Pulp Ranked: The tracks of Taylor Swift’s new album, Lover
By Nicolette Petra
Taylor Swift dropped a fresh album last Friday and after playing it on repeat all weekend, I have a lot of feelings and we have a lot to cover.
Disclaimer: **ALL** of Taylor’s new songs are fab, but let’s face it – only some that will join the likes of Love Story, Wildest Dreams and Out of the Woods in the God Tier. Don’t @ me.
Summary
God Tier
I Forgot That You Existed, The Man, The Archer, Paper Rings, Cornelia Street, Death By A Thousand Cuts
High Tier
Lover, I Think He Knows, Cruel Summer, London Boy
Mid Tier
False God, Soon You’ll Get Better ft. Dixie Chicks, You Need To Calm Down, Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince
Shit Tier
ME! (ft. Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco), It’s Nice To Have A Friend, Afterglow, Daylight
Let’s start from the top.
GOD TIER
I Forgot That You Existed – Your girl has started off her new album with a BANG-ERRR! This song is, and rightly so, the first track on Tay Tay’s new album cos it’s number one in my eyes. This song is that freeing feeling of singledom, a subtle flipping of the bird to your ex, and the beat you bump to when you pick up your girls for a night out.
Paper Rings – If there’s a track that captures the essence of relationships for young people today, it’s this one. Taylor walks us through the millennial relo from Instagram-stalking start to paper-ring marriage finish. At its heart is that all-consuming love that is defined not by material things, but by the experiences, picture-frame memories and dreams you make with your s/o. Baby boy, dis a creepy but hella accurate and relatable bop.
The Man – Hell. YES. Now here’s a song about love for womankind and saying ‘screw it’ to double standards. It’s not unlike Taylor’s 1989 lead single Shake It Off and Blank Space in that it addresses her dating life. In those bangers, Swift raises that she’s painted as a serial dater with a ‘long list of ex-lovers’ who ‘can’t make ‘em stay.’ With this new track Swift vents that she’s sick of men earning respect and titles like ‘Alpha’, ‘player’, and ‘The Man’ for their dating conquests, work ethic, being flashy, and it being ‘okay to be mad’, when women aren’t given the same cudos. Sound off, girl! Sound.👏 OFF.👏
The Archer – Released just in July, The Archer is the fifth song on the album and, according to Taylor’s Instagram livestream, the most ‘honest, emotional, vulnerable, and personal’ of all the tracks. It’s about self-love and the struggle in reaching a place of truly accepting yourself #gainsonly. It has a great build, and the looming beat of an action blockbuster, which completely contradicts the uncertain and vulnerable lyrics, making this track all the more powerful. Definitely one to belt out in the car with friends. Or alone. No judgement here.
Cornelia Street – Wowee. This one has some heavy Red and 1989 vibes. Cornelia Street speaks to the doubt we can feel in relationships, and the suspicion of being led on only to be pleasantly surprised otherwise. What’s really special about this song though, is the gravity of it; you can really feel the weight of how important this relationship is to Taylor, and that’s why it’s so relatable. It bottles the moment when you not only feel extremely happy, but you realise it and understand how different your life would be without the people you love in it. No doubt, this is the best slow song on the album because of its happy-sad nature.
Death By A Thousand Cuts – Instrumentally, there are so many layers to this song. There’s a loop of ‘my, my, my’, multiple guitars, drums, a squeaky synth, a magical piano, some sort of maraca? It’s undoubtedly the most interesting to listen to, and the title and message is a beautiful metaphor for the painful aftermath of a breakup.
HIGH TIER
Lover – Now, this song has some good moments. It paints relationships as a liberating act of teamwork (‘this our place, we make the rules’) where it’s so often a point of pining, yet still shows a deep, loving connection. But it reminds me of that Sex and the City episode where Carrie keeps saying she’s ‘taking a loverrrr’ and I can’t help by cringe. What holds Lover up is its music video, which has a heap of easter eggs, with one fan suggesting that each room in the mv represents one of Taylor’s previous albums, thus representing her musical career as a whole. Tbh it’s too good not to be true, and you can check out the theory here (when you’re done reading this first, of course).
I Think He Knows – This track is reminiscent of Swift’s usual songs about blooming relationships, but there’s a new level of maturity and self-assuredness to it. Her line ‘I think he knows he better lock it down, or I won’t stick around cos good ones never stay,’ has the same regal vibe as Mia’s grandmother in Princess Diaries saying, ‘The Queen is never late, everyone else is simply early.’ With that said, lyrics like ‘It’s like I’m seventeen, no one understands,’ are a good lol – we love a self-aware queen who knows she was an angsty teen.
Cruel Summer – I’m a sucker for an upbeat T-Swift song but it was the melodramatic bridge, particularly the gloriously twisted line ‘I scream for whatever it’s worth “I love you!” Ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard? He looks up grinning like a devil!’, that lifted this from mid to high tier.
London Boy – Ah, yes. The age-old story of smiley American girl meets dimply British boy. This one’s most likely (dare I say, clearly) dedicated to Taylor’s current boyfriend and Englishman, Joe Alwyn and I can’t deny that I ‘fancy’ our girl’s heavy-handed sprinkling of UK lingo almost as much as I fancy this track.
MID TIER
False God – No matter how many times I listen to this track I hear the first verse and then suddenly it’s over. The lyrics have a Hozier-esque quality (Take Me to Church, anyone?), and the slightly alternative synth and ‘eh’s make me think this belongs in an indie movie. But the slowed down, jazzy saxophone makes me zone out of the song and zone into my readings. A solid mid-tier track because it made it onto my Spotify study music playlist.
Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince – Enter the all-consuming-love track. Lyrically, this screams Sparks Fly, but musically, it’s got Reputation written all over it. To the mid-tier, with you!
Soon You’ll Get Better ft. Dixie Chicks – This has the sad, angsty acoustic vibes of stripped-back, old-country Taylor. It's the song you crack out when you’re feeling down, or to help you wring out all the tears during your weekly scheduled cry sesh this semester.
You Need To Calm Down – Another one that’s been out for a while, YNTCD is an anthem about embracing tolerance, and fixing each other’s crowns has never sounded more like a fierce clap back. The song is as upbeat as its music video and with the insane number of celebrity cameos in the mv, it’s safe to say that YNTCD is this album’s Bad Blood. Only this time, Taylor and Katy are making-up, not rocking up to a fiery showdown. Amen to that!
SHIT TIER
ME! (feat. Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco) – In the immortal words of Ariana Grande, thank u, next. Sure, this is a fun song but you can’t deny that it makes you feel like you’ve been pushed into an over-saturated Disney teen musical (which I’m all for btw (granted it includes Zac Efron, duh)). By virtue of the fact it’s been completely ooovveerrplayed on the radio for several months now, it’s long overdue that this track hits the bin. But let’s be honest, this is a TSwizzle song, so it’s not going to the tip, it’ll just be recycled at some point in the future when you need an ego boost.
It’s Nice To Have A Friend – Yes, it is. And the love in friendships is all too often sidelined for the love in relationships. But this sounds like the intro to a Big Little Lies episode, and while I’m a fan of the book and series adaptation, as far as this song goes, it doesn’t rank on the makes-me-wanna-dance-in-my-room scale.
Afterglow – The lyrics are honest in their simplicity, but they are simple. Afterglow is a classic Taylor song with a classic Taylor sound, but it lacks the maturity and growth of the other songs on this album. This is the song you sway to at a concert with your phone light on, but it’s not the song you wait all night for Queen T to sing. (Might I suggest a song of the same name by The Driver Era instead?)
Daylight – A reassuring track where Taylor tells us to let go, but again, little more than a nice bit of music to play if you need a backing track to your life as you walk between lectures. I will say, however, that the recording of her voice at the end is touching and the words ‘You are what you love’ is a beautiful way to cap off an album that is an homage to love and the many forms it takes.