Ranking the Vault Songs from Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)

Published in

Saoirse Ronan Deserves an Oscar

8 min readSep 25, 2023

“It was like an age-old classic the first time that you saw me. The story started when you said, ‘Hello.’”

In early July of this summer, it became a Speak Now season as Taylor Swift arrived at the midway point of her massive re-recording undertaking with Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). Released on July 7 to much pomp and fanfare in the middle of the Eras Tour, Speak Now finally became Taylor’s first wholly solo-written endeavor. And as we have seen throughout this re-recording era (that still has 1989, Reputation, and Taylor Swift to come after Red and Fearless releases), she also opens up the vault for some never-before-heard songs that are begging to imprint upon the world. We know Speak Now is an album that is content in the messiness of love, loss, and length (every vault track is over four minutes long; three are over five) and the vaults maintain that throughline throughout their denouement on the album. I still hold the Red vaults in the highest of esteem (I think they are better than the actual Red album itself), but the Speak Now vaults are such worthy additions to the Taylor catalog. As has become one of my favorite traditions whenever a new Taylor album is released, let’s run through the new tracks and rank them with the fulfilling knowledge that all Taylor music is a gift.

6. “Castles Crumbling”

First up, we have “Castles Crumbling,” a Jack Antonoff joint, at the bottom of the list. I appreciate the alliteration in the song and the feature of Paramore’s Hayley Williams on the song — especially since Paramore was so clearly an influence on Taylor during the original crafting of Speak Now — but it’s just one of those songs that hasn’t been super memorable for me, yet. Maybe it’ll get there eventually, but usually, a barometer for my enjoyment of music is measured by how I feel when I see the title. For “Castles Crumbling,” I can barely remember how the melody goes, even though I’ve probably heard it over fifty times already. I appreciate that it’s another ballad-esque anthem of Taylor’s deepest anxieties (“You don’t want to know me”) and it does succeed on that level. It’s just not one that I’ve really embraced as a signature song of her filmography. Not every song has to be, but I hoped to have rated a Taylor-Paramore collaboration higher.

5. “Electric Touch”

Maybe it is not a coincidence that the two collaborations on the “(From the Vault)” tracks are in the bottom two spots on this ranking; I do always enjoy when Taylor Swift just does it on her own (and Speak Now is the album that sees the most of this). But it’s important to remember, I do enjoy all six of these vault tracks. They’re maybe a hair below Red and Fearless, in my estimation, but they’re still quality. Some just have to be ranked lower. “Electric Touch” is one of the three Aaron Dessner tracks in the vaults, but most notably, it also features Fall Out Boy, who has been very vocal about the reverence they maintain for Taylor. It’s a perfectly fine feature and I dig a lot of the melodies on “Electric Touch.” Taylor’s voice sounds great and it blends into the pop rock realm seamlessly. Nothing to critique when it comes to the musicality of the track! Lyrically, it’s just not one of the strongest for me. It feels like it could’ve been a song by anyone, rather than one that is specifically Taylor’s. It made sense, to me, why it wouldn’t have made the original cut of Speak Now, but I am glad for its existence now.

4. “When Emma Falls in Love”

Apparently, according to the Taylor Swift subreddit, “When Emma Falls in Love” has received a lot of flak from Swifties as the “worst” vault track. And this is an opinion widely held and seen as accurate by a majority of Swifties? I was stunned to learn this. Not that it’s a life-changing song or anything, but I really liked it when I first heard it and it has only grown for me since; I just didn’t expect people to feel so strongly about it in the other direction. Likely about Emma Stone and performed beautifully during the Eras Tour (I’m still listening to that “Evermore” acoustic rendition every day, by the way), “When Emma Falls in Love” is one of those songs that shows what Taylor does so well. It tells a story from a narrator with a distinct and specific point of view, positioning the subject of the story as an object of awe and a figure of envy for our complicated narrator we got to know so well throughout the main “(Taylor’s Version)” tracks on the album. As we saw on Folklore and Evermore (sure enough, Dessner is on this one), Taylor is a riveting songwriter when her lyrics come from as close to an “outsider’s” perspective as we can get. “When Emma Falls in Love” is absolutely one of these without feeling any less deeply felt than her other songs with pink hearts about the vulnerable beauty of falling for someone.

3. “Timeless”

Speaking of storytelling, how about “Timeless,” right? This is where we get into the vault tracks that I really love. With Antonoff as her producer on “Timeless,” we see Taylor wade back into the narrative and thematic territories of her grandparents as she seems to write from her grandmother’s point of view about the love Marjorie held in her life. Obviously, the story hook is a great one (no matter which time the central couple lived, they would have found each other and fallen in love) and “Timeless” delivers both melodically and lyrically, too. Her voice is strong and driven, focused on telling the story with all the emotional impact felt when her grandparents did fall in love all those years ago. And what a beautiful sentiment to imagine that the love never goes away when life is lost. It ripples out into the universe forever and defines the people it touched for all time. “Timeless” is not about the absence of time when in love with someone, but the absence of needing to worry about that time — because when something is forever, then time does not matter. Whether it’s a foreign land in the 1500s or a crowded street in 1944, there was always a love story that brought us into this world at some time or another. The timely specifics don’t matter when the love is eternal.

2. “Foolish One”

I wait a couple months to write these rankings because I want to allow the songs to settle a bit in my mind and in my estimation of them before I commit to anything. This is a great reason why. “Foolish One” was my favorite after the first couple listens, but it has now slipped to number two. However, that is only because “I Can See You” continued to grow for me, while “Foolish One” remained steadfastly excellent in its Dessnerian intonations and exactly as well-written as it was when I first heard it. It was probably a good thing because “I Can See You” and its growth helped show that the Speak Now vaults were still a force to savor, rather than the lesser collection of the re-recording project. Thanks to this tussle at the top, Speak Now is able to hold its own with the others’ vaults, even if it doesn’t measure up evenly. Anyway, “Foolish One” is awesome. I love when Taylor has such a wry and sardonic take on a common feeling that subverts how she usually writes about those feelings. In this case, it’s her lovestruck obsession with someone else and the remove she needs to be able to speak to that greener version of herself with the wisdom she wished she’d had (even though she was too naive to take it because when you’re that young, no advice will ever cure a heartbreak that you think only you have felt). The song luxuriates in its over-five-minute run-time, but never in a manner that loses focus on the core theme of the song and instead deepens it while also allowing for cute vocalizing from Taylor. Furthermore, the pre-chorus is such a cogent prelude to a catchy, melodious chorus that is among Taylor’s most lilting. “And the voices say, ‘You are not the exception / You will never learn your lesson,’” she croons. “Foolish one / Stop checkin’ your mailbox for confessions of love / That ain’t never gonna come / You will take the long way, you will take the long way down.” It is such a Swiftian sentiment and one that takes on even more meaning with thirteen years passing between the original and re-recorded album releases.

1. “I Can See You”

Now, “I Can See You” has arrived as my favorite of the Speak Now vault tracks. Many people, including the Every Single Album podcast, were on this from the jump, but I needed a bit more time to get into it. It’s just so different from anything on Speak Now (it comes on the same album as “Ours,” which is surely a JFK tribute, no?) and so different from anything Taylor has done before. It took a while to recognize that I was loving it and not just finding it catchy or cool or reminiscent of the opening strands of “Mine.” With its propulsive beat, though, the song is catchy and cool; it’s just also in the pantheon of vault tracks to date and one of the major reasons why this project is so worthwhile. Where else could this song have existed? And how would it have been lesser without the Antonoff’s production on it? Not to mention, it also comes with a pretty stellar music video (Taylor Lautner and Joey King cameos galore in the TSCU!) that provides the clearest distillation yet about how Taylor views this re-recording project. Musically, the bridge reminds me a lot of the bridge on “Speak Now” (perhaps not a coincidence) in terms of chord progression, rather than exact one-to-one tonal comparisons. That final chorus kick-in is also radical and so welcome in a song that needs a consistent re-dip into energy bursts to have the identity it has. Plus, it’s clear that Taylor was feeling frisky when she wrote it and we all know some of her best songs come when she is open about her sexuality (“So It Goes,” “Dress,” “I Know Places”), so hearing that she can see them up against the wall with each other is also fantastic. The whole song just works so well and it seems like a pretty clear number one almost three months removed from the release.

All in all, Taylor has done it again! As I’ve said, she is on a run right now that is getting to a point I don’t think any other musician could touch throughout history. With more vault tracks from 1989 (Taylor’s Version) coming up next month (as well as a hotly anticipated concert film in theaters that I’ve already purchased two tickets to), I’m excited to see how that run continues.

Ranking the Vault Songs from Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)

Written by Dave Wheelroute