Taylor Swift Album & Song Ranking Procedure (science behind the catalogue ranked last to first)

This is the result of ranking each album by song. What I mean is I ranked each song on the album awesome, good, OK, meh, or skip. The ranking is what I like! It’s not technical, it’s not based on song complexity or singing–just my opinion. But my consistent opinion. I listened and checked each of these lists until my opinion didn’t change, and the songs were locked into their ranking. For the album ranking, I counted up the number of songs in each group. The albums with the highest amount of awesome songs were ranked the highest.                 

awesome       good to ok             meh              skip

1989                      7                     5                           4                    0

speak now            7                      5                           4                    1

red                        5                      13                         0                    0

folklore                  6                      9                            1                   1

Evermore 6 8 0 1

reputation            5                       8                           2                   0

fearless                  5                       8                         4                   1

self-titled               5                       6                           3                    1

lover                       4                       7                           4                   3

P.S. I think the above chart might have changed a little after I ranked each individual song. I’ll have to update it after the catalogue ranking is posted.

Then I took it further. I wanted to rank every song in Taylor’s catalogue (album songs only). I started with the awesome, good, OK, meh, skip playlists from the album ranking, then narrowed those groups into smaller groups.

For example, I took the awesome list and ranked those songs into 3 groups within awesome: Elite, exactly awesome, and almost good.

I did this with all 5 of the original playlists.

At the same time, I marked the song characteristics.

(C)atchy

(D)etailed story

(G)aylor references

(I)nstrumentals

(L)yrical complexity

very high/low (N)otes

(P)roduction stands out in a good way

(S)entimental

Some of the lists were still overwhelmingly large, so I split them in half

like top of the elite-awesomes and bottom of elite-awesomes.

There’s more. Once the lists were manageable, I tried to put the songs in order on each list. This required a lot of listens. I would put the songs on each different group in order, then listen to each different section to make sure the list was accurate. If there was any changes on a section (at least one song moved), I’d mark the list to double-check.

I listened from the bottom to the top, each different group from skip all the way up to awesome, marking any sections with song changes.

If there was a change I would listen to that section again later. I listened over and over until no songs needed to be moved.

Well, I finally finished today! After the holiday music, I started this project so it’s been a long time coming. As soon as I format the lists, I’ll post it up. Hope you enjoy!