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With over 250 songs, 14 Grammys, and 118 Guinness World Records to her name, Taylor Swift has reached the pinnacle of lyrical storytelling and has left an indelible mark on the landscape of pop and country music.
From the innocent country romance of her teens to the emotionally surcharged pop of her twenties to ruminating about the mind's complexities in her thirties - Swift's music has been the torchbearer of a generation's worth of emotions.
Her eleventh solo album, The Tortured Poets Department, was released a few days back, and the songs are expected to rack up astronomical numbers in sales when the Billboard 200 Albums chart and the Billboard Hot 100 Songs charts come out next week.
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Taylor Swift's Top 5 most popular songs, ranked
5) Shake it Off, 1989 (2014)
Times Streamed on Spotify: 1,375,526,556
Shake It Off was released as part of Taylor Swift's 2014 album, 1989. The song is one of the biggest chartbusters in the singer's career, staying atop Billboard's Hot 100 for four straight weeks and in the top 10 for six months.
Taylor's life has been embroiled in controversies with juggernauts like Kanye West and Katy Perry, and 2014's anthem is for the haters. She tells the world how she shakes them off.
Talking about Shake It Off in an interview with Good Morning, Taylor Swift commented, "People will find anything about you and twist it ... You have to not only live your life in spite of people who don't understand you — you have to have more fun than they do."
The song also earned Grammy nominations for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Pop Solo Performance.
4) Anti-Hero, Midnights (2022)
Times Streamed on Spotify: 1,513,361,419
Anti-Hero was the lead single of Taylor Swift's Grammy-winning Midnights album released in 2022.
While other album entries focus on emotions of love and revenge, Anti-Hero makes Taylor Swift her own villain and talks about her incessant insecurities, anxieties, and self-doubt.
Talking about Anti-Hero on Instagram, she wrote:
This song really is a real guided tour throughout all the things I tend to hate about myself. We all hate things about ourselves," she said. "So yeah, I like 'Anti-Hero' a lot because I think it's really honest.
Anti-Hero debuted at the apex of Billboard's Hot 100 and remained there for six weeks. Later, it returned to the top again and stayed there for another two weeks.
3) I Don't Wanna Live Forever, Fifty Shades Darker (2017)
Times Streamed on Spotify: 1,632,780,371
Taylor Swift released I Don't Wanna Live Forever as a duet with ZAYN. The song is a part of the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack and depicts an interplay between relationship struggles and the importance of second chances.
The song is the perfect representation of the plot of Fifty Shades Darker. It talks about a problematic relationship in which the dominant character is estranged from his emotions but eventually gives in.
I Don't Wanna Live Forever peaked at number 2 on Billboard's Hot 100 in March 2017.
2) Blank Space, 1989 (2014)
Times Streamed on Spotify: 1,788,911,127
In 2014, Taylor replaced herself at #1 on Billboard's Top 100 when Blank Space dethroned Shake It Off. The 2014 song spent seven weeks at the top that year.
Taylor Swift's love life has always been the subject of media scrutiny, and she has been incessantly criticized for writing songs about it. However, she decided to collect the bricks thrown at her and make a castle out of it in Blank Space.
Taylor Swift revealed the motivation behind the song before her performance at the Grammy Museum. The pop star discussed how the media portrayed her as a "psycho serial dater girl" and how she turned that media-painted avatar into a character for her song.
1) Cruel Summer, Lover (2018)
Times Streamed on Spotify: 2,033,760,246
Cruel Summer is the most streamed Taylor Swift song on Spotify to date, having been played over two billion times at the time of writing. Although Cruel Summer was released as part of Lover in 2018, it was released as a single in June 2023. The song finally topped Billboard's Hot 100 in October 2023.
In Cruel Summer, the singer talks about a casual relationship that takes place over one summer. The 34-year-old sings about sneaking out, climbing out of the window, and jumping walls to meet her casual lover.
Since Taylor is known to write about her real relationships, many have wondered if Cruel Summer is about one of her boyfriends. Unfortunately, the singer has never revealed anything, and fans don't have a plausible working theory. Ultimately, it can be a fictitious tale or connote a relationship she's never shared with the public.
With fans going gaga over the newly released songs of Taylor Swift's latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, it won't be a surprise if one or more songs from the album dethrone the ones in the list.
After all, Taylor Swift is the only female musician to have replaced herself at the top when Blank Space replaced Shake It Off at the apex of Billboard's Top 100. It makes us wonder if she'll be the only woman ever to do it twice!
