23% Of Taylor Swift Fans Said This Was Their Least Favorite Song
Pop star Taylor Swift — the recipient of the 2021 Brits' Global Icon Award in May — has had more awards and chart-topping singles than a human has fingers and toes. As Vulture noted, joining notable prior Global Icon Award winners like David Bowie and Elton John, Swift broke three records by becoming the first woman, the first non-Brit, and the youngest artist to be awarded the accolade.
It's not hard to see why. Although Swift is only 31 at the time of this honor, she boasts one of the most prolific discographies amongst working singer-songwriters in the business. Once the subject of a 2014 Bloomberg op-ed piece entitled "Taylor Swift Is the Music Industry," the singer as of 2021 has put out nine studio albums and over 200 songs within the span of 13 years (via Billboard). "I think about my next move 10 steps ahead," Swift told Marie-Claire about her work ethic in 2010 (via The Boot). "I'm always planning three awards shows ahead. For me, planning is a productive way of stressing out about your life." After releasing the highly anticipated re-recorded album "Fearless (Taylor's Version)" in April, fans await Swift's next musical announcement with bated breath.
In the meantime, let's take a look at what the 579 Americans that Nicki Swift surveyed named as their least favorite Swift jam (after 200 songs, a few are bound to be not to everyone's taste, after all). The results just might surprise you...
Taylor Swift fans want fewer dance tracks from her
For Taylor Swift, lead singles and dancier tracks appear to be her weakness, as far as fan popularity goes. A Nicki Swift survey of 579 Swifties found that four of the six "least favorite Taylor Swift songs" results were her lead singles over the years, with 2017's "Look What You Made Me Do" leading the charge at 23.14%. Off her 2018 comeback album "Reputation," the song, set to a bassline borrowed from Right Said Fred, addresses the waves of negative press against a singer whose public persona had begun outweighing her work. Perhaps lines like, "I don't like your little games/Don't like your tilted stage/The role you made me play of the fool/No, I don't like you" were too simple for fans accustomed to the precocious songwriter's dexterous lyrics.
Almost neck-and-neck in second and third place were 2014's "Welcome to New York" at 18.65% (off "1989," Swift's first crossover into full-on pop) and 2019's "Me!" at 18.31%. The former, the Village Voice pointed out, was "a tourism campaign disguised as a single." The breakup anthem from 2012, "We Are Never Getting Back Together," and the youthful bop "22" — both packing explosive propulsive pop choruses — landed at 15.89% and 12.95% respectively. The critically praised mega-hit (and lead single) off the "50 Shades Darker" soundtrack, "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" is a surprising entry at 11.05%. Perhaps that falsetto-sung "oh baby, baby" got on listeners' nerves after too many plays on the radio!