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The Worst Taylor Swift Songs

December 6, 2022 11:05 am GMT
Last Edited July 26, 2023 3:36 pm GMT

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Nobody loves Taylor Swift more than us!

We’ve all got our favourite songs, our preferred eras, the cats of hers we think look the cuddliest. There can be no denying our love for her. But you have to be honest with the people you love too. After all, it isn’t true love if you can’t tell them the truth.

So this is us being brutally honest with Taylor. These are the rare occasions when she slipped up slightly and recorded a song that we just couldn’t quite love as much as all the others, no matter how hard we all tried.

It hurts us to say it, but these are the 10 worst songs by Taylor Swift:

10

Santa Baby

We love Christmas!! And we love Taylor!! What could possibly go wrong?! Oh, good lord.

Taylor took on the Eartha Kitt holiday classic and promptly bludgeoned it to death along with five other enduring Christmas favourites for Sounds Of The Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection. An EP that was only saved by the delightful Liz Rose co-write ‘Christmases When You Were Mine’.

9

End Game (feat. Ed Sheeran and Future)

What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple? Ed Sheeran’s verse on ‘End Game’. Only stopping short of using phrases like "belting scran" and "proppa nawty", the Halifax-born singer unearthed some cockney roots in a stanza that made John Barnes’ rap in the middle of ‘World In Motion’ sound like Kendrick Lamar.

It was like watching your embarrassing friend from Uni get up on the table and do Ali G impressions. Don’t invite him again.

8

No Body, No Crime (feat. Haim)

A collaboration with besties Haim in a ‘Goodbye Earl’-style country revenge murder fantasy that fell short almost everywhere it tried to land.

It’s like when you were younger and you’d have a sleepover at your friend's and make a video that you thought was just the funniest thing ever, and then the next day you’d show it to another friend who wasn’t there and they wouldn’t find it funny at all. This was one you really had to be there for.

7

So It Goes

Taylor seems to be channelling 80s pop star Nik Kershaw in this overly dramatic slice of alt-pop, presumably only sandwiched between ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ and ‘Gorgeous’ on Reputation to make those two songs sound better.

Lines like “All eyes on you, my magician” are laughably bad. It does have some fun counting on it though.

6

Macavity

For someone who supposedly loves cats, Taylor showed little remorse when she absolutely murdered this song about one. She’s not entirely to blame of course; the song wasn’t written by her and the original is perhaps even worse. But Taylor still has to shoulder some of the blame for even agreeing to be involved.

Urgh. I’ve got a hairball in my throat just thinking about it.

5

Bad Blood

A long-running feud with Katy Perry (now thankfully over) inspired this clunky single off 1989 as Taylor mercilessly took aim at her nemesis.

Predating the dark Taylor persona of her Reputation era, she invited the rest of her squad to pile on in the blockbuster video starring Selena Gomez, Cara Delevingne, Karlie Kloss, Hailee Steinfeld, Zendaya, Mariska Hargitay, Gigi Hadid and Lena Dunham.

Unfortunately it all started to get a bit Regina George, and we all know how that ended. As Taylor herself once sang, “Why do you have to be so mean?”

4

Better Than Revenge

From the opening “Ha!” to the clunky punk pop riffs, this bratty Avril Lavigne-like single off Speak Now was never going to feel at all believable.

Written about her relationship with Joe Jonas and the girl he dumped Taylor for, actress Camilla Belle, it ends up being patronising and sexist and just generally rather mean.

No one expects you to be gracious all the time, Taylor, but slut shaming and blaming your break-up on anyone other than the actual man who dumped you is even more frowned up now than it was in 2010. We move.

3

London Boy

For anyone who actually lives in London, Taylor’s celebration of its hot spots sounded like a run down of the worst things you could possibly do in their home city; no matter how much you loved your new English boyfriend.

You’d only enjoy Shoreditch and Camden in the afternoon if your idea of a fun day out is sidestepping puddles of sick in the aftermath of bottomless prosecco brunches and bankers playing crazy golf.

Highgate pubs are some of the best in London, but the idea of going to The Flask with his rugby watching school mates sounds particularly nauseous.

No one likes hearing stories from uni. No one. I don’t care how cute you think his accent is.

2

Gorgeous

Dreadful.

1

Me! (feat Brendon Urie)

Ah, ‘Me!’ With its bubbly exclamation mark and its sickly sweet joyfulness. In the grand tradition of lead singles off Taylor albums, ‘Me!’ wasn’t at all indicative of the album that followed it, and even Brendon Urie seemed confused by it all in the video.

A pastel coloured dystopian nightmare that looked like an especially trippy episode of Balamory, it featured the Panic at the Disco singer floating down through the sky on an umbrella and Taylor looking like she was modelling in a morning news wedding fashion segment.

It did have a lot of fun Easter eggs in it though, but overall it just felt like eating too much pick ‘n’ mix and puking up everywhere.

~~

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Written by Jof Owen
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