games and police sirens, and Dizzee himself delivering bars in his trademark, high-pitched squawk. RO The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Hounds of Love (1985), Kate Bush Proof that a woman could satisfy her unique artistic vision and top the charts without kowtowing to industry expectations, Kate Bush’s self-produced masterpiece explored the extreme range of her oceanic emotions from the seclusion of a cutting-edge studio built in the garden of her 17th-century farmhouse. The human vulnerability of her voice and traditional instruments are given an electrical charge by her pioneering use of synthesisers. Thrilling and immersive. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Blue Lines (1991), Massive Attack A uniquely British take on hip hop and soul that continues to influence booming modern genres like grime and dubstep, the Bristol collective’s debut gave a cool new pulse to the nation’s grit and grey. You can smell ashtrays on greasy spoon tables in Tricky’s whisper and feel the rain on your face in Shara Nelson’s exhilarating improvisations. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Surfer Rosa (1987), Pixies It only takes 20 seconds of opening track Bone Machine to realise Pixies and producer Steve Albini have stripped down the sound of rock ’n’ roll and rebuilt it piece by piece. The angry smack of Led Zep drums, ripe bass, and sheet metal guitar straight off the Stooges’ Detroit production line are separated and recombined. Pixies’ sound is already complete before Black Francis embarks on one of his elusive pop cult narratives (“your bone’s got a little machine”). The tension between the savagery of his vocals and Kim Deal’s softer melodic tone won’t reach its perfect balance until their next album but their debut, Surfer Rosa is gigantic, and deserving of big, big love. Its “loud, quiet, loud” tectonics would prove so influential that Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain would later say he “was basically trying to rip off the Pixies”. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Talking Timbuktu (1994), Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder If you ever doubt the possibility of relaxed and respectful conversation across the world’s cultural divisions, then give yourself an hour with this astonishing collaboration between Mali’s Ali Farka Toure (who wrote all but one of the tracks) and California’s Ry Cooder (whose slide guitar travels through them like a pilgrim). Desert meets Delta Blues. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Great Gospel Men (1993), Various artists Compared to the blues, the incalculable influence of gospel music on pop, soul and rock ’n’ roll has been underplayed. It can be found in every song on this brilliant 27-track compilation. If you can’t hear James Brown in the foot-stomping opener “Move on Up a Little Higher” by Brother Joe May, you’re not listening hard enough. The road to Motown from “Lord, Lord, Lord” by Professor Alex Bradford is narrow indeed, but you could still take a side-turning and follow his ecstatic whoops straight to Little Richard, who borrowed them, and on to the Beatles who copied them from him. The swooping chord changes in James Cleveland’s “My Soul Looks Back” are magnificent. All the irreplaceable soul voices, from Aretha Franklin to Bobby Womack, were steeped in gospel. This is a great place to hear where they came from. Companion album The Great Gospel Women is a marvel, too. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Hopelessness (2016), Anonhi “A lot of the music scene is just a wanking, self-congratulatory boys club,” said this angel-voiced, transgender artist in 2012. Four years later, the seismic drums and radical ecofeminist agenda of Hopelessness shook that club’s crumbling foundations to dust. The horrors of drone warfare, paedophilia and global warming are held up to the bright lights in disconcertingly beautiful rage. HB The 40 best albums to listen to before you die In Utero (1993), Nirvana Kurt Cobain had one goal with In Utero: to pull Nirvana away from what he dubbed the “candy-ass” sound on Nevermind – the album that had turned them into one of the biggest rock bands on the planet – and take them back to punk-rock. He asked Pixies’ producer Steve Albini to oversee production. It didn’t exactly eschew commercial success upon release (it went on to sell 15m copies worldwide), but the heaviness the band felt as they recorded it bears down on the listener from the opening track. Disheartened by the media obsession with his personal life and the fans clamouring for the same old shit, In Utero is pure, undiluted rage. “GO AWAYYYYYYYYYYY” he screams on “Scentless Apprentice”, capturing the essence of Patrick Suskind’s novel Perfume: Story of a Murderer and using it as a metaphor for his disgust at the music industry, and the press. RO The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Curtis (1971), Curtis Mayfield Curtis Mayfield had been spinning golden soul music from doo-wop roots with The Impressions for more than a decade before releasing his first solo album, which contains some of his greatest songs. While some point to the 1972 Blaxploitation soundtrack Superfly as the definitive Mayfield album, Curtis is deeper and more joyous, its complex arrangements masterly. Mayfield’s sweet falsetto sings of Nixon’s bland reassurances over the fuzz-bass of “(Don’t Worry) If There Is a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go”; doleful horns give the politically conscious “We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue” a profound emotional undertow; “Move On Up” is simply one of the most exhilarating songs in pop. To spend time with Curtis is to be in the presence of a beautiful soul. CH The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Rumours (1977), Fleetwood Mac Before they went their own way, Fleetwood Mac decided to tell a story that would be the quintessential marker for American rock culture in the Seventies. As Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks tossed the charred remains of their relationship at one another on “Dreams” and “Go Your Own Way”, the rest of the band conjured up the warm West Coast harmonies, the laid back California vibes of the rhythm section and the clear highs on “Gold Dust Woman”, in such a way that Rumours would become the definitive sound of the era. At the time of its release, it was the fastest-selling LP of all time; its success turned Fleetwood Mac into a cultural phenomenon. RO The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Are You Experienced? (1967), Jimi Hendrix A virtual unknown to rock fans just a year before – Hendrix used Are You Experienced? to assert himself as a guitar genius who could combine pop, blues, rock, R&B, funk and psychedelia in a way no other artist had before. That’s even without the essential contributions of drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, who handed Are You Experienced? the rhythmic bridge between jazz and rock. Few album openers are as exquisite as “Purple Haze”. Few tracks are as gratifying, as sexy, as the strut on “Foxy Lady”. And few songs come close to the existential bliss caused by “The Wind Cries Mary”. Hendrix’s attack on the guitar contrasted against the more polished virtuosos in rock at the time – yet it is his raw ferocity that we find ourselves coming back to. Few debuts have changed the course of rock music as Hendrix did with his. RO The 40 best albums to listen to before you die We Are Family (1979), Sister Sledge Disco’s crowning glory is this album that Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards made with Kathy Sledge and her sisters Debbie, Joni and Kim. Nile and ’Nard were at the peak of their powers, classic songs were pouring out of them – We Are Family was released in the same year as the epochal “Good Times” by Chic – and this album has four of them, “Lost in Music”, “He’s the Greatest Dancer”, “Thinking of You” and the title track itself. Sister Sledge gave Rodgers a chance to work with warmer, gutsier vocals than the cool voices he used to give Chic records such laid-back style and the result is a floor-filling dance party, punctuated by mellow ballads. CH

93) “Long Live”

Swift does nostalgia incredibly well, but this track from Speak Now comes off a little too cheesy – it makes a very big deal out of what is essentially a high school graduation.

92) “King of My Heart”

Of all the “late at night”, breathy love songs on Reputation, this is the least effective – although the juddery beat and Swift’s vocodered voice on the chorus have a certain je ne sais quoi.

91) “Bad Blood”

Taylor Swift unveils her new music video for Bad Blood

1989 was conspicuous upon release for its lack of “revenge” songs – previously a popular feature on Swift’s earlier albums. But “Bad Blood”, rumoured to be about the now-quashed feud with fellow pop star Katy Perry, is the only one it needs; it has Swift chanting a “nyah nyah, nyah nyah nyah” style chorus and delivering verses that drip with real venom.

90) “Don't Blame Me”

The instrumentation is big and brash with hints of gospel, recalling Hozier’s “Take Me To Church” or Rag’n’Bone Man. It doesn’t stack up to album-mate “I Did Something Bad”, though.

89) “Breathe” (ft Colbie Caillat)

A sweet duet where Caillat’s low murmur lifts Swift’s youthful vocals, about the pain of having to watch someone leave your life and wondering how you’ll manage without them.

88) “Better than Revenge”

Swift learnt pretty quickly after this song that you should never punch down, even if someone has run off with your boyfriend. The lyric “she’s not a saint and she’s not who you think, she’s an actress (woah)/ She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress” makes you wince now. Swift has come up with far classier insults since.

87) “Stay Beautiful”

Listening back to these early songs is gratifying, if anything, because it shows how far Swift has come as a singer. She used to say she really only sang to deliver her art as a songwriter – hearing how often she veers off-key on this relaxed love song only makes it more endearing.

86) "It's Nice to Have a Friend"

Another of Swift’s songs that appears to have been influenced by this year’s Jonas Brothers album Happiness Begins, this time for the tin drums, which add a distinctly Caribbean vibe.

85) “Haunted”

This is a dramatic song, even for Swift, with its sweeping violins and thudding percussion – maybe she wrote it after bingeing on the Twilight saga.

84) “Speak Now”

Swift indulges in a small fantasy about interrupting a wedding to tell the groom he’s making a mistake. Goodness! There’s a gorgeous melody on the chorus of this one.

83) “Teardrops on My Guitar”

Swift absolutely nailed every one of her early songs about being a teenage girl mooning after a boy in love with someone else. “Teardrops on My Guitar” is the earliest example of that, and still one of the best.

82) “You're Not Sorry”

Fearless was all about amping up the drama, but it also showed Swift progressing as a singer after early criticism of her rather fragile vocals. On this sombre ballad, accompanied by a cello and piano, she shuts out an ex who betrayed her trust.

81) “The Best Day”

Swift’s gentle tribute to her mother on Fearless is sweet for its wide-eyed innocence, as she recounts the small things her mother did to brighten her day over soft acoustic guitar strumming.

7 best fashion moments from Taylor Swift 'Lover' music video Show all 7 1 /7 7 best fashion moments from Taylor Swift 'Lover' music video 7 best fashion moments from Taylor Swift 'Lover' music video For her opening look, Swift is seen wearing a bomber jacket from her clothing collaboration with British fashion designer Stella McCartney. The ivory-coloured jacket features a colourful heart print with wings and a "Stella x Taylor Swift" logo on the back. Swift pairs the jacket with sequin trousers and heart-shaped earrings. She also has the bottom of her hair dip-dyed bright pink. Taylor Swift/YouTube 7 best fashion moments from Taylor Swift 'Lover' music video In the next clip, Swift is shown playing the drums while her love interest hangs a picture of her beloved cat on the wall. Swift matches her outfit to the green colour scheme of the room, opting for a silky lime-hued shirt tucked into a pair of checked, high-waisted shorts. Again, the singer has dyed the ends of her hair to match the colourful scene. Taylor Swift/YouTube 7 best fashion moments from Taylor Swift 'Lover' music video In a topsy-turvy room that sees Swift and her love interest playing board games on the ceiling, the singer opts for a Fifties-inspired look consisting of a yellow knitted top, matching flat pumps and white shorts. Taylor Swift/YouTube 7 best fashion moments from Taylor Swift 'Lover' music video As she plays the guitar in a maroon-coloured living room during a New Year's Eve party, Swift stands out from the crowd in a canary yellow dress that features a ruffled hem. The singer accessorises the look with drop earrings and a retro-inspired headband. Taylor Swift/YouTube 7 best fashion moments from Taylor Swift 'Lover' music video Butterflies have been an ongoing theme throughout the Lover album cycle, with Swift featuring them in both the "ME!" and "You Need to Calm Down" music videos. For "Lover", the star incorporated the symbol with a patterned playsuit. She finishes the look with a pink hairband emblazoned with the word "Amour", which translates from French to mean "love" in English. Taylor Swift/YouTube 7 best fashion moments from Taylor Swift 'Lover' music video As she plays the violin in a cobalt blue-coloured dining room, Swift can be seen wearing a Chanel-inspired boucle shift dress. The singer finishes the look with cream block heel shoes and a heart-shaped hair clip. Taylor Swift/YouTube 7 best fashion moments from Taylor Swift 'Lover' music video Sitting in the attic of the colourful doll house, Swift wears a formal white shirt that features a red floral motif. The top is tucked into black leather shorts that are secured with a red belt. She pulls the ensemble together with a swipe of red lipstick. Taylor Swift/YouTube

80) “Cold as You”.

As with several of the songs on Swift’s debut, her vocals here can be a little pitchy, but on this occasion, it serves the song well as evidence of raw emotion.

79) “Never Grow Up”

While this song about childhood innocence would have fitted better on Swift’s debut, the tender acoustic picking and her husky delivery against a male backing vocal makes for a soothing listen.

78) “I Almost Do”

Swift wonders what her ex is up to on this slow-jam from Red, returning to one of her favourite themes: it’s easy to leave someone but harder to stay away.

77) “ME!”

Taylor Swift and Brendon Urie perform at the Billboard Music Awards (Getty)

I have a soft spot for this sugary sweet pop song featuring Panic! At the Disco frontman Brendon Urie. After Reputation, it was a joy to see Swift go back to being goofy again – even if she did eventually remove the (admittedly teeth-clenching) “hey kids, spelling is FUN!” line.

76) “Girl at Home”

Few songs ask the listener to consider what it’s like to be put in the position of “the other woman”. Swift can sound pious at times, but it’s a sweetly sincere song about infidelity.

75) “Innocent”

Remember when Kanye West ruined what was, at the time, the biggest moment of Swift’s career? This was her song of forgiveness. But, as she would go onto note after their feud flared back up, “I bury hatchets but I keep maps of where I put them”.

74) “The Way I Loved You”

As was the case in Katy Perry’s “Thinking of You”, Swift feels guilty because her new boyfriend is nice enough – but she misses the drama and passion of her previous relationship.

73) “Forever & Always”

It’s a surprise Swift doesn’t have a perpetual cold, for all that standing in the rain she does. “Oh, and it rains in your bedroom/ Everything is wrong/ It rains when you’re here and it rains when you’re gone.”

72) “Mary's Song (Oh My My My)”

One of Swift’s fond wanders down memory lane; she pulls off the “wiser than her years” tone very well.

71) “Change”

Powerhouse rock riff aside, Swift sounds uncomfortable at this pitch and tempo, and what should be a euphoric build falls kind of flat.

70) “Stay Stay Stay”

A chirpy pop track that borders on sickly, thanks to its twee ukulele strumming and Swift’s remaining country twang on the vocals.

69) “22”

There’s nothing particularly significant about turning 22, but Swift convinces you there is. She gives a big shrug to anyone who deems her “not cool enough” and embraces her inner-dork to sing about midnight snacks and being ridiculous with your friends.

68) “Mine”

Taylor Swift performs during the TIME 100 Gala dinner on 23 April, 2019 in New York City. ((Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for TIME))

Two people from different sides of the tracks fall in love on this “love conquers all” number, which features one of Swift’s best lyrics: “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter.”

67) “Fearless”

The title track from Swift’s second studio album was produced by Swift and Nathan Chapman, and is about what she viewed at the time as the perfect first date. “Fearless doesn’t mean you’re completely unafraid and it doesn’t mean that you’re bulletproof,” she explained upon the song’s release. “It means that you have a lot of fears, but you jump anyway.”

66) “This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things”

Swift is a big fan of musicals, and the violin-plucking and “it’s a hard-knock life”-esque chorus on this buzzy Reputation track is evidence enough of that. The best moment is the cackle after “forgiveness is a nice thing to do” (“I can’t even say it with a straight face!”).

65) “Last Kiss”

A really stunning, fragile ballad that deals in sparse instrumentation and homes in on Swift’s stripped-back vocals, which detail the last moments of a broken relationship.

64) “Cruel Summer”

Taylor Swift on the cover of her new album, ‘Lover’

Co-written with Jack Antonoff and Annie Clark (St Vincent), “Cruel Summer” is a bolshy synth-pop track with distorted vocals – arguably there are stronger tracks on Lover Swift could have opened with, but it’s a good introduction to the overall pop sound she offers on the record.

63) “Enchanted”

“Please don’t be in love with someone else/ Please have somebody waiting on you,” Swift pleads on this five-minute 52-second epic about love at first sight. She starts off accompanied by a male vocalist, but builds to the song's climax – a duet with herself.

62) “I Wish You Would”

It’s not exactly filler, but “I Wish You Would” was possibly the only song on 1989 that wouldn’t be notable in its absence. Partly because it uses a similar riff to the superior “Out of the Woods”, and also because of the opacity of the lyrics in comparison to the sharp lines she delivers elsewhere.

61) “State of Grace”

This stadium-sized rock track opens with some U2-style power guitar and Swift matching Bono’s yearning calls from “With or Without You”.

60) “I Forgot That You Existed”

The opening track on Swift’s seventh album is a bouncy pop number of sharp piano notes and a thrumming bass, where she shrugs off an old grudge and moves on with her life.

59) “Starlight”

A noted F Scott Fitzgerald fan, Swift paints a picture of a Gatsby-esque party in the “summer of ’45” where she and her lover sneak into a glamorous yacht party.

58) “How You Get the Girl”

Swift takes a step back from her usual first-person narratives on the verses for this song encouraging a boy to tell a girl how he really feels in order to win her back. It’s a throwback to the cinematic romanticism Swift dealt in on her earliest albums – perhaps not as convincing, but just as catchy.

57) “The Archer”

Lover is a pure pop album, and “The Archer” is drenched in Eighties synths that hum around Swift’s ethereal vocals. It feels more like a scene-setter than a song of its own. Indeed, it was followed by the release of the title track “Lover” just before the full album dropped, which better conveys the love Swift feels in her current relationship.

56) “Should've Said No”

Where other songs on her self-titled debut were all dewy-eyed romance, Swift sounds really, really mad on this track about an ex who cheated on her: “You should’ve said no, baby and you might still have me.”

55) “...Ready for It?”

The artwork for Taylor Swift's new album has been unveiled by the artist on her Instagram page

Swift flips her favoured romantic theme on its head for the opening track of Reputation, emulating a more (unapologetically) lustful tone than anything from the days where her narrator leaned wistfully out of castle windows, waiting for a prince to appear. Instead, she is the instigator – “let the games begin,” she orders – full of a supreme kind of confidence that’s unlike anything heard on her previous albums.

54) “Begin Again”

Swift sounds blissfully happy on this track from Red, where she sings about learning to trust someone again and finding new love. All over the kind of tender guitar-picking that her idol James Taylor, whom she mentions in the lyrics, would approve of.

53) “White Horse”

While not as effective as “Love Story”, Swift’s twist on a classic scene from countless romances is moving for the way she chastises herself for believing in fairytales. “This ain’t Hollywood,” she sings. “This is a small town/ I was a dreamer before you went and let me down.”

52) “The Story of Us”

John Mayer is now the (likely reluctant) subject of songs about awkward post-breakup encounters by not one, but two major pop stars. Swift reportedly wrote this song after being forced to sit near him at the CMT awards: “We’re sitting six seats away from each other and just fighting this silent war of ‘I don’t care that you’re here,’” she recalled.

Swift’s former sparring partner and now-friend Perry, who dated Mayer after he and Swift split, has since released “Small Talk”, which points out how strange it is that he would be awkward after they were previously so intimate.

51) “You Belong with Me”

Swift was still on the precipice of a full-blown pop career when she released this song about a high school nerd comparing herself to her best friend/crush’s girlfriend: “She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts/ She’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers.”

50) “Mean”

Swift’s biggest country-sounding song gets a bad rap by some critics because it’s believed to be a response to a journalist who wrote a scathing review of her 2010 Grammys performance with Stevie Nicks – interpreting it as a sign she couldn’t take criticism. But Swift, who has dealt with being belittled or underestimated her entire professional career, turns “Mean” into an anti-bullying anthem about pursuing your dreams, regardless of the haters.

49) “Welcome to New York”

The first track on 1989 gets an unfair rap from most critics, who felt it lacked substance compared to Swift’s previous album openers. But really it’s a blast of fresh air that captures Swift’s own excitement as she moved to the city; the track is propelled by a sharp electronic beat that darts along and has the listener thinking... maybe my dreams could come true here, too.

48) “Treacherous”

This slow-burning acoustic number has Swift revelling in a secret, perhaps forbidden romance: “Put your lips close to mine/ As long as they don’t touch.”

47) “End Game” (featuring Ed Sheeran and Future)

Definitely the most divisive Reputation track, but Swift impressively holds her own with Future while her loyal pal Sheeran tries to keep up. Bonus points for filming the video in my favourite Kentish Town pub.

46) “Death By a Thousand Cuts”

It’s not a bad song, but it’s one of the least memorable on an album (Lover) that could have done with a trim.

45) “Sad Beautiful Tragic”

Swift is graceful in her heartbreak here, as she pictures a former lover waking up in a different city, haunted by the memory of her: “Kiss me, try to fix it, could you just try to listen?/ Hang up, give up and for the life of us we can’t get back.”

44) "Daylight"

Continuing Swift’s tradition of ending albums on a positive, albeit reflective note, “Daylight” is yet another fruitful Swift/Antonoff collaboration that draws on their enigmatic track “Getaway Car”. Only this time, Swift doesn’t want to run away, she wants to stay and revel in the moment.

43) “The Lucky One”

It’s fascinating to listen back to Swift, who by the time Red was released was a certified pop star, singing about an artist who grows tired of the spotlight. It’s believed to be about English pop singer Kim Wilde, given how it references the main hook melody from “Four Letter Word” and talks about how the artist “chose the rose garden over Madison Square” (Wilde branched into a landscape gardening career).

42) “I Knew You Were Trouble”

Widely believed to be about former One Direction star Harry Styles (the music video featured a lookalike with matching tattoos), “I Knew You Were Trouble” is an example of Swift’s very brief flirtation with dubstep. It’s great because the chaotic structure of the song mimics Swift’s own sense of chaos in the lyrics. The massive belt she does at the song's climax seems like a defining moment, which proved all the hard work she’d put into vocal training was 100 per cent worth it.

41) “Sparks Fly”

Taylor Swift attends the 2019 Billboard Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on 1 May, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Getty)

Taylor loves a good “in the rain” scene and “Sparks Fly” – a thundering rock-pop song – features the best one: “Drop everything now! Meet me in the pouring rain/ Kiss me on the sidewalk, take away the pain.”

40) “Holy Ground”

This is one of Swift’s best songs that glance back on a past relationship – here she sings about it as though it were sacred, despite the messy parts, and even throws in some croons that sound a lot like “hallelujah” for good measure.

39) “Dancing with Our Hands Tied”

Swift dips back into a garage/dubstep vibe on this Reputation track, something she hadn’t really done since 1989’s “I Knew You Were Trouble”. The beat is excellent, until you reach the chorus that feels clunky in a way that holds the song back.

38) “I Think He Knows”

The Jonas Brothers come to mind on this jittery, heavy-on-the-bass track that has Swift singing in her best falsetto on the chorus.

37) “London Boy”

Joe Alwyn (Getty Images)

Swift’s obsession with the UK reaches its peak with one of the most divisive songs on Lover (a lot of Brits are taking issue with the lyrics, as they’re essentially a tourist’s guide to where-not-to-visit in London – Shoreditch, Camden, the West End). But she’s entirely self-aware of her outsider status – if anything she revels in it. Plus, the idea of Taylor Swift sitting with Joe Alwyn’s mates from uni doing Jaeger Bombs is pretty great.

36) “All You Had to Do Was Stay”

“I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,” Swift seems to sing on this track about a relationship that broke down when one person gave up too quickly, realising too late what they’re leaving behind. “People like you always want back the love they pushed aside/ But people like me are gone forever, when you say goodbye.”

35) “This Love”

A breathless song from 1989, where Swift revels in the secret midnight hours where she can dream about her lover. Full of yearning, it builds from an acoustic intro before blossoming into a bold, simmering Eighties synth track.

34) “I Know Places”

“I Know Places” suffers simply for being a weaker “getaway” song in comparison to its 1989 peer “Out of the Woods”. The beat she sings over is a little sluggish, although she sounds delightfully menacing on the line: “Loose links sink ships all the damn time/ Not this time.”

33) “Fifteen”

“In your life you'll do things/ Greater than dating the boy on the football team/ But I didn't know it at 15.” A gentle word of caution that, on Fearless, marked Swift’s remarkable growth as a songwriter.

32) “The Man”

Swift has a history of calling out the double standards she’s faced as a woman in the industry, but never so much in an actual song. “The Man”, from her most recent album Lover, changes that – she questions how differently she’d be treated were she a male artist. “I’m so sick of running as fast as I can,” she sings, weary of the constant fight just to justify her place in the music industry.

31) “Clean”

More rain. This time it’s a good thing, pouring down and washing away all the bad stuff. Swift often ends her albums with a positive outlook, so many of those final songs, like “Clean”, are about seeing the light and finding true happiness.

30) “So It Goes...”

This Swift-Max Martin-Shellback collaboration from Reputation has her lusting after a “magician”. Reputation felt a lot like a sexual awakening for Swift as an artist, who had previously spoken about never feeling “cool or sexy”. Here she’s unafraid to admit when she wants something – or someone.

29) “You Need to Calm Down”

Katy Perry and Taylor Swift in the 'You Need to Calm Down' video (YouTube/Taylor Swift)

One of Swift’s most controversial and divisive songs, “You Need to Calm Down” is a clear-cut pro-LGBT+ anthem that contains the line: “Why be mad, when you could be GLAAD?” referring to the LGBT+ charity. Some saw it as an attempt to appear “woke”, but Swift has been making more subtle statements in favour of same-sex relationships since at least 2014 (“Welcome to New York”). “You Need to Calm Down” has a bouncy beat and Swift and her eye-rolling best.

28) “Look What You Made Me Do”

Yes, it’s the weakest song on Reputation, but in retrospect this song is also genius. Interpolating Right Said Fred? Seriously? It’s like the ultimate dig at a celebrity couple infamous for their vanity, and as a single served as a major palette cleanser after 1989.

27) “Shake It Off”

Some might find Swift’s unshakeable chirpiness on this “haters gonna hate” song from 1989 annoying, but the infectiousness of the chorus is, well, hard to shake.

26) "Soon You'll Get Better" (feat Dixie Chicks)

Without a doubt the most emotional track on Lover, “Soon You’ll Get Better” is delivered in half-whispers as Swift addresses her mother’s cancer diagnosis. The Dixie Chicks, apparently one of her mother’s favourite artists, accompany on backing vocals as Swift sings as though she’s on the verge of tears.

25) "Gorgeous"

With a guest appearance from Ryan Reynold’s and Blake Lively’s baby daughter James, “Gorgeous” presents Swift as a gibbering mess after she spots a hot guy at a party then proceeds to embarrass herself by getting drunk and making fun of his accent. Presumably this is about the first time Swift met her now-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, whose English accent has been the subject of Swift’s affection in more than one song.



24) “Red”

Swift’s signature colour, at least until recently (things are more golden on Lover), signals passionate, wild abandon upon falling in love without warning on the title track from her hit 2012 album.

23) “Cornelia Street”

A throwback to “Dress” from Reputation in terms of vocal performance (big falsetto on the chorus), but with lyrics that are more about places that become haunted by the memory of another person.

22) “New Year's Day”

This is one of Swift’s boldest songs for the fact that it is her at her most stripped-back and intimate. There’s a warm resonance to her soft touch on the piano keys, and small but significant observations about the morning after a big New Year’s party. “Hold on to the memories,” she sings, “they will hold on to you.”

21) "False God"

It’s unclear what people were expecting from Lover, but surely not a song that would stand as a contender for one of Swift’s best – from the sax to the throbbing synth beat. Swift’s low murmurs are so full of longing, you feel a bit awkward eavesdropping on such an intimate moment.

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