Ranking the Vault Songs from 1989 (Taylor’s Version)
“I would stay forever if you say, ‘Don’t go.’”
Another month, another Taylor Swift album is on the way. Just when I finished my vault rankings for Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) was imminent. And now, as I finally affirm my vault rankings for the new 1989 re-release, The Tortured Poets Department is just around the corner. It’s hard to keep up!
Since I became a Swiftie in 2019 with the premiere of Lover, Taylor has released Folklore, Evermore, Midnights, and re-recordings of Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and 1989. She has released multiple documentaries, contributed to several films, delivered “Christmas Tree Farm,” and is still in the midst of the biggest tour in the history of concerts and live music. She has also defeated a decades-old record held jointly by Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, and Stevie Wonder for the most Album of the Year Grammys of all-time (four!). And there’s another album and two more re-records on the way. So, I suppose I picked a perfect time to become a Swiftie.
Pivotally, it was “How You Get the Girl” that helped me open up to trying Lover. That underrated 1989 pop jam delivered a fondness of melodies to me beyond the radio hits that I had heard vastly more than any deeper cuts on her masterful records. Without having heard that song first, I may not have felt the need to dive deeper into Taylor’s discography. As such, I’d have never uncovered a bona fide, eternal member of my musical Mount Rushmore.
Therefore, it is kind and fitting to now revisit the 1989 album as my Swiftie journey continues to compound into increased delirium and euphoria with each passing day. The album that cemented her as a pop icon beyond “just” a country star and burgeoning songwriting legend is still considered one of the all-timers. A defining record of the 2010s and a Grammy winner for Album of the Year, 1989 continues to enrich and entice more Swifties every day. Whenever you see one of those TikTok videos of a social media intern asking football players what their favorite song is by Taylor Swift, you’re likely to hear “Blank Space,” “Wildest Dreams,” or any one of the myriad singles Swift released into the stratosphere back in that 2014–15 heyday of her pop awakening. That’s because 1989 is just ubiquitous in the music landscape.
Now, I still think the vault tracks from Red (Taylor’s Version) have yet to be topped, but the 1989 (Taylor’s Version) vaults were the first ones where I didn’t feel like one was a lukewarm track that I’d be comfortable skipping right away. They’re all pretty solid! None that would crack the pantheon of my favorite Taylor vaults, but none that would hit the bottom of the lower echelon either. Partly, I think that is because the vaults kind of sound like they would be as comfortable being vault tracks for Midnights, rather than 1989. Yet, it’s also partly because 1989 is not necessarily an album that had deeper places to go; the original track listing and bonus tracks were already driven by depth and emotional insight. Still, it is a gift to have these and I appreciated that there weren’t any features on them either, as some had speculated. This was just a quality, well-done re-release rollout with little fanfare. And that’s okay because the original 1989 already had so much runway. Let’s spend a little bit more time going into the ones that have now joined the Swiftian oeuvre.
5. “Now That We Don’t Talk”
Speaking of 1989 vault tracks that sort of sound like they could be from Midnights, I think this one might be the biggest offender and that’s probably why I have it ranked in the fifth position. Yes, I know that Jack Antonoff was a producer on both (and certainly more involved with the vaults from 1989 than he was in the original recording), but still, I feel like the production on “Now That We Don’t Talk” is just not the kind of production we would have heard if the song had escaped the vault a decade ago via Shellback, Max Martin, or Ryan Tedder. That is okay, though, because Midnights is also a dynamite album! And sometimes, songs remained in the vault for a reason. With as much overflowing quality as 1989 had, there just had to be cuts; that’s why editing matters (ironic, I know, coming from the person who wrote so many essays about television shows that they’d have to be in two volumes if they were ever published in print form). Regardless, the song itself is still pretty quality. A six out of ten, I’d say. She hits high notes well throughout and it is certainly atmospheric. However, lyrically, I feel like it only barely touches on the topic of wondering what happens to the life you shared with a person when you break up. What happens to their family? Their friends? Their day-to-day life? It’s a rich subject that she does explore deeper elsewhere, but with so much emotional depth to plum, it just left me wanting a little more here. (Side-note: a fun portmanteau of this and the next song would be, “Is It Over Now That We Don’t Talk?”)
4. “Is It Over Now?”
“Is It Over Now?” is the vault song that I think has the most potential to keep growing in my mind and 1989 proclivity. I can feel it already that I might look back on this ranking in a couple months or a year or so and wish I had moved some things around. It just feels like one of those songs that might really hit one day. For now, though, it still slots into the range of six out of ten to nine out of ten songs in the vaults. No ten out of tens, but nothing weak either. “Is It Over Now?,” however, has already begun to increase its appeal to me. The melody is starting to stick in my head a little more and the aching uncertainty present in the song just feels like a more authentic lane for Taylor to pursue. It feels as if she is more comfortable in this subject matter, which is why the songwriting just feels stronger. Write what you know, they say! I also appreciate that the musical progression of “Is It Over Now?” cannot be specifically tied down to one particular chord structure or any sort of predictable rhythm. Each line is delivered differently from the line before it and it really works well as a showcase for Swift’s vocal gymnastics and the growth that she is achieved within them even since 2014. For me, it’s most apparent in the way that this lyric could have been so clunky, but was actually so satisfying with its internal rhymes and flow: “Let’s fast forward to three hundred awkward blind dates later / If she’s got blue eyes, I will surmise that you’ll probably date her.”
3. “Suburban Legends”
It is some kind of miracle that Taylor is able to write as many songs as she does at the clip that she does without ever writing one that feels stagnant or stale or derivative of some other music she’s already written. Similar? Sure. But nothing is derivative. It always feels new and like it uniquely belongs to each of her individual songs. That is the case with “Suburban Legends,” which has this aura of familiarity to it, but cannot actually be tied down to any song in particular beyond mere inspiration (which is how 1989 operates, as a whole, anyway — what with its titular decade influences). I was hooked in by Taylor’s hook initially, but then grew to more profoundly appreciate how “Suburban Legends” ties into the everlasting ethos and philosophies of the ways in which Taylor sees the world. Through songs like “The Last Great American Dynasty,” we have always seen her appreciation for vintage culture and old school glamour. Through songs like “You Belong with Me” and “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince,” we have always been able to read her songwriting journey through the lens of scholastic metaphors. In “Suburban Legends,” we get a bit of both. Hearkening back to a kind of celebrity/relationship mystique that doesn’t really exist anymore (think Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio or Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward), “Suburban Legends” maintains the throughline from “Style” about having a “James Dean daydream look in your eye” with a “red lip classic thing that you like.” If we are to believe the song is about Harry Styles, then it is a deeper notion of how that kind of lovestruck aesthetic is great to traipse around in a relationship’s early days to, but it’s not something to build upon. It’s not something to become suburban legends with. This song articulates that brilliantly.
2. “Say Don’t Go”
Talk about a chorus that just makes you feel good. Melodically, that is. Lyrically, obviously, it’s a bit sad to be reminded of the empathy ascribed to the idea that if one person cared as much as you cared, then you’d be able to say “forever” together. This is a sentiment we can see applied to friendships, as well as relationships, but it’s also a more retroactively mature one for Taylor, as she also demonstrates the self-driven confidence and wherewithal to accept that she will not beg for someone to choose her. She knows her self-worth. Enter Diane Warren, a surprise writer on the track who has dabbled with innumerable anthems and ballads about very similar topics. Now, she won’t be able to randomly grab an Oscar nomination for “Say Don’t Go,” but it’s a track with her involvement that will stick in my memory for much longer than any of her one-offs for VOD films ever did. That swell of the chorus is just what I keep coming back to. In a way, I think the maturity and development of Swift only wanting forever if someone else wants it, too, is mirrored in that juxtaposition we see in the song’s most joy-boosting moments. The lyrics may have an undercurrent of sadness within them, but the melody is so sunny, grand, and heightened that it just reminds you of how much joy the world still has to offer, even if someone chooses to distance themselves from their time in it with you.
1. “Slut!”
I was surprised when “Slut!,” the first of the vault tracks, did not receive the overwhelmingly fawning response from others that it received from me. I suppose many were expecting an up-tempo pop banger about growing beyond the slut-shaming that exists on the Internet towards Taylor for the mere audacity of dating more than one person and — the shock of it all, I know — writing music and poetry about it. And we do get that to an extent in the song’s written portions, but it’s much more about how Taylor has found a love worth falling for that it makes all the petty insecurities just dissolve away. Musically, it is definitely mid-tempo (and even that’s being generous), but the synth elements of it really seem to find the perfect blend of 1980s inspiration, 2014 homage, and 2023 perspective. It is much slower than many of her other punctuation-laden songs, but it is slower in an evocative way. It’s hazy, almost dreamy. In terms of the song’s point of view, it just feels like it’s exactly where Taylor is at her strongest: denouncing the circus that surrounds her personal life and embracing the love that is most important to her. “If they call me a ‘slut,’ you know it might be worth it for once,” she says. For me, Taylor is never more profound than when she is fighting against the box that she herself threatens to cage herself within and “Slut!” is one of those beautiful moments when she conquers the petty things she can’t help but care about and reach inwards to her purest soul instead. I love the energy she brought to this and, as one of her most anticipated songs (by title alone), I thought she absolutely delivered brilliance with it.
These were some of the most stripped-down vault songs we’ve received yet. Very few collaborations on them (beyond Antonoff, Warren, and Patrik Berger, who contributed to “Slut!”) and very few of them, in general [nine vaults on Red (Taylor’s Version) and only five here]. However, I feel they complement 1989 well and showcase some of the best qualities of Taylor Swift’s musical career. We’ll see you in another decade for either more 1989 vaults or perhaps a bonus track or two from The Tortured Poets Department. Gosh, I can’t wait. Thanks, Taylor!
See also:
Ranking the Vault Songs from Red (Taylor’s Version)
Ranking the Vault Songs from Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)
Ranking Every Song from Lover by Taylor Swift
Ranking Every Song on Taylor Swift’s Folklore
Ranking Every Song on Taylor Swift’s Evermore
Ranking Every Song from Midnights by Taylor Swift
Fearless (Taylor’s Version): The Best Tracks From The Vault, Ranked
