I wouldn’t call myself an avid “Swiftie,” purely because I don’t really like the group nicknames given to fans for being a fan of a random celebrity. I think that Taylor Swift is a really talented artist, and I have been following her pretty closely for as long as I can remember. I went to her concert during the "Red" tour in Tacoma, Washington as well as in Seattle, Washington during her 1989 tour. I have every one of her CDs on a playlist on my phone, as well as on my Spotify account.
When I heard she was planning to release another album, I was ecstatic. It’s been too long since some new Swift music, and I had gotten to know this waiting game a little all too well… (see what I did there).
I eventually got to thinking about which of Swift's albums were my favorite, and eventually even which songs I preferred over others. I regularly blast T Swift when I'm driving around, and I got to thinking, which songs do I skip the most?
Thus, the idea was born. The T Swift Bracket Style Best Song Tournament (Abbreviated on the streets to TTSBSBST). Just kidding, that would be obnoxious.
Anyway, in order to make a bracket, I knew I needed a number that would allow me to finish with a final two, and 64 seemed like far too many so I settled on narrowing it down to 32 songs. I started with 40 songs, from Billboard’s list. I wrote the numbers one through twenty down both sides of a piece of paper, and I wrote down all of the songs in order, alternating sides. This meant that the number one song would be pitted against the number three song, the number five against the number seven, and so on.
Once I got all of the songs down, I crossed off the bottom four on each side in order to narrow it down to 32 songs. I then turned to my selection committee.
This group was made up of my roommate, her boyfriend, and three of my friends. Three of these people considered themselves pseudo “Swifties” similar to myself.
We began going through the list simply pitting one against the other and voting on our favorites. If there wasn’t a natural consensus, we would either turn to the music videos, and watch both and decide on the quality from there, or we would think about driving in the car. If we could imagine riding shotgun, with our hair undone in the front seat of his car, jamming to this song, then it typically made it further through the bracket.
The song that won, was "You Belong with Me" from Swift’s "Fearless" album. The hardest part of the battle for "You Belong with Me," came in round one, against "Speak Now." We listened to both songs, and because of the iconic music video for "You Belong with Me," it took the cake. When Taylor is holding up the sign from her room with the glasses on and all of the names on her t-shirt, it’s such a classic moment, and it deserved to win.
Other songs that were major contenders were, "Shake it Off" and "I Knew You Were Trouble." I think that part of the reason "You Belong with Me" won is because the majority of my voting committee have been longtime Swift fans, and if we didn’t grow up listening to certain songs, we wouldn’t have the same appreciation or memories of it.
I plan to redo this list in a few months to include her new album, "Reputation." I think that while "Reputation" has the potential for being phenomenal, I wonder if it will originally face the same backlash that "1989" and even "Red" faced at the beginning, simply because of how different it was from her older stuff.
Nonetheless, I plan to purchase her album and attend her concert if I can.
