Taylor Swift Is Talking About ‘Red,’ Her “Only True Breakup Album”
"I wrote this album specifically about pure, absolute, to the core, heartbreak."
All Taylor Swift fans have their favorite song, music video, and album of the singer’s—and often, they’re armed with passionate explanations to prove their fave is the crowned jewel in Swift’s roster. But whether you hate the black-leather-clad, Reputation-era Tay or love the curly-haired, twirling-in-tulle-dresses Taylor circa Speak Now, we haven’t met a Swiftie who doesn’t like the singer’s fourth studio album, Red. And it turns out, Rolling Stone agrees with the unanimous support of Swift’s 2012 smash—so much so, that Red ranks among the magazine’s 100 Greatest Albums of All Time, coming in at number 99.
Rolling Stone just announced the launch of a 10-episode podcast called Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums (available exclusively on Amazon Music, starting on November 10th), where artists and RS staffers will discuss the albums which made the cut. Luckily for Swifties, Tay will be featured on one of these episodes, where she’ll offer behind-the-scenes details of the making and meaning behind Red.
Rolling Stone just released a trailer for the podcast, which includes a snippet from Taylor’s episode. While discussing Red, Swift revealed how she views her 4th album now, after making four more since its 2012 release.
“I look back on this as my only true breakup album, Swift said. Every other album has flickers of different things, but this was an album that I wrote specifically about pure, absolute, to the core, heartbreak.”
Of course, Swifties will speculate that Tay is referencing her breakup with Jake Gyllenhaal, because duh—“All Too Well”, aka the heartbreaker of all heartbreak anthems, lives on Red, and a certain little boy in glasses recently proved that the song is about him (as if we didn’t already know). Red also includes masterful heartbreak songs like “I Almost Do,” “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” and perhaps Swift’s most famous breakup song, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”
So, yes, now that we think about it, Red is most definitely Tay’s purest breakup album—and although we’re sorry she endured that heartache, we’re thrilled that Red came from it (and that the singer is happily dating Joe Alwyn now).
It’s important to note that the 10-time-Grammy-winner has not one, but two albums that rank on the Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list: Red lies at number 99 while 1989 (which snagged the 2014 Grammy for Album of the Year, BTW) sits lower at number 393. So, hopefully, we’ll also get some backstory into 1989 on Taylor’s episode.