We have been with Taylor throughout the different eras of her life; the love, heartbreak and just pure s–t of being a teenage girl and the chaos of a global sell-out.
And we all know our girl is incredible at writing out every moment in her life and planting hidden meaning in her cryptic lyrics, but do we really know who each album is about? Because trust me, they’re about someone (usually a man).
So, every album has a heartbeat behind it, but we are here to break it down, album by album, heartbreak by heartbreak and banger by banger. Let’s rewind it back to Debut.
Debut: 2006
At just 16 years old, Taylor released her Debut album and was all curls, cowboy boots and classic country charm.
Most of the songs in her first album were inspired by high school crushes and teenage daydreams.
Tim McGraw? It’s not about a romance with the country singer, with Taylor sharing with Great American Country, “If anyone has heard this song and really listened to it, they realise it’s not about Tim McGraw. It’s about a relationship that I was in. Just to set the record straight, it wasn’t with Tim McGraw. It was with this guy I was dating and he was about to go off to college and I was thinking about all the things that I knew would remind him of me.
“I didn’t really think of Tim McGraw personally when I wrote this song. It was a song where I was listing personal things. One of the things that I listed was that my favorite song is by Tim McGraw.”
Taylor added: “The guy I wrote ‘Tim McGraw‘ about, I dated him for about a year and we are still friends, but we don’t talk that much because his new girlfriend isn’t too much of a fan. He really thought it was cool that, even though we weren’t going out anymore, I remembered our relationship nicely. I think that he was happy that I didn’t write ‘Picture To Burn‘ about him, another song on my album.”
Fearless: 2008
Welcome to the young and in love era, where Taylor went from 0-100, creating hit after hit that became the soundtracks of young teenagers.
Enter fairytales and the fearless romantic, where Joe Jonas entered the chat and exited via a 5-second phone call as shared by Taylor on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2008.
Then came the soundtrack, with Taylor writing Forever & Always about Joe Jonas, sharing with The Los Angeles Times in 2008, “It’s about watching somebody fade away in a relationship. They said they were going to be with you forever, that they loved you, and then something changed in the relationship and you don’t know what it is, but you’re watching them slowly drift.
“That emotion of rejection, for me, usually starts out sad and then gets mad. This song starts with this pretty melody that’s easy to sing along with, then in the end I’m basically screaming it because I’m so mad. I’m really proud of that.”
We got this heartbreaking (angry) song, but we also got hopeful love anthems like Love Story and You Belong With Me, which were all about teenage love.
Speak Now: 2010
Taylor really said Speak Now with this one, with the singer sharing to her Instagram when she announced Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), “I first made Speak Now, completely self-written, between the ages of 18 and 20.”
“The songs that came from this time in my life were marked by their brutal honesty, unfiltered diaristic confessions and wild wistfulness. I love this album because it tells a tale of growing up, flailing, flying and crashing … and living to speak about it.”
Dear John? Yep, that one is about her brief romance with John Mayer, who later shared with Rolling Stone that, “It [the song] made me feel terrible. Because I didn’t deserve it. I’m pretty good at taking accountability now, and I never did anything to deserve that. It was a really lousy thing for her to do.”
Taylor’s song Mean is said to be about critic Bob Lefsetz, who reviewed her 2010 Grammys performance on his blog Lefsetz Letter, calling her “young and dumb” and saying that she “can’t sing.”
Enchanted (one of the faves) is about meeting a guy in NYC, and classic 19-year-old Taylor romanticised basically everything, so she wrote a song about it. It was later confirmed that the song was about Owl City singer Adam Young.
Back to December is an apology to Taylor Lautner, and Long Live is written to us!! The fans.
Of course, all of her songs have a meaning to them (about someone), but we’d evidently be here for a little while if we unpacked them all.
Red: 2012
We remember this one all too well, the heartbreak album. The scarf and the second-guessing. Jake Gyllenhaal really wrecked Taylor’s heart during those few months of dating. All Too Well (especially the 10-minute version) left no stone unturned, and the rest of the songs were painfully honest and raw.
Look, most of these songs are most likely about Jake Gyllenhaal, with little easter eggs scattered throughout the lyrics of each of the tracks.
I Knew You Were Trouble has a monologue at the beginning of the music video ending with, “I think that the worst part of it all wasn’t losing him, it was losing me.” In an interview Taylor did around Red, she shared that the biggest thing she lost in the relationship was herself.
22 gave us one of our favourite pop hits, all about being happy with your besties but also confused and lonely, like so relatable, right?
1989: 2014
We go full pop for 1989 and country Tay is gone. Harry Styles was the muse for Style, along with Out of the Woods, and I Wish You Would.
This album gives us gloss, heartbreak and reclaiming back power with some staple red lipstick.
Blank Space was written in response to media scrutiny following her dating life at the time, All You Had to Do Was Stay was inspired by a dream about her ex showing up.
Bad Blood was thought to be about Katy Perry at the time, but Taylor shared with Rolling Stone, “You sit there, and you know you’re on good terms with your ex-boyfriend, and you don’t want him — or his family — to think you’re firing shots at him,” she explained. “So you say, ‘That was about losing a friend.’ And that’s basically all you say. But then people cryptically tweet about what you meant.”
Reputation: 2017
Snakes, public feuds and Look What You Made Me Do, enter Taylor’s baddie album, her comeback after being dragged by the media along with the whole Kanye and Kim Kardashian drama.
During this time, she was dating Joe Alwyn, who was her long-term and very private boyfriend at the time. With a lot of the songs being about him – End Game, Ready For It, Don’t Blame Me, Delicate etc etc.
I Did Something Bad is about her ex Calvin Harris and Kimye. This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things is once again about Kimye.
Lover: 2019
Lover is exactly that, being in love and moving in with her boyfriend at the time, Joe Alwyn.
This was the “I’m in love and I want the world to know” album. Lover, Cruel Summer, and Cornelia Street are pure romance. It’s soft, whimsical, and the closest thing to Taylor wearing a flower crown and dancing in a meadow that we will ever get.
Of course, in true Taylor fashion, we also got sadness and vulnerability, with insecurities taking place in songs like The Archer, Soon You’ll Get Better, which is about her mother’s cancer battle and Death By A Thousand Cuts, which channels heartbreak despite Tay being in a happy relationship at the time.
Folkore & Evermore: 2020
The quarantine twins. These albums stepped away from autobiographical storytelling and leaned into fictional narratives — or so she says. We all know some of the songs were based on real-life people, like Marjorie, her grandmother, but a lot of her hits (The 1 and Champagne Problems) are about fictional characters and couples.
Folklore actually looks at the idea of a love triangle between characters Betty, James and Augustine.
Cardigan is written from Betty’s POV, August is from the girl James spent his teenage romance with and Betty is James’ apology to Betty. See the triangle now?
The links between all the characters could go on and on, but the main gist is heartbreak, angst and regret.
Joe Alwyn even co-wrote under the pseudonym William Bowery for the songs Exile and Betty.
Midnights: 2020
Enter her 10th album, Midnights, a concept album about sleepless nights with Taylor reflecting on everything from insecurity to revenge.
Lavender Haze and Maroon trace romance, while Karma gives us classic pop hits.
It’s glittery, dark, chaotic, but her songs on this album explore being alone, focusing on yourself (go off, boss lady) and of course, a few songs sprinkled in there for Joe.
The Tortured Poets Department: 2024
And here it is. The break-up album. I wasn’t even going through a break-up, but was down bad for this one.
This one hit like a punch to the gut, with obvious reasoning that this one was about Joe Alwyn as well as her whirlwind romance with Matty Healy (Ooops Smallest Man Who Ever Lived).
It’s raw, very literary (hence the title) and is very different from what she’s done before.
Think tears, then screaming, then fetal position. Love to see it.
