Song of the Day #4,268: ‘Dancing With Our Hands Tied’ – Taylor Swift

Continuing my ranking of Taylor Swift’s albums…

#3 – Reputation – 2017

Yesterday I wrote that my biggest surprise in this assessment of Taylor Swift’s discography was the relatively low placement of Speak Now. Well, I was equally surprised by how high I wound up ranking 2017’s Reputation.

This is an album I brashly dismissed as Swift’s worst when I first heard it. And here I am placing it in the top three. So, what changed?

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Song of the Day #4,267: ‘Dear John’ – Taylor Swift

Continuing my ranking of Taylor Swift’s albums…

#4 – Speak Now – 2010

One of the biggest surprises for me when reassessing Taylor Swift’s catalog was how far 2010’s Speak Now slid in my estimation.

Don’t get me wrong… it’s a great album. But before my deep dive into each of her releases, I would have named it as her best. In fact, I did just that when I recently placed it on my list of the best albums of the decade.

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Song of the Day #4,266: ‘All Too Well’ – Taylor Swift

Continuing my ranking of Taylor Swift’s albums…

#5 – Red – 2012

Red was a transitional album for Taylor Swift, marking her first steps into more muscular pop territory (and her first collaborations with Swedish hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback). It was also her longest album to that point, at 16 tracks.

You can feel the strain on both of those fronts, as Red feels way too long and way too unsure of itself.

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Song of the Day #4,265: ‘The Flirting Kind’ – Elvis Costello

This Elvis Costello track shows up on one of the reissues of his 1983 album Punch the Clock.

It’s a testament to the depth of Costello’s catalog that a song this good can end up as a forgotten B-side, and also that after months of Costello Weekends, plenty of Random Weekend appearances, and a bunch of other Song of the Day posts, I still have to much great material of his to mine.

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Song of the Day #4,264: ‘Crystal Ball’ – Pink

I started listening to Pink sometime in the late 2000s, when her latest album Funhouse was charting well and receiving a lot of critical acclaim.

I also enjoyed her next album, 2012’s The Truth About Love, but after that I stopped keeping up with her releases. She has dropped two studio albums since then that struggled to find an audience. Last year’s Hurts 2B Human hasn’t even cracked 100,000 U.S. sales, while most of her earlier releases were in the millions.

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