I first heard about Taylor Swift when I stumbled upon her profile in a now-discontinued teen magazine. I was still in fourth grade, and Taylor was only ten years older than me. Intrigued by her stunning visuals and early rise to fame, I would use what little Wi-Fi I could find to listen to her songs and watch her music videos. Growing up with her, I can’t help but notice how her artistry, along with my perception of her, has evolved with time.

Taylor Swift entered the music industry in 2006 when she was just 16, with the self-titled album Taylor Swift. With frizzled blond hair, cowboy boots, and a strong country accent, Taylor became an unexpected success in a genre that’s atypical of teenage girls. Although she would be known as a country singer for the next few years, this album is the only one with a distinct country setting in her entire discography, with prominent melodies of banjo, dobro, acoustic guitar, and mandolin throughout. It is also filled with country-themed references such as Tim McGraw, the renowned country musician, in the song literally named after him, and phrases like “stupid old pickup truck you never let me drive” in “Picture to Burn”. Additionally, the song “The Outside” tells us about young Taylor’s struggle with fitting in and soul-searching. Taylor Swift has an overall naïve and dreamy feel, reminiscent of 16-year-old Taylor’s raw emotions.

Taylor became an even hotter national sensation after her second studio album, Fearless (2008), which features singles like “Love Story” and “You Belong with Me” that would become the anthems of teenage girls for years to come. The girl who used to sing in local cafes was now performing in glittery dresses in front of thousands of audiences. Although she had established herself as a rising young artist at this point, her songs were still imbued with childlike innocence, such as the lyric “in your life you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team” in “Fifteen”. Taylor also continued to use the real name of her crush in “Hey Stephen”, and sing about experiences with bullying in “The Best Day” (“I’m thirteen now and don’t know why my friends could be so mean”). However, Fearless also marked the time when Taylor had her first major conflict with another celebrity: as she was delivering her speech for winning the VMA Best Female Video award, Kanye West grabbed her mic and insisted that Beyoncé should have won the award instead. This incident left both Taylor and Beyoncé crying backstage.

In her next album, Speak Now (2010), Taylor sounded even more pop and grown-up. Aside from “Mean”, the songs in the album were mostly accompanied by electronic arrangements, with only subtle hints of country instruments. The album also mentioned Taylor’s high-profile breakups with Taylor Lautner in “Back to December”, John Meyer in “Dear John”, and Joe Jonas in “Better Than Revenge”. She also sang about her public feud with West in “Innocent” and barging in on her ex’s wedding in the light-hearted titular song “Speak Now”. Meanwhile, the chorus of “Sparks Fly”, “greet me with those green eyes, baby, as the lights go down”, felt more passionate than most of her previous songs. Overall, Speak Now sounds like the epitome of young adulthood: candid and innocent on one hand, but thoughtful and mature on the other. Her record label’s CEO at that time revealed that Taylor originally intended to title this album Enchanted, but later changed it to reflect her departure from “fairy tales and high school”.

However, it was not until Red (2012) that Taylor’s transition from an young country girl to a mature young woman became evident. I remember watching her music video of “I Knew You Were Trouble” with my middle school friends and being shocked at how racy it looked compared to her previous music videos. The album’s visuals were set in a moody tone and no longer used the curly “Taylor Swift” font that she had always used up to this point. Red sounds much more contemplative and features more level-headed, poetic songwriting. Some notable songs include “Red”, in which Taylor exemplified the feelings of being in love using colors and similes like “driving a Maserati down a dead-end street”, and “All Too Well”, widely regarded as one of Taylor’s lyrical masterpieces, wherein she reminisces of her past relationship that “got lost in translation”, calling herself as “a crumpled-up piece of paper lying here” for remembering it all too well. Musically, Red contains even fewer country elements — rather, Taylor experimented with various pop, country, and rock styles. Although the album was still featured in country music awards, it was regarded as more of a pop/country album by critics and fans alike.

The fifth studio album, 1989 (2014) marked Taylor’s debut as a full-fledged pop singer. While fans of Taylor’s original country works would be disappointed, the pop album allowed her to reach a wider audience. The album was titled after Taylor’s birth year and is inspired by the 1980s synth-pop genre popular around that period, featuring a variety of synthesizers and overlapped vocals. The opening song, “Welcome to New York”, seems to confirm Taylor’s transformation from a Nashville country girl into a resplendent pop diva in New York. “Shake It Off”, the first single to be released, was a shock to fans who were used to Taylor’s sweetheart image. Taylor wore funky outfits, crawled under twerking dancers, and danced whimsically with the rest of her team. Likewise, the music videos for “Blank Space”, “Style”, “Bad Blood”, and “Wildest Dreams” are also much more theatrical and mature. This era was truly a major turning point for Taylor’s artistry.

But as Taylor’s success grew, so did her difficulties. After a bitter breakup with Calvin Harris, she got into a feud with the DJ over her contribution to Harris’s song “This Is What You Came For”, and haters started calling her a snake for starting a petty drama. This only got worse after Kanye West released his controversial song “Famous”, wherein he sang the line “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / I made that b*tch famous” and slept next to a naked wax figure of Taylor in the music video. Taylor was unaware of this before the song was released, but an edited video shared by West’s wife Kim Kardashian made the public believe that Taylor was lying. Following this, the hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsASnake trended on Twitter and Taylor’s reputation plummeted. She broke her one-album-every-two-years discography, only releasing her next album reputation (2017) the following year. As the title implied, the album explored Taylor’s fall from grace in 2016, and is set in a dark, vengeful concept. The promotions for reputation began with Taylor removing all of her Instagram posts and posting short clips of a black snake a few days later. The album is full of hate and fury: “I Did Something Bad” captures this concept perfectly with the line “They say I did something bad / then why’s it feel so good?”. The music video for the lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do”, started with zombie Taylor crawling out of her grave and showed an “evil” Taylor saying “I’m sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now / Why? Oh! / ‘cause she’s dead” in the bridge.

But apparently, the old Taylor wasn’t completely dead after all, for her next album Lover (2019) was a drastic turn from reputation’s concept. As the title says, Lover is a celebration of love and pride, with colorful cheerful visuals and upbeat hits. The music video for “ME!” provides a smooth transition to this era; it began with a colorful snake that soon burst into rainbow butterflies. Out of all of Taylor’s discography, Lover is arguably the least unique; aside from Taylor-flavored songwriting, a majority of the tracks sound just like most other mainstream pop songs. Still, there are songs that showcase Taylor’s unique music styles, like “Lover” — a calm, romantic love song — and “False God” — a sensual song relating passionate love to a false god.

Just last year, Taylor released two surprise albums, folklore (2020) and evermore (2020) in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike her previous albums, the albums are drawn from a combination of Taylor’s imagination and real-life experiences, and feel much more indie. The two are like “sister albums” according to Taylor; instead of moving on to a new style for each new album like usual, Taylor enjoyed the creative production process of folklore so much that she decided to preserve the concepts of folklore in evermore. In the absence of large-scale promotions and tours due to the pandemic, Taylor was able to produce unorthodox works that are more artistic than commercial. For example, the songs “cardigan”, “august”, and “betty” revolve around a high school love triangle told from the perspectives of each lover at different stages of their lives. Taylor also managed to tell a story of two con artists who fell in love in “cowboy like me”, a murder mystery in “no body, no crime”, and an adultery set in medieval times in “ivy”. Additionally, there are songs devoted to real-life people — two of them are “epiphany” for healthcare workers fighting against COVID-19 and “marjorie” for Taylor’s grandmother, Marjorie. 

And finally, Taylor’s discography seems to come full circle when she re-recorded her second studio album as Fearless (Taylor’s Version) last month. She amazingly managed to preserve the naiveté and dreamlike feelings in the original album, while delivering the songs in a much more refined technique. The album is the first in Taylor’s plan to re-record her albums prior to Lover, which are still owned by her old label, Big Machine Records. After she left the label in 2018, it was sold to Scooter Braun, Kanye West’s manager during the release of “Famous”, and Taylor’s nemesis. But the following year, Braun sold her masters again for a reported 300 million USD, and in response Taylor opened up on social media about how he had bullied her. Indeed, she is notorious for being a “drama queen” and making enemies of fellow celebrities over “petty” affairs. However, this candidness is also what makes her loved by Swifties and the public in general. In her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana — named after one of her songs “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince”, an allegory of the current state of US politics — she discusses the struggles she faced in various stages of her life, including sensitive topics she usually avoided in interviews such as her past battle with body dysmorphia and eating disorder. 

Over the past eleven years, Taylor surely has been through a lot, and I, too, have changed in more ways than I could remember. The Taylor that I grew to love was the Taylor of the Speak Now era, so I was initially not very happy with Red, ambivalent about 1989, and nonchalant about reputation and Lover. However, I finally realized that I had simply expected her to keep her debut persona forever. But that can never be the case, because celebrities are human too — they will never stay the same. So, do I love Taylor Swift now? Wholeheartedly yes, but rather than a 20-year-old sweetheart, I admire her as an artist who’s constantly experimenting with her music and life.