Love and Taylor Swift tend to go hand in hand. The musician’s skill to capture the intricacies of this complicated emotion is matched by few.
Still, each of Taylor’s albums take on a specific identity depending on her style of writing, the style of production, and the subjects she chooses to focus on. That’s why your favorite album can say a lot about you.
The five love languages were categorized by marriage counselor Gary Chapman in 2015 as a way to successfully bridge the gap between two people in a relationship by learning to speak their language. It’s about the things you value the most, but it doesn’t mean you don’t value all five different aspects to some degree. The same is true for Taylor’s albums — you will finds traces of all five love languages on every album, but each tends to lean more heavily into a specific one.
Of course, this list isn’t meant to be in any way scientific or specific, but more so a fun, lighthearted exploration of which love language is more prominent in each of the artist’s 11 studio albums.
Words of affirmation – folklore and The Tortured Poets Department
If your favorite Taylor Swift albums are either folklore or The Tortured Poets Department or both (It’s me, hi!), your love language could be words of affirmation. You might value verbal communications of love and affection like hearing your partner say they love you and express what it is exactly that they love about you.
Both of these albums, released in 2020 and 2024 respectively, are Taylor at her most poetic and contemplative. It’s the lyrics that function as the driving force of both folklore and Tortured Poets and both albums contain some of her most vulnerable declarations of love, as well as heartbreak and grief. If these two bodies of work are your favorite music Taylor has written, it’s likely you appreciate love in the written, sung, and spoken form.
Quality time – 1989, Lover and Midnights
People who love 1989, Lover, and Midnights are probably social butterflies who love having their schedule packed with all kinds of activities, trips, or a simple coffee date with your friends or partner.
Songs like “New Romantics,” “Welcome to New York,” “London Boy,” “Lover,” “Maroon,” “Paris,” and “Sweet Nothing” are all about spending quality time with your favorite people, living in the moment, and appreciating every experience, because life is short.
Physical touch – reputation and evermore
Reputation and evermore are Taylor’s most yearning and longing filled albums. They’re both defined by a desire for proximity and warmth albeit in very different ways. Reputation is about finding a genuine connection after an incredibly lonely time in your life, while evermore is much more wistful and nostalgic, taking on an almost hopeless romantic view of love.
Although it might instantly suggest sex, the physical touch love language is more broadly about being close to the other person, touching, hugging, kissing, and cuddling. But even if we do reduce it to being sexual, these albums still very much apply. Reputation is easily one of Taylor’s sexiest albums thanks to songs like “Dress” and “So It Goes,” while “’tis the damn season,” “cowboy like me” and “ivy” also provide evermore with a more mature and more complicated sexual charge.
Acts of service – Speak Now and Red
If you’re more of a Speak Now and Red aficionado, then chances are you value acts of service above anything else in a relationship. When Taylor wrote both of these classics she was at a point in her life when showing up for your significant other was the most important thing, especially because she the men she was dating back then tended to fail her in that regard. They were elusive and disconnected, and often loved bomb-ed her to make up for it.
Acts of service can range from simple courtesies, like your partner holding the door open for you, to heavier, more boring every day chores that you hate doing. Sometimes they will do it for you just because they want to help you out and it instantly feels like the most romantic thing anyone has ever done. Songs like “Begin Again,” “Stay Stay Stay,” and “All Too Well” from Red and “Mine” and “Last Kiss” from Speak Now are all great at capturing this feeling.
Receiving gifts – Taylor Swift and Fearless
Gift giving is all about symbolic tokens of your love like a letter, a song, a picture, or a ring. Because they’re so tangible and concrete, they’re easier forms of expressions to understand from a young age, which is perfectly reflected in the lyrics of earlier Taylor Swift songs like “Teardrops on My Guitar,” “Our Song,” and “Tim McGraw” from her self titled album or “Love Story” and “Hey Stephen” from Fearless.
The singer’s first two albums present a much more idyllic and romanticized version of relationships and love, expressed through grand gestures that share similarities with this love language. People whose love language is giving and receiving gifts appreciate the thought process and romanticism behind choosing and preparing the perfect present.
