An era, in simplest terms, is a distinct period of time with a specific feature or characteristic. The show stopping-ever relevant Taylor Swift is very familiar with this concept. Swift has been an active musician for eighteen years. During these eighteen years, she has released a total of ten albums and four re-releases. She has also gone on six tours since the beginning of her career. The stages in her musical career are defined as her “eras”. The eras are categorized by each of her albums and when they were released. I am going to briefly explain each era and the reason why each and everyone is so iconic.
Debut (2006)
Taylor’s debut album, self-titled Taylor Swift, was released on October 24, 2006. This began her rise to fame. From this album came the fan favorite song Tim McGraw, which hit 40 on the Billboard Hot 100. There’s not too much to say about this era, since she hadn’t really come into the spotlight just yet. The color for Debut is green. This era will forever be known as the era that got Taylor started.
Fearless (2008) (2021)
After a successful debut album, Taylor came back better than ever with her second album Fearless. This album includes arguably the most popular songs of her discography, Love Story and You Belong With Me. Fearless is the first album of Swift’s to have a deluxe edition called Fearless (Platinum edition). It is also branded as the gold album. Taylor went on a tour to support this album in 2009. The Fearless tour drew 1.2 million people in attendance and lasted 15 months with 115 shows. Later on, Journey to Fearless– the concert movie was released. In 2019, Taylor’s masters were taken from her and bought by Scooter Braun. Taylor decided that in order to own her masters, she must re-record all of the albums that were taken from her. Taylor decided to start this journey with Fearless. On April 9th, 2021 she released Fearless (Taylor’s Version). The album included all of the original Fearless tracks and four never-before-released “vault” tracks.
Speak Now (2010) (2023)
Speak Now proves to be one of Taylor Swift’s most cathartic albums. Speak Now is the first album of Taylor’s to feature a title track. The track Speak Now is about breaking up a wedding that shouldn’t happen. The album has no skips in my opinion and includes the famous songs Better Than Revenge– about the girl who stole her boyfriend, Long Live-an ode to her band and the fans, Back To December-the famous song written about Taylor Lautner, Mean– a song that responds to the criticism Taylor faced by critics after singing alongside legend Stevie Nicks, and Dear John– the song that completely calls Taylor’s ex John Mayer out . She even created a song pardoning Kanye West called Innocent. The song basically notes that she doesn’t blame Kanye for interrupting her VMA speech in 2009 because everyone makes bad choices here and there and it’s important that he’s trying to change. We will see a resurgence in this topic later on in her career. Speak Now’s honorary color is purple because of the purple dress Taylor wears on the album cover. Speak Now also had a tour beginning in 2011 and concluding in 2012. Taylor re-released Speak Now in July of 2023 with 6 vault tracks and features by Fall Out Boy and Hayley Williams of Paramore.
Red (2012) (2021)
Everyone’s favorite autumn album, Red originally came out on October 22, 2012. This album signifies the beginning of Taylor Swift’s genre switch from country to pop. The album includes a few of her most popular songs such as 22 and We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. Personally, I must add that the song Treacherous is one of my favorites and it happens to come from Red.Taylor also collaborates with longtime friend Ed Sheeran on Red with the song Everything Has Changed. During this era, Taylor also managed to make an original song for The Hunger Games movies called Safe and Sound featuring The Civil Wars. This song was a whole revolution in 2012-2013 because The Hunger Games movies were a HUGE deal back then. She launched the Red tour in 2014. It lasted about a year with 86 shows. Red (Taylor’s Version) was released on November 12, 2021. The re-recorded album includes 9 vault tracks with the best features you could imagine. Phoebe Bridgers- one of my all-time favorite musicians ever was featured on the track Nothing New- a song Taylor wrote about becoming “boring” to the music industry after a certain point, which is something she has proved she has yet to do in her career. The other feature on the Red vault tracks is country singer Chris Stapleton singing the backing vocals on I Bet You Think About Me. Perhaps the most notable vault track on Red (Taylor’s Version) is All Too Well (10 Minute Version). The song All Too Well was a song featured on Red when it was originally released in 2012. At that time though, it was only 5 minutes and 29 seconds long. The song is about Taylor’s ex Jake Gyllenhall whom she dated prior to the original release of Red. Fans, including myself, had no trouble learning all of the lyrics to this 10-minute song. Since its release, it has become one of Taylor’s most iconic songs. Taylor even directed a short film to accompany the song starring Sadie Sink of Stranger Things and Dylan O’Brien of Teen Wolf. The film is Swift’s directorial debut and it is supposed to give us a small glimpse into the hardships in the relationship between her and Gyllenhall and how it all fell apart.
1989 (2014) (2023)
October 27, 2014 was the day pop music changed forever. Swift’s fourth studio album 1989 was released. 1989 is THE pop album of the 2010s. About 1.287 million copies of the album were sold in the first week of the album’s release. 1989 is the first album to feature the legendary Jack Antonoff as a producer for three songs. This led us to find out that Jack Antonoff and Taylor Swift make an amazing duo. Shake It Off, Blank Space, and Bad Blood are the most popular songs from this album, though every song is good. My personal favorite from 1989 is Style. Taylor toured this album as well spanning from May to December of 2015. Although 1989 is a masterpiece, Swift faced a lot of criticism for the album because of her genre switch. On August 9th, 2023, Taylor majorly hinted at a re-release of 1989 by debuting some brand new light blue (the official color of 1989) outfits during her Eras Tour. Sure enough, when she came out to sing the surprise songs of the night, she announced that on October 27, 2023, 9 years after the original release, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) would be re-released. The re-release of this album caused a resurgence of fans from all around the world. While it is known that a handful of songs from 1989 are about Taylor’s ex Harry Styles, we saw a whole new side of him in the vault tracks written about him. As an example, in the song “Is It Over Now?” Taylor questions his actions during their relationship, even going so far as to say “You dream of my mouth before it called you a lying traitor.” I think someone needs to check on Harry after 1989 (Taylor’s Version).
Reputation (2017)
Following drama with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian about some unauthorized lyrics written by Kanye, Taylor was bashed by the media. They called her many nasty names including snake and liar. This drama affected Taylor significantly. She took to Twitter to post an explanation of what actually happened, stating “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of, since 2009.” Following this, Taylor took a lengthy break from music. On August 18, 2017, She blacked out all of her social media accounts and started to post cryptic teases to her upcoming album, Reputation. She finally announced the album on the 23 of August 2017. The album came out on November 10th, 2017. Taylor dropped the iconic “Look What You Made Me Do” music video to accompany the song. It was a huge deal at the time of its release, the first shot of the video being a zombified Taylor crawling out of her grave dressed in her 1989 attire. The entire video features callbacks to her past and people who have wronged her. At one point, we see all of the different Taylors in her different eras struggling to climb to the top of an era “mountain” with Reputation Taylor at the very top, saying that “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now” because she’s dead. This is probably the most iconic moment of this era, as it left fans shocked. The album mainly focuses on the ones who tried to end her career. The album isn’t all about karma though, another topic she decided to focus on was her newer relationship with actor Joe Alwyn. She wrote the song “Call It What You Want” about their private relationship amidst the chaos of everyone attempting to cancel her. As expected, Taylor would go on tour for Reputation. The Reputation stadium tour would go down to be one of her most iconic tours as well. I can speak from experience on this one since I had the opportunity to go to one of the shows, it was an amazing experience to say the least. While it is STRONGLY hinted at that Reputation is the next of Taylor’s albums to be re-released, we aren’t sure of when that will happen.
Lover (2019)
In 2019 Taylor Swift completely shifted gears. On April 26, 2019 she released the music video for her new song “ME!”, an upbeat self-confidence song. In the beginning of the video, we see a pink snake slithering down pastel colored cobblestone. The snake then erupts into a bunch of pastel-colored butterflies, signifying the end of the Reputation era and the beginning of the Lover era. The album Lover was released on August 23, 2023. Taylor calls this album “a love letter to love”. Joe Alwyn inspired almost all of the songs on this album. Lover also includes the heartfelt song “Soon You’ll Get Better” featuring The Chicks written about Taylor’s mom’s battle with cancer that she faced during the production of Lover. She also wrote the song “You Need To Calm Down” in support of the LGBTQ community. It was during this era that Taylor won Artist of The Decade at the 2019 American Music Awards and released her famous documentary Miss Americana. In the documentary, we see Taylor in her more vulnerable moments and it deals with the heavier topics in her life like her mother’s illness, her struggle with her own self-image, and the public’s harsh view of her. Taylor planned a tour for Lover called “Lover Fest”. It was supposed to be a brief tour with only a few stops since she wanted to be there for her mom while she still battled with cancer. Unfortunately, COVID-19 struck and completely put an end to“Lover Fest” before it even started. Lover is the first of her albums to be completely owned by her after Scooter Braun bought the access to all of her masters in 2019. Ever since then, she has fought hard to help artists own their music.
Folklore (2020)
With the whole world shut down due to the pandemic, Taylor found inspiration in isolation. On July 23, 2020, Taylor announced on Instagram that her eighth studio album, folklore would be released the next day, July 24th. The album was so different from anything she had ever done before, and in my opinion, it’s a masterpiece. Taylor doesn’t just write from personal experience on this album either, she decided to dedicate a few songs on the album to various people and stories that she’d created. She dedicated the third track of the album, “The Last Great American Dynasty” to the woman who lived in her Rhode Island house before her. The songs “August”, “Cardigan”, “Illicit Affairs”, and “Betty” all follow a love triangle between three characters Taylor had created: James, Augustine, and Betty. You’ll have to listen to the entire album to really get what I’m talking about, but it’s definitely worth it. Amidst the chaos of the world at the time, Taylor was able to make a music video for the song “Cardigan”. In the video, Taylor debuts the iconic folklore cardigan. This cardigan would become a huge fashion staple for swifties, as Taylor even has different ones for certain eras such as Speak Now and Red. Since no concert could be held for folklore, Taylor decided to get together with her producers Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff to perform the entirety of folklore in the place where it was recorded: Long Pond Studios. This was released on Disney+ in November of 2020 and was a huge success. Fans loved hearing the origins of every song on the album.
Evermore (2020)
In December of 2020, five months after the release of folklore Taylor announced that she “couldn’t stop writing” and that folklore’s sister album evermore would be released later in the month. Personally, after much consideration, evermore is my absolute favorite album from Taylor Swift. It tends to be overlooked by the other albums but there are no bad songs on this album. This album is a bit heavier than Taylor’s previous work, with some deeper songs with deeper subjects handled in every song. Taylor is once again inspired by others when writing evermore. The song “No Body, No Crime” featuring HAIM is about a murder mystery case, “Cowboy Like Me” (my favorite) is about two swindlers who end up falling in love, and she also writes the heartwrenching song “Marjorie” about her grandmother Marjorie Finlay, an opera singer who had passed away. An honorable mention on this album is the song “Happiness” about finding contempt after a break-up. It is one of the most lyrically beautiful songs she’s written, complete with references from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. There isn’t too much else to provide for evermore, since it didn’t really have much that came with it, but it deserves all of the attention because it is a true masterpiece that never fails to amaze me.
Midnights (2022)
The 2022 VMA awards brought the announcement of Midnights, Taylor’s tenth studio album. The album was announced by Taylor in her Video of the Year acceptance award. Midnights came out on October 21st, 2022. Despite her past two albums folklore and evermore being soft and folky, Midnights became her return to upbeat pop music. The most recognizable song from the album is probably “Anti-Hero”, the song about not feeling like you belong. My favorite from Midnights is definitely “Lavender Haze”. It’s such a great opener to a good album. She had also written one of the most iconic comeback songs of her career “Karma” about everyone who’s gotten in the way of her successes, simply saying that karma will be back for you. Taylor also collaborated with one of my favorite artists ever: Lana Del Rey on the song “Snow On The Beach”. This was such an exciting collaboration since I had been wanting the two of them to collaborate for the longest time. When the time came to tour, Taylor decided that instead of just touring one album, why not tour them all? “The Eras Tour” was soon announced. It would be a journey into nine of her eras in the span of two hours. This tour was bigger than anyone could have ever imagined. Tickets were very difficult to acquire because of the popularity of the tour. The Eras tour is worth every penny in my opinion, since I was so lucky to have gone to night two in Nashville. As of November 13, 2023, the Eras tour is still going strong after almost a year and is expected to wrap up sometime in 2024. Sadly the Midnights era was also the era which we witnessed the breakup of Taylor and Joe Alwyn, her partner of six years who inspired so many songs in her discography. While this was a sad loss, Taylor has recently found love again in Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and they have taken the world by storm. Of course, everyone just wants the best for Taylor so we’re happy that she seems so happy in the relationship.
No matter what you listen to, you can’t deny that Taylor Swift has made such a large impact on the music industry and is an amazing inspiration to many. No matter which era you like best, all of her eras prove to be just as iconic as the last.
