All 30 Tracks on “Red (Taylor’s Version),” Ranked By How Much They Make Me Want to Renounce Love, Drop Out of College and Become a Sheep Farmer in Iceland or Some Other Place That Has Low Population Density
Valerie Pavilonis
Due to some copyright nonsense with Scooter Braun that I did not care to follow and know absolutely nothing about, Taylor Swift re-released her fourth studio album “Red” on Friday, Nov. 12 — a helpful reminder to us all that love is terrible and painful and also that Jake Gyllenhaal should be in prison for murder. After a week of Just Going Through It, I have managed to rank the album’s — very many — tracks by how much they made me want to start a sheep farm in the mountains and speak to no one. Enjoy!
Read The Room: “Begin Again,” “Stay Stay Stay,” “Starlight,” “Everything Has Changed,” “Holy Ground,” “22,” “Message in a Bottle,” “State of Grace,” “Run,” “Treacherous”
Great songs — bops! — but far too happy and hopeful. Booo. This is completely antithetical to the Sad Girl Autumn agenda I’m pushing over here. Also: Starlight is a piece of Ethel and Bobby Kennedy fanfiction. Is that…okay?
Sad In Theory But Not In Practice: “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “Girl At Home,” “I Bet You Think About Me,” “Babe,” “Red,” “The Very First Night,” “State of Grace (Acoustic)”
I’m sorry, but if you can dance to it at BD, you cannot listen to it while miserably shearing your sheep, cleaning the fleece and picking the wool.
See, This Is Something. I Could Cry to This While Dyeing and Carding My Wool in Complete Darkness Because the Sun Sets at 4:30 Now: “The Last Time,” “The Lucky One,” “The Moment I Knew,” “Come Back…Be Here,” “Better Man,” “Forever Winter”
Finally, Red accomplishes its main goal — which, contrary to popular belief, was not transitioning Swift from country into pop or setting her up for global superstardom but, in fact, making me distraught.
I Am Going to Throw My Phone into the Atlantic: “Ronan,” “Nothing New,” “I Almost Do,” “Sad Beautiful Tragic”
Bad news: I’m starting to think that hand spinning wool will not be a good enough distraction from this pain.
That Made Me Want To Die: “All Too Well” and “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)”
I listened to the 10-minute version of “All Too Well” and said, “Oh, okay, this is fine.” And then I listened to it eighty more times in the span of six hours, and then I watched the short film and now there is nothing left for me to do but learn how to knit, make a lot of scarves and never, ever lend them to terrible boyfriends.