The Most Loved Taylor Swift Lyrics, Based on Data Science

When John Lennon wrote the lyrics to “Glass Onion” in 1968, he was trolling the obsessive Beatles fans who read too much into the band’s increasingly opaque lyrics.

Half a century on, the new World’s Biggest Pop Star, Taylor Swift, has built a career on the masked characters, loaded imagery and teasing Easter eggs of her expanding songbook.

In the 1960s, Beatles fans would pore over the printed lyrics on the cardboard album covers—an idea the band popularized with the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Today, Swifties can go straight to the internet to read the lyrics and decode them in the forums. While printed Beatles lyrics were something of a bonus, Swift’s collected writings have become integral to the whole Taylor Swift project.

To find which songs fascinate fans the most, Crosswords.tips found the total lyric views for all songs from Taylor Swift's studio albums from Genius, ranked them overall and just for the Tortured Poets Department album and found the most loved lyrics for each album.

Key Findings

• “All Too Well 10 Minute Version” (Taylor's Version) is the Taylor Swift song with the most loved lyrics, with 4.7 million views on Genius.
• “Fortnight” has the most loved lyrics on Swift’s Tortured Poets Department album, with 3.0 million views.
• “Blank Space” has the most loved lyrics from Swift’s 1989 album (1.9 million views), but “Is It Over Now” (Taylor’s Version) is the most loved from 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (2.4 million views).

Lost “All Too Well” Lyrics Are Swifties’ Favorite

The most loved Taylor Swift lyrics are for “All Too Well 10 Minute Version” from Red (Taylor's Version)—her rerecording of 2012’s Red.

Fans have viewed the “All Too Well 10 Minute Version” lyrics 4.7 million times, which is almost one and a half times that of second-placed “Cardigan” from Folklore (3.2 million). There are three songs from The Tortured Poets Department among the ten most loved lyrics, but four songs from 2020’s Folklore.

Swift rerecorded four of her earliest albums in their entirety following a dispute over ownership of the master recordings. The extended version of the original “All Too Well” is of particular interest since it apparently includes lyrics cut from the original song, which have been under considerable scrutiny since fans believe it to be about Swift’s relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal. Despite claims that Swift could not have written these ‘lost’ lyrics as early as the original Red era, the song remains a point of fascination for Swifties.

“Basically, when I was writing the Red album,” Swift told Jimmy Fallon, “I knew I had a favorite on the album, and it was a song called ‘All Too Well.’ But what happened on this album was, this song became the fans' favorite on its own.”

And the Most Loved Lyrics in Swift’s Tortured Poets Department Are…

The 31-track anthology version of Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department has a word count of 9,795 words across its 122 minutes. It’s her funniest album (according to The Guardian) and her rudest (with 57 curse words). And the most loved lyrics are on the opening track, “Fortnight,” which has three million views on Genius. “I Look In People's Windows” has the least popular lyrics, with just 617,400 views.

“Fortnight” was the lead single from Tortured Poets Department and was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 as Swift became the first artist to hold the top 14 positions at once. The downtempo synthpop track was co-written and performed by Post Malone and “tells the story of a former love affair turning into a suburban nightmare” as the narrator’s former lover moves in next door, according to American Songwriter. “Now you’re in my backyard, turned into good neighbors/

Your wife waters flowers; I wanna kill her,” sings Swift. Fans have speculated that she’s singing about her British ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn since ‘fortnight’ is a common British word meaning “two weeks.”

The Most Loved Lyrics on Every Taylor Swift Album

Finally, we identified the most loved lyrics on each of Taylor Swift’s 15 albums (including rerecordings) to date. Her Folklore album (2020) has the song with the second most loved lyrics of all: “Cardigan,” which has 3.2 million views. “Cardigan” was the first single from Folklore, and Swift teased fans with promises of hidden Easter eggs on the forthcoming material during the countdown to the single’s release.

“I view Folklore as wistful and full of escapism,” explained Swift. “Sad, beautiful, tragic. Like a photo album full of imagery, and all the stories behind that imagery.” “Cardigan” is one part of a triptych of songs telling the story of a love triangle from each of the three perspectives. “One thing I did purposely on this album was put the Easter eggs in the lyrics, more than just the videos,” wrote Swift in a live chat. “I created character arcs & recurring themes that map out who is singing about who.”

The Tortured Fandom

As her career and talents as a wordsmith have evolved, Taylor Swift has only become more mysterious.

“There was a point that I got to as a writer who only wrote very diaristic songs that I felt it was unsustainable for my future moving forward,” she told Zane Lowe in 2020. “When I put out Folklore, I felt like if I can do this thing where I get to create characters in this mythological American town or wherever I imagine them, and I can reflect my own emotions onto what I think they might be feeling and I can create stories and characters and arcs, I don’t have to have it feel like when I put out an album I’m just giving tabloids ammunition and stuff.”

Few modern pop stars face such scrutiny towards their lyrics. Swift’s genius has been to turn this scrutiny into the basis of her appeal and drip-feed clues to her highly literate fanbase, one line at a time.

Methodology

To determine the most beloved Taylor Swift lyrics, we sourced the total lyric views for all songs from her studio albums and rerecordings (Taylor's Versions) from Genius.com. This data analysis was completed in May 2024.