The Best Taylor Swift Songs for Halloween

mad woman

Taylor Swift lifted our spirits in 2020 with the surprise release of her eighth studio album, folklore, though it wasn't all hopeful musings and cozy cardigans.

In fact, much of the album takes on a pretty dark and weighty tone, especially on 'mad woman,' which has all the makings of a perfect spooky Swift song. The eerie piano-backed ballad is centered around female rage, gaslighting and the societal standards posed upon women to keep their emotions in check, regardless of the validity of their feelings.

Written by Swift alongside The National's Aaron Dessner, who also produced the track, it's thought to be inspired by her infamous dispute with music executive Scooter Braun, who purchased her former label home, Big Machine Records, and with it the masters to her first six records. It's a messy sparring match that has resulted in a growing list of songs from the Grammy-winning hitmaker, and this one includes several references to witch hunts, being an outcast and more.

Talking about the ominous tune in Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, Swift said: "I was thinking the most rage-provoking element of being a female is the gaslighting. There have been instances of this recently with someone who is very guilty of this in my life, and it's a person who tries to make me feel like I'm the offender by having any kind of defense. I feel like I have no right to respond, or I'm crazy or I'm angry."

- Lydia Farthing

Bad Blood

"You forgive, you forget, but you never let it go."

These are wise words (and one of the many Swiftie fan chants) that were imparted to us in one of Swift's more fiery songs... though, those are technically in the version featuring iconic rapper Kendrick Lamar.

Rumored to be about fellow pop star, Katy Perry, who may or may not have hired some of Swift's dancers ahead of her Red arena tour, 'Bad Blood' combines EDM-esque keyboards, hip hop beats and a pulsing bassline to create one of Swift's best revenge tracks to date. With lines like "Did you think we'd be fine? / Still got scars on my back from your knife" and "Band-aids don't fix bullet holes / You say sorry just for show," she sings about the deepest betrayal by someone who she thought was a close friend.

The Grammy-winning music video, which resembles sci-fi action classics like Kill Bill and Mad Max while boasting a long list of guest appearances from Selena Gomez, Hailee Steinfeld, Gigi Hadid, Ellie Goulding, Cara Delevingne, Zendaya, Hayley Williams, Karlie Kloss, Jessica Alba, Ellen Pompeo and more, shows Swift and her crew caught in a fierce battle against a back-stabbing friend-turned foe with CGI explosions, plenty of weaponry and entirely too much leather.

There's drama, there's tension and there's blood drawn, which makes it a must for spooky festivities, but don't worry! Swift and Perry have since put the past behind them as they danced around in cheeseburger and french fry costumes.... don't ask.

- LF

Look What You Made Me Do

What's spookier than Taylor Swift actually being dead?!

When the old Taylor couldn't come to the phone right now on the lead single from Reputation in 2017, the reason was given as her death, much to the distress of Swifties everywhere.

The video for 'Look What You Made Me Do' was so jam packed with meta self-references that an entire book could be written on it, but in a nutshell, the video is an easter egg loaded unpicking of Swift's public perception up until this point. Premiering at the 2017 VMA's, the tongue in cheek visualizer begins with a zombified Swift literally digging her own grave before ending with a line-up of Taylor Swifts, both old and new.

First there's Zombie Taylor telling the 'You Belong With Me' Taylor to “stop making that surprised face, it’s so annoying," while another Taylor says, “You can’t possibly be that surprised all the time”. Then a different Taylor, dressed as the top hat wearing ringmaster from the Red era, tells country Taylor that she’s “so fake," whereupon country Taylor immediately bursts into tears, until finally, 2009 VMAs Taylor appears, still clutching tightly to her Moonman award, and announces that she would “very much like to be excluded from this narrative."

- Jof Owen

my tears richocet

Opening with a ghostly choir of angels singing, 'My Tears Ricochet' follows the ghost of a dead woman as she haunts her ex-lover and murderer beyond the grave.

Written with Jack Antonoff and William Bowery, the exquisite indie goth murder ballad became one of the catalysts for her eighth studio album folklore as she worked over her real-life career betrayal.

“You know I didn't want to have to haunt you, but what a ghostly scene,” she sings, using the funeral imagery as a metaphor for her feelings of betrayal. “You wear the same jewels that I gave you as you bury me.”

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Taylor explained that while she was writing songs for Folklore, she found herself being “very triggered by any stories, movies, or narratives revolving around divorce."

“There’s no reason it should cause me so much pain, but all of a sudden it felt like something I had been through," she explained. "I think that happens any time you’ve been in a 15-year relationship, and it ends in a messy, upsetting way. So I wrote ‘My Tears Ricochet’ and I was using a lot of imagery that I had conjured up while comparing a relationship ending to when people end an actual marriage. All of a sudden this person that you trusted more than anyone in the world is the person that can hurt you the worst.”

- JO

I Did Something Bad

Heavy, grungy EDM was allllll the rage in 2017, and no one did it better than Taylor Swift on her sixth record, Reputation.

Wading into her disputes and public perception in what is often seen as her "revenge" record, the Album is inundated with stomping beats, pulsing synthesizers and manipulated vocals that all combine to create a rather ominous collection from the former country darling, who compares the whole experience to something like a witch hunt.

"They're burning all the witches, even if you aren't one / They got their pitchforks and proof / Their receipts and reasons / They're burning all the witches, even if you aren't one / So light me up, light me up / Light me up, go ahead and light me up," she declares in the bridge.

Amidst them all is one of the more sinister, 'I Did Something Bad'. Said to be inspired from the final episode of the Game of Thrones seventh season, Swift shows a lack of remorse for her allegedly wrongful behaviors and relationships put in the media spotlight all those years ago... and it's the first time she's ever cursed in a song, and for that, we salute her.

- LF

no body, no crime (feat. HAIM)

Swift teams up with her popstar pals Haim to avenge a woman's murder for the sixth track off Folklore's companion album, Evermore. The murder mystery tells the story of a character, coincidentally called Este, who goes missing after confronting her cheating husband. It's suspected that her husband murdered her in favour of his mistress but without a body, he can't be tried for homicide.

The solution that Taylor and Haim come up with is for Este's friend to kill the husband and frame the mistress so everyone gets a little bit of country justice meted out to them.

“I’ve cleaned enough houses to know how to cover up a scene," they sing menacingly.

"Working with the Haim sisters on 'No Body, No Crime' was pretty hilarious because it came about after I wrote a pretty dark murder mystery song and had named the character Este, because she's the friend I have who would be stoked to be in a song like that," Swift told Entertainment Weekly. "I had finished the song and was nailing down some lyric details and texted her, 'You're not going to understand this text for a few days but... which chain restaurant do you like best?' and I named a few."

"She chose Olive Garden and a few days later I sent her the song and asked if they would sing on it," says Taylor. "It was an immediate 'YES.'" Which also explains the line, "Este wasn't there / Tuesday night at Olive Garden," that appears in the song.

- JO

Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?

Er, with all this talk of murder and revenge, we're beginning to get a little bit scared of you, Taylor.

Taylor is back from the dead again after having seemingly survived another attempt on her life, leaping from the gallows and levitating down your street as she meditates on the music industry and fame.

“If you wanted me dead, you should’ve just said / Nothing makes me feel more alive," she sings pointedly to her detractors in this menacing ballad from her 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department. "I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me / You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me,” she adds in another meme worthy moment.

With its eerie orchestration and witchy group backing vocals, it's one of Taylor's spookiest sounding songs as well as being one of darkest lyrics.

- JO

Vigilante Shit

Taylor's got murder on her mind again on the eighth track from her 2022 album, Midnights.

“They say looks can kill and I might try," she sings, hankering for some sort of revenge for an injustice that she's suffered.

Most Swifties think 'Vigilante Shit' is a coded metaphor aimed in the direction of the aforementioned Scooter Braun. Throughout the song, Swift sings about various “crimes” that have been committed against her and references Princess Diana's legendary "Revenge" outfits when she sings about how lately she's been "dressing for revenge."

- JO

Haunted

It's 2010. Your favorite country superstar – whose sophomore album, Fearless, broke the world and a slew of records – is readying her third album, Speak Now. It's a chilly October night and BAM! she releases this aptly named, blood-curdling break up tune that hasn't left your mind since.

'Haunted,' like much of Swift's third record, saw the beginning of her sonic exploration that she's still on today. Ditching the acoustic guitars and cowboy boots, this tune and the album as a whole finds Swift experimenting with rock and emo elements that meld with her still country songwriting with great effect.

After waking up with a disturbing realization of someone she was in love with drifting away, a teenage Swift wrote of the harrowing feelings in the aftermath of a relationship, the ones that stick with you for years to come.

With the production echoing the intensity felt in the prose, the arena rock anthem, boasting its electric guitars and persistent drum line, also features a sinister symphony of strings that underline the weighty, nightmarish feeling Swift is so compelled to sing about.

- LF

Carolina

Swift is no stranger to offering up songs for movie soundtracks – other credits include 'I Don't Wanna Live Forever' from Fifty Shades Darker, 'Beautiful Ghosts' from Cats and the Grammy-winning 'Safe & Sound' from The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond – yet none are as stirring and poignant as 2022's 'Carolina.'

Actually written around the same time that she was working on her lauded folklore and evermore sister records, 'Carolina' is included on the soundtrack for the film adaptation of Where The Crawdads Sing, a murder mystery film set in North Carolina in the 1950s.

Sung from the perspective of the film's protagonist, Kya, it's a truly haunting ballad that pulls on folk and bluegrass elements while only employing acoustic instruments that were available around the '50s, including mandolin, fiddle, banjo and gently strummed guitar, all over eerie minor chords.

As Swift flexes her lower register to sing the sinister lullaby, she explains that all of her secrets, which seem to be pretty ominous, will always be safe in Carolina.

'Tis a master class in American gothic perfection that keeps the hair on your arms raised from start to finish.

- LF