Every vault track on Taylor Swift's 'Red (Taylor's Version),' ranked

Ahlgrim: "Forever Winter" is best understood as a spiritual relative of "Renegade," the better of Swift's two collaborations with Big Red Machine, released in July 2021.

Both songs explore a tenuous relationship with someone who's falling victim to late-night doom spirals, as well as the toll that's taking on Swift's own mental health. "I call, just checking up on him / He's up, 3 am, pacing," she sings in the former. "I tapped on your window on your darkest night / The shape of you was jagged and weak," she sings in the latter.

Unfortunately, because we heard "Renegade" first, I can't help but feel that "Forever Winter" is lacking. It doesn't contain the same gut-punch revelations or keen-eyed observations, instead casting Swift as a kind of happiness tool at a man's disposal, desperately pleading to be the "summer sun" to thaw his sadness.

Larocca: If you're going to center yourself in someone else's suffering, chances are you're going to rub some listeners the wrong way. As someone who is self-aware enough to know I'll never be someone's summer sun forever, I relate more to Swift's subject here, and it bugs me that she talks about him instead of to him in the verses.

I can tell Swift is trying to be empathetic and understanding, but without this direct action, it feels like she sees him as a problem she needs to solve, and that maybe she's talking about him to someone else behind his back. The song is strongest in the choruses, however, when she's singing directly to the person.

I much prefer "Renegade," because she's in conversation with her subject the entire time. While "Renegade" is personal and recalls a tough-love conversation with somebody who really needs it, "Forever Winter" sounds like Swift is recruiting opinions and asking everyone she knows, "What are we going to do with him?"

No one I know likes to be the person that their friends were brainstorming an intervention for behind the scenes.

The horns are nice though.

Ahlgrim: "Run" is the secret second collaboration with Ed Sheeran from the "Red" era.

Although I prefer the one we already had ("Everything Has Changed"), I do appreciate that "Run" is still infused with the intimacy and warmth that Swift and Sheeran clearly share. It's easy to picture two pals sitting on a trampoline, whispering secrets about new crushes, devising a plan to protect young love from prying eyes.

Larocca: I really liked this one when it first came out, but I haven't found myself reaching for it much since. Swift already had a Sheeran collab on the album, and "Everything Has Changed" has more to offer.

"Run" is monotonous at times, and without any standout moment, it ends up being quite forgettable.

Ahlgrim: I always enjoy a casual spin of "Message in a Bottle" and there's nothing bad about the song, per se. I love how Swift describes her daydreams of this person's laughter as a "disaster," and the central metaphor of sending a love letter into the void with nothing but hope and a bit of sand.

This is just not one I consistently reach for as a standalone track. I see it more as the little sister of "The Very First Night" — highly danceable, just not quite as thrilling.

Larocca: With its infectious beat and refusal to take itself too seriously, "Message in a Bottle" is a fun time from start to finish. I don't think I've ever been able to sit still while listening to this one; it's as if Swift bottled straight joy.

Ahlgrim: I would take "Babe" over several standard-edition "Red" tracks, including "22," "Stay Stay Stay," "The Lucky One," "Starlight," and "Girl at Home." None of these could stand up to that country-rock beat drop in the chorus, the glorious bed of horns beneath Swift's harmonies, or her anguished delivery of the bridge's fatal blow: "I hate that because of you, I can't love you."

"Red" is the era of Swift's most potent yearning. The album's best songs show us the future she once saw so clearly, but was forced to abandon before she was ready.

"Babe" doesn't have an arena-ready muscle like "State of Grace" or the heady lyrics of "All Too Well." But despite its perky sheen and conversational style, it paints a vivid portrait of broken promises and certainly belongs in the same division.

Larocca: I understand why Swift kept "Babe" off the original album and gave it away to Sugarland. She already had another song ("The Last Time") where she repeats the phrase "this is the last time..."

"Babe" is an irritating pet name, so its overuse here can verge on annoying. The inclusion of "What about your promises, promises?" balances it out, though — and makes it superior to the Sugarland take.

Ahlgrim: "I Bet You Think About Me" snuck up my ranking with astonishing agility. It didn't blow me away when it was first released, but now, it's one of the "Red" tracks I listen to the most — singing in the car, dancing in the shower, prancing around the kitchen with a glass of wine.

There's never a bad time to enjoy Swift at her most jaunty and derisive. I can't get enough of the line "I'm harder to forget than I was to leave" — a phrase so classically Swiftian that I'm floored it took us until 2021 to hear it — or the way she spits out "million dollar couch."

This song is a delicious bite of self-righteous fury, wrapped up in winks and twangy guitar strums.

Larocca: "Oh my God, she's insane" has echoed in my head weekly since "Red (Taylor's Version)" first dropped.

Swift described "I Bet You Think About Me" as "sort of a drinking song," in an interview shared by the Boston radio station 102.5. "We wanted to kind of make people laugh with it," she explained.

She succeeded. Nothing brings me more unbridled joy than crooning along in a country accent to "I'll bet your friends tell you she's better than me, huh!" It satiated the part of my brain that's waiting for "Better Than Revenge (Taylor's Version)."

But aside from making every shower a karaoke bar or every car a stage, "I Bet You Think of Me" is a win for annoying Swift fans like me who know that, when an ex thinks Taylor Swift, they think of them. I love having that power and it will never stop being funny that there's an entire song about that very concept.

Ahlgrim: Surely, "The Very First Night" is laced with some kind of addictive substance. Is it the way Swift trills "fly" and "sky" in the chorus, or those bright opening chords? Is it the drum pattern that sounds like a racing heartbeat? The answer, of course, is all of the above.

The only thing that would make this song more screamable is if Swift had committed to the proper rhyme scheme.

Larocca: "The Very First Night" is an everlasting pop song for the ages. This would have hit so hard in 2012, and it still does in 2022. I will never get enough of screaming, "They don't know how much I miss her!" in the car, even if that's not the official line.

Swift, a proud Sagittarius (a sign known for its need to travel), loves to tell her subject to take her places as a sign of true love and adoration: "Take me home," she begs on "Style;" "Take me out," she trills on "Lover," and here, she's screaming, "Take me away to you."

If I'm recalling correctly, she only uses the specific phrase "take me away" one other time in her discography: on the "Midnights" bonus track "Hits Different," another reflective breakup song with an uplifting beat. They both can also easily be interpreted from the queer perspective, so it's interesting that they're linked lyrically. If it was intentional, Swift is a genius (but we know this). But even if it was a mere happy accident, they're both still bangers.

If Swift is begging you to take her somewhere, you better go — because if she's asking, it's going to be a fantastic ride.

Ahlgrim: Although "Nothing New" was inspired by Swift's fame and "relevancy" in Hollywood, the age-related anxiety she describes is deeply affecting, regardless of wealth or status.

Our society treats youth as currency, especially as it relates to femininity. Men are permitted to age gracefully; women are "discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they're 35," as Swift said in "Miss Americana."

"Nothing New" would have been a relatable and welcome addition to "Red," but it hits even harder as a vault track released after Swift exited her 20s, leaving a long line of shiny new pop stars in her wake. "I know someday I'm gonna meet her, it's a fever dream / The kind of radiance you only have at 17" feels downright prophetic in retrospect.

Plus, if "Nothing New" had been released in 2012, it wouldn't have featured Phoebe Bridgers, whose wistful, wise-beyond-her-years voice offers the perfect foil to Swift's rosy-cheeked, wide-eyed dread.

Larocca: Before its release, I feared that "featuring Phoebe Bridgers" meant Swift was going to have the "Kyoto" singer whisper backing vocals on mute the way she has with other female artists like The Chicks, Maren Morris, and Lana Del Rey.

Thankfully, that wasn't the case on "Nothing New." Bridgers instead gets one of the best verses on this true duet: "How long will it be cute / All this crying in my room / When you can't blame it on my youth / And roll your eyes with affection?"

From then on, Swift and Bridgers share the mic as they do what they both do best: agonizingly pour out their souls and break their audience's hearts.

"Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?" is a gut-wrenching question to pose, but in Swift and Bridgers' case, my answer is an emphatic "yes." Listening to these two artists never gets old.

Ahlgrim: "Better Man" was already an elusive favorite of mine, ever since Swift performed an acoustic version of the song at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe in 2019. But the official version is more heart-wrenching than even I could've hoped for.

The song captures the exquisite agony of wasted potential. You can't help but miss this person, even though he callously took your love for granted: "Talking down to me like I'd always be around / Push my love away like it was some kind of loaded gun" remains one of the most succinct and piercing relationship post-mortems that Swift has ever written.

Larocca: Of all the vault tracks, I was probably second-most excited about "Better Man" when they were announced (the first being the 10-minute version of "All Too Well," of course).

She wrote the song during the "Red" era and gave it away to Little Big Town, which was fine. But I fell in love with the song when Swift performed that acoustic version in Nashville. I'm ecstatic that she performed the studio version in a similar vein.

Every time I hear that pre-chorus — "But your jealousy, oh, I can hear it now / Talking down to me like I'd always be around / Push my love away like it was some kind of loaded gun" — I can feel every fiber of my being yearning to scream out with Swift.

There's something so tragic about aching for someone you know could've been the one, but ultimately wasn't the one for you. "Better Man (Taylor's Version)" explores this honestly, proving yet again that Swift can grapple with the rawest human experiences, and hand them back to her listeners on a silver platter to make their own.

Ahlgrim: It's difficult to overstate the ways in which "All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor's Version) (From the Vault)" has altered my brain chemistry.

"All Too Well" was already my favorite Taylor Swift song, and while I was desperate to hear the fabled extended version like any other Swiftie, I was doubtful that it would replace the original version — the one I trauma-bonded to when I was 18 years old — in my playlists and my heart.

One year later, the results are in. I cannot count the number of times I have listened to the 10-minute version in its entirety, though it surely surpasses four digits. I still get chills when the outro hits.

Conversely, I know I have not listened to the five-minute version more than a handful of times — only when I'm enjoying the entirety of "Red" on vinyl. And during each turn, I spent the full five minutes yearning for every verse, lyric, and harrowing confession that was cut.

Larocca: Callie and I have both written extensively about how "All Too Well" is Swift's magnum opus, even before it was expanded into a full 10-minute odyssey through one of her most formative relationships.

It's no small feat to take what was a perfect song and double its length; you risk it sounding overstuffed, or unedited. But Swift's initially scrapped lyrics reign as some of the best in her catalog. It's a wonder why she ever felt the need to leave "You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath" on the cutting-room floor.

The grief Swift feels — for the relationship, for her old self, for who she could've been if she never stepped foot into that sister's house — is palpable throughout, but especially when she reveals why she co-opted everyone's 22nd birthday: "You who charmed my dad with self-effacing jokes / Sipping coffee like you're on a late-night show / But then he watched me watch the front door all night, willing you to come / And he said, 'It's supposed to be fun turning 21.'"

The only downfall of "All Too Well (10 minute version)" is it makes the condensed track seem incomplete. I don't know how I ever lived without the transition to winter, and the lines "And did the twin flame bruise paint you blue? / Just between us, did the love affair maim you too?"