Taylor Swift

The Icon throughout the : Years

Anyone off the street can tell you who Taylor Swift is. She’s an icon, there’s no doubting it, but the girl who stepped into the music scene 16 years ago has grown into a woman before the world’s eyes. Her music has influenced popular music artists. Her albums continue to top the charts almost two decades after her initial entrance to the music world, but how much has changed?

Taylor Swift’s self-titled debut album, Taylor Swift, which came out in 2006, featured a country heavy soundtrack, bringing well-known songs such as “Should’ve Said No”, “Tim McGraw”, and “Teardrops on My Guitar” into the world. Everything changed when Taylor Swift released her fourth album, “Red” at 22 years old. Not only had her voice matured, but her songs too. Her songs featured fresher sounds and more intricate lyrics that helped break her into the pop music scene. Songs such as “We Are

Never Ever Getting Back Together”

and “I Knew You Were Trouble” still showcased her heartbroken tone from her earlier songs, but unlike “Tim McGraw”’s lamentful lyrics about lost time and love, these songs were exciting and upbeat “1989” came out two years later with songs that screamed even stronger of the pop genre. Swift embraced the criticism of the berating songs she wrote about her exes with songs like “Blank Space” and “Bad Blood” showing Swift’s unapologetic yet stinging take on her past relationships. While the beat was different, many lyrics carried on the same themes as her previous songs. Much like how “Everything Has Changed” shared the hopeful romantic tone of “Love Story”, “Shake It Off” approached the same devil-may-care attitude as “Mean” when it comes to the criticism of her life with a more care-free feel.

Swift’s sixth album, “reputation”, came out three years later with harsh lyrics and edgier beats. With songs like “Look What You Made Me Do” and “So It Goes…” bringing bass heavy songs into her track record. Many of the songs were about love, but rather than the hopeful romantic take, they were about not caring what others thought, like in “Delicate”, or how they never should have trusted her, like in “Don’t Blame Me”.

Her 2017 album, “Lover”, featured subdued beats but more of the same hopeful romance and heartbroken laments as her earlier tracks. While the romantic and heartbroken themes continued, many of the tracks featured more mature lyrics in songs like “The Man” and “Daylight”.. Which detailed her struggles in the music industry as a woman, a comparison of “the daylight” she sees to a brighter future.

Swift released “folklore” and “evermore” from 2020 to 2021. Songs like “no body, no crime”, which detailed the story of Swift’s revenge on her best friend’s murderer, and “the last great american dynasty”, which told the story of a woman living in a mansion on the coast of Rhode Island, were fiction, but other tracks like “epiphany” and “marjorie” are tributes to Swift’s grandparents. Each line is packed with meaning, using words like “Machiavellian” and “contrarian” to get her intended feelings across to the listeners.

In October of last year, Taylor released her tenth album, “Midnights,” with thirteen tracks detailing nights she had laid awake. Her first track, “Lavender Haze,” began with the phrase she spread across the internet: “Meet me at midnight”.

Story by: Teagan Willyard