Thirteen Years Of Red – The Best Taylor Swift Album

By Kayla Harper

The leaves are crisp underneath your shoes and the smell of cinnamon spills out of open windows.  Pumpkin spice melts onto your tongue masking the nostalgic ache in your gut. The soundtrack? Taylor Swift’s Red. 

It’s been thirteen years since Swift ditched the curls for the iconic fringe she still rocks today and the princess dresses for high-wasted shorts. Red was released on October 22, 2012 and at the time was Swift’s most experimental and mature album to date.  It was her transition from country to the pop sensation that would be her following record, 1989.  In addition to sprinkles of pop, Red also blends arena rock and folk-pop.

As a result of the mixed genres featured on Red many fans claim it is Swift’s most sonically confusing and least cohesive record. While I can understand this to an extent -going from “All Too Well” to “22” is quite the vibe change- I feel like this is the entire purpose of Red. If the album were to have a thesis statement to summarize its intent it would be: “happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time” (“22”, Red, 2012), which is exactly what life is like post-breakup, loss, etc. Through its rapid instrumental ups and downs, Red perfectly encapsulates the emotional turmoil it is meant to. The bipolarity between songs like “All Too Well” and “22” being right next to each other is exactly the emotional confusion Swift wants to evoke in the listener as that is what her life was like at the time of writing this record.

There is no doubt that with a discography as vast and diverse as Swift’s, it’s difficult to choose a best album. Swift is the only artist to win Album Of The Year four times at the Grammy’s and has done so in three different genre categories: Fearless (2010 ceremony) in country, 1989 (2016 ceremony) and Midnights (2024 ceremony) in pop, and folklore (2021 ceremony) in alternative. Despite it not being on the list of Album Of The Year wins, Red certainly beats all of these records in terms overall production, lyrical themes and melody.

I would argue even after the eight albums that followed it, Red is still the most “Taylor Swift” album to date.  Red was ahead of its time, featuring all of the best aspects of all the other albums in terms of storytelling, production and songwriting. With the lyrical substance and storytelling of folklore and evermore in songs like “Treacherous”, “Sad Beautiful Tragic”, “The Last Time”, “Holy Ground”, “State Of Grace” and “The Lucky One”; as well as the vulnerable side of the catchy pop earworms of Swift’s future pop records 1989, reputation, Lover, Midnights, The Tortured Poets Department and The Life Of A Showgirl on songs like “I Knew You Were Trouble”, “We Are Never Getting Back Together”, “Starlight”, “The Lucky One”, “Holy Ground”, “State Of Grace” and “22”; and finally what can only be described as classic Swift, the whimsical and hopelessly romantic, high school tone that dominated Swift’s first three records, Taylor Swift, Fearless and Speak Now, on songs like “Red”, “All Too Well”, “I Almost Do”, “Stay Stay Stay”, “Everything Has Changed” and “Begin Again”.

Red was probably the last album of Swift’s that primarily features real instruments. The problem with future albums, is that while some songs feature real instruments, drum machines and synth bass took over the production of Swift’s albums with 1989. While many of the songs are still fun, the use of real instruments brings more life and emotion to the instrumental track -these songs don’t need the lyrics to necessarily evoke a response in the listener the way a song made up of bass synths and drum machines do. This also makes Red more sonically dynamic than Swift’s future pop records.

Red’s high moments like “State Of Grace”, “The Lucky One” and “Holy Ground”  are some of the highest of Swift’s career, and the low moments?  Well next to albums like 1989, Lover, Midnights and The Life Of A Showgirl they simply don’t exist.

At the time of Red’s release the opening track “State Of Grace”was a shocking new sound from Swift, unlike anything we’d heard from her prior.  For the first time, Swift sounded like an adult, not the hopelessly romantic teenage girl she had been impersonating prior and not only did she sound like one, she looked like one too.  With the Red era, Swift adopted a brand-new look -the 2012 “hipster” tumbler vibe dominated the era’s fashion aesthetic with high-wasted shorts, red jeans, varsity jackets, striped shirts, blouses, sunglasses and a bold red lip. Additionally, her careless curls were traded in for pin-straight locks and fringe which she’s rocked ever since.

With this new look and sound we were given Swift’s most reflective and introspective album yet. However, it’s not all new, as previously mentioned, Red is both its own entity and the best parts of all of Swift’s other albums in one.  As a result, it’s her most sonically dynamic and thematically diverse.  Most people categorize Red as the “heartbreak” album, but really it features no more “sad songs” than Swift’s other albums.

Swift explores some of her most devastating heartbreaks to date on songs like the feature with Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody,  “The Last Time”, and fan-favourite “All Too Well”; But she also tackles the beauty of falling in love again in songs such as the collaboration with Ed Sheeran, “Everything Has Changed”, and “Begin Again”; being in love, “Stay Stay Stay” and “Treacherous”; the hardships that come with fame on “The Lucky One” (the original and superior Life Of A Showgirl);  her parents separation, “Sad Beautiful Tragic”;  a historical snapshot of Ethel Kennedy’s life, “Starlight”; and some of her first and best pop bangers, “We Are Never Getting Back Together” and “22”; All tied up in a bow of bittersweet nostalgia that weaves its way through every song, but is most evident on tracks like “State Of Grace”, “Red”, “All Too Well”, “I Almost Do”, and “Holy Ground”.

If it wasn’t already one of the strongest of Swift’s career, nine years later, in 2021, Swift released Red (Taylor’s Version) as a part of her re-recording project to own the rights to her masters. While Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is the most improved, it goes without saying that Red (Taylor’s Version) is the best of the four re-recordings to date.  It took an already flawless album and made it even better.  Swift’s vocals are healthier and stronger than they were before, but she doesn’t let this overshadow the raw emotion of Red.  Additionally, Red (Taylor’s Version) offered us the best Vault Tracks of all four re-recorded albums: featuring singles from the original era like “Ronan” in which all proceeds still go towards Childhood Cancer funding and research; cuts that didn’t make the album “Nothing New”, “I Bet You Think About Me”, “Message In A Bottle”, and “The Very First Night”; and Swift reclaimed her songs “Better Man” (sold to Little Big Town) and “Babe” (sold to Sugarland).  However, the most anticipated song on the 30-track album, was the ten minute version of fan-favourite “All Too Well”.

The story goes, during rehearsals for the Speak Now World Tour, Swift started playing and singing the melody, soon singing lyrics.  Before long, her band joined in playing along with her, the result?  A 25-minute-long song called “All Too Well”.  Swift’s mother Andrea who happened to be attending the rehearsal and ensured the sound guy recorded the entire thing and kept it. When revisiting the song, Swift trimmed it down to ten minutes.  But of course her label insisted a ten minute song from an artist of Swift’s status would never do well.  It was between “Better Man” and “All Too Well” for which would make the album, Swift loved “All Too Well” and decided to trim it down to six minutes.

Fans found out about the existence of the ten minute version and begged Swift to release it for years, so when she announced its release with Red (Taylor’s Version) fans were excited.  Alongside it, Swift released her self-directed short film.

From its vast range of thematic elements, the careful use of figurative devices and descriptive imagery throughout its lyrics, its dynamic melodic and instrumental production, Red, is the most rounded Swift album. It is country Swift, pop Swift, folk-pop Swift, alternative Swift and rock Swift in one package that somehow manages to exist as a complete body of work that makes sense. It doesn’t have to be your favourite, but there is no denying that Red outshines even the best moments of some of Swift’s best albums, it’s a career-defining album that will hold up in Swift discography long after she stops making music.